Re: Death of the RPG Programmer -- MIDRANGE-L

Bruce,

Quite elegant.

And this:
> If all you know is RPG, then every box starts to look like a 400.

is very qoutable :)

jte


"R. Bruce Hoffman, Jr." wrote:

> I don't think I have done this on this list yet so...  here goes....
>
> RANT(*ON)
>
> And SQL by nature is slower than direct record access.  But as time goes on,
> that difference is negligible.  Compared to the costs that follow.
>
> Look at the maintenance.  The external descriptions are great.  But when the
> record changes you maintain the code.  Maintenance burns the MOST money.  It
> IS cheaper to upgrade the hardware.  Except for 400 disks maybe.  So SQL...
>
> The idea is that the hardware costs less.  The software costs more.  This is
> not news.
>
> Death of RPG programmer?
>
> COME ON!!!
>
> OH, yeah, I remember now.  The COBOL programmer is dead!  Long live the
> COBOL programmer!  (GEEZ!  The 70's again!)
>
> Java does what it does.  COBOL _STILL_ does what it does, regardless of the
> 400's RPG slant.  Linux does what it does (which is networking, hands down,
> regardless of your 400 blinders).
>
> A language is a TOOL. You ADD it to your toolbox and move on.  But you still
> take it out when you need it.  It is what separates the professionals from
> the hacks.  I own air driven nailers.  When I rebuilt the porch, they paid
> for themselves three times over, but when I built the birch CD cabinet, they
> stayed in the box.
>
> A hack makes the money today, but the professional makes the money all the
> way through.
>
> RPG II, RPG III, RPG IV, COBOL 68, COBOL74, COBOL 85, PL/I, Lisp, Prolog,
> Smalltalk, Pascal, C, C++, Fortran, Java, Perl, Python, Forth, Basic, Rexx,
> C shell scripts, Bourne shell scipts, Korn shell scripts, GPSS (damn, I
> can't remember the number that follows this, maybe "V"?), and some Prime
> language for PrimeOS that looked a lot like REXX...
>
> I have them all in my toolbox.  Some I pull out more that others.
>
> If all you know is RPG, then every box starts to look like a 400.
>
> But take a hard look around.  They are not.  Even IBM, the mother of
> mainframes says that it is a heterogenous environment.
>
> Problems are problems and this thread is not a problem in the community, it
> is a problem in narrowness.
>
> Platforms come and go.  Tie yourself to ONLY one platform, and your career
> is over almost as soon as it begins.
>
> Death of the RPG programmer?  Only if you commit suicide.
>
> But NO... let's burn some bandwidth with how soon we will all be gone...
>
> RANT(*OFF)
>
> ===========================================================
> R. Bruce Hoffman, Jr.
>  -- IBM Certified AS/400 Professional System Administrator
>  -- IBM Certified AS/400 Professional Network Administrator
>  -- IBM Certified Specialist AS/400 V4R4 Administration
>
> "The sum of all human knowledge is a fixed constant.
>     It's the population that keeps growing!"
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joel Fritz <JFritz@sharperimage.com>
> To: 'MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com' <MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com>
> Date: Tuesday, June 13, 2000 7:49 PM
> Subject: RE: Death of the RPG Programmer
>
> >IBM has claimed that optimizing at level 40 should make Java perform as
> >though it were compiled.  I think that's stretching it a bit.
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: Erick Garske [mailto:erick@formationmg.com]
> >Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2000 3:35 PM
> >To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
> >Subject: RE: Death of the RPG Programmer
> >
> >
> >Java would by nature be slower than RPG because its interpetive.
> >
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--
John Earl                               johnearl@400security.com
The PowerTech Group                     206-575-0711
PowerLock Network Security              www.400security.com
--




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