Re: Is CFINT IBM's way of getting rid of RPG?

Folks,

I took this as a tongue in cheek commentary.  The "would go something
like this" is -exactly- what has been going on.  It is not imaginary.

John Rockwell wrote:
> 
> Here's a thought.  What if IBM thinks the only way the iSeries can
> survive is by getting rid of RPG?  The thinking would go something like
> this.
> 
>    1. Customers are tied to their legacy applications by the programs
> they've grown accustomed to.
> 
>    2. These legacy applications taint the iSeries when it's competing
> against the latest technologies because competitors dismiss
>        them as old green screen applications.
> 
>    3. Most of these green screen applications are in RPG and a lot of
> the more valuable ones are interactive in nature.
> 
>    4. Now what happens if we suddenly make a seemingly unrelated
> marketing change, breaking the pricing of the AS400 into
>        two separate features, batch and interactive, and then charge a
> fortune for the interactive segment.  And let's make it even
>        more interesting by tuning CFINT so it really does succeed as a
> governor when you move to versions 4.5.
> 
>    5. How long will it take for RPG and the high price of the
> interactive feature to be linked together, making new technologies
>        like Domino, JAVA, et al, more appealing because they
> conveniently run in batch as far as the AS400 is concerned (even
>        though this changes the definition of batch a bit)?  Thus through
> a little sleight of hand the argument changes from language
>        vs. language (with a company usually having to rely on its own
> in-house programmers judgment) to an argument simply
>        over dollars (with a company having more than enough accountants
> to make a case against the legacy system).
> 
> Just thinking out loud of course.
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