Re: Platform Independence (was George is Farr from where we want tobe)

Pete


albartell wrote:

You make a lot of good points Pete, and from what I can see we are both on
the same page.  You, as a software reseller, want to write software in a
language that wont cause you to lose sales because you had to sell a piece
of expensive hardware to go with it.  I don't disagree with your approach
and it is great that the iSeries supports things like Java and PHP for your
purposes.

Here's what I struggle with: There are die hard RPG programmers writing home
grown applications for companies that have already chosen the iSeries as
their platform of choice.  They understand, for the most part, why they dish
out the many thousands of dollars a year.  They understand that they gain
ROI by using the same technologies repeatedly (RPG, DSPF, PF's, CL, DB2,etc)
year in and year out.  They have become very productive in meeting their
business needs.  Now IBM comes and says: "We have a roadmap for you to get
to GUI, and here it is.  You use these wizards and walla! You have GUI."
Well, in the middle of that they introduced a whole bunch of things that I
would consider far from being native.  They essentially took their tools
normally used for cross platform purposes and tried to make them fit with
intimate native practices.  True blue RPG shops don't want this (speaking
mostly for myself but believe others share my sentiment).  They don't want
to introduce another language.  They are not looking to migrate or run on
Windows.  These are they people that aren't getting as much development time
from IBM.

Thanks for your comments Pete,
Aaron Bartell