Oh well....i've been hearing the same dying theory applied to COBOL, RPG
and various other languages...the same will hold true for this platform.
It's not going away, it's reinventing itself constantly. The hardware
has improved, the OS has improved and the programming languages are
being updated and functionality added. PC languages change
too...continually, the thing is the PC languages (for the most part ...
See M$ for examples...) are not backward compatible. Processor models
are not that big of an issue here. Would PC's die if they didn't
improve from the x86 to Pentium? I doubt it. Is it better? Of course,
but PC sales (and any other platform) does not hinge upon the processor
model but the need for the system.
Now on to the "maintenance programming jobs" in my last 3 jobs spanning
8 years. I may have spent 5% of the time doing maintenance programming
which leaves 95% doing new development. I understand this may not be
the norm but to say all (or the majority) of RPG developers are doomed
to maintaining existing code is ludicrous at best.
I have been working (in my sparse spare time) on open-source projects to
make a feeble effort to improve the community as a whole. There are
several others on this mailing list that do that as well. To say there
is not a "little effort" is not really true. I forget but some where in
this thread someone mentioned that we should speak to people outside of
our workplace and to IBM, this IS being done. I firmly believe that the
people involved in this and other forums are doing their best to keep
the system in front of the public. It's my humble opinion that we need
to recruit OTHERS that aren't participating to join the fight. I
appreciate everyone's thoughts on this (even Steve Richter with whom I
tend to disagree with...not in a vindictive way just different schools
of opinion ;-)...) All of us have much to gain by fighting for what we
know is best but at the end of the day, the squeaky wheel may get the
grease but the louder the wheel the better. Go recruit us some help in
the fight instead of preaching to the choir...
FWIW, IT jungle is not the end-all be-all of computing...there are many
more websites that can be used for reference but you have to bear in
mind that even reporters/writers there is always some bias based on how
things should work, are working, etc. I take things with a grain of
salt..(sometimes the whole frigging shaker if needed...)
Thanks,
Tommy Holden
-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[
mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Steve Richter
Sent: Monday, June 11, 2007 10:53 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: When an AS/400 is called an iSeries
On 6/11/07, Trevor Perry <trevor@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I know that few of us have time to spit outside of our normal
maintenance
programming jobs and emailing midrange-L, but without a little effort
this
platform of ours is going away.
is that a prediction based on recent news? we need the Power6 now, not
next year. the lastest metrics from ITJungle show the i5 models
slower at running java apps than the competition.
http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh061107-story01-fig01.html
-Steve
midrange.com
