Re: drinking the koolaid WAS: Latest

Gerald Kern wrote:

I think it's safe to say that had EGL been a
dog of a product he would have said so. But since he's invested well over ayear on bringing this product to the attention of our community via his
articles and tutorials, and has stuck with it, I think that alone is worth
merit.

Thanks, Jerry. And to be honest, this hasn't been a love-at-first-sight relationship. Don't tell anyone, but I've been writing about EGL since September of 2004, a time at which I was none too impressed. A followup article in December of 2005 wasn't really that much more enthusiastic, since I was still focused on EGL as a replacement to RPG, not as a partner technology.

It wasn't until April of 2006 that I started to see the possibilities of the tool, and it wasn't until I really used it in conjunction with RPG that I saw its true potential as a SOA enabling solution for i shops. And so while people are complaining about me being too gung-ho, it's really the exact same sequence I went through with WDSC, and I think time has borne out my opinion there. I resent any intimation that I'm not doing the groundwork. I've paid my dues with EGL <smile>.

As for changing perspectives about SOA - so what. He recognized a
change in the paradigm and moved on and I appreciate his flexibility in that regard too.

What's funny is that I've always been a big supporter of distributed programming. I designed the very first commercial application for OS/2 and AS/400, so I know a little bit about the real world of multi-platform programming. Now that SOA is no longer a buzzword married to SOAP and UDDI and web services, I think it has a great potential. And EGL makes it easy for us in the i world to use.

Joe