Re: 'green screen' not sellable --> WE(?) are the problem

I wasn’t endorsing Profound Nathan - but you were talking about a specific design scenario and my client used Profound to build just that. If they had used look, or Rocket, or Asna, or … I would have said that.

I have found that most of the RPGers who deserve “more credit” are for the most part already doing web stuff and have been for years. As a teacher I am concerned with finding ways to help folks who haven’t yet made that leap (for whatever reason) to do so. Starting with an existing and well known and understood paradigm can help them make that jump.

I always found it more than a little amusing that folks who grew up with S/34/36 MRTs or mainframes who knew CICS, have a far easier time learning to program for the web than those raised in the S/38 EXFMT school. Why? Because if you have never had to worry about maintaining state then it can be a hard thing to get your head around. But those of us old frets who had to deal with it for green screen apps already had that skill and the transition was simple.


Jon Paris

www.partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com

On Jun 9, 2015, at 2:11 PM, Nathan Andelin <nandelin@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

The point you are missing I think Nathan is that OA based products such as
Profound _can_ be used to build the kind of apps you describe.

Another nice endorsement, Jon. If OA based products can be used to build
the types of apps I describe, then yes I am missing the point.
Nevertheless, I still question, and very much doubt that OA based products
can do what you are asserting they can. And when you endorse a particular
vendor, you're not just endorsing OA as an interface, you're also endorsing
a particular implementation of that interface.

Maybe it is just a misunderstanding of the "kind of apps" I'm describing.
To build these "kinds of apps", my suggestion is that developers begin with
just HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and perhaps an SPA framework which provides a
way of "merging" static HTML with static JSON objects, whereby applications
may be built and tested nearly entirely with just a browser and an HTTP
server. No need to interface with a database, or RPG code, until you're
ready to implement data validation, referential integrity checks, and
similar business logic against live data.

The focus is on implementing the UI, first. You can connect to the database
later. I hope you can see and appreciate the paradigm shift from "writing"
display file "records" to clients, and "reading" display file "records"
form clients.

I understand that many traditional IBM i developers feel safe with the
display file paradigm, and might not try a different approach. But I like
to give them more credit than that.
--
This is the Midrange Systems Technical Discussion (MIDRANGE-L) mailing list
To post a message email: MIDRANGE-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options,
visit: http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/midrange-l
or email: MIDRANGE-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives
at http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l.