Re: Externalizing I/O

[DrFranken <midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ahh yes, the blessing and the curse of 'forever supported.' One of the 
Best and Worst features of IBM i.

With Windows and many other O/Ss the requirement to re-write things 
every few releases to even be able to run on newer stuff has created 
large employment there but has forced at least a modicum of 
modernization. But yes there is a LOT of 'legacy' code on Windows.

IBM i has not mandated that and as inferred by Justin you can in fact 
run S/36 code on 2016 IBM i. *IF* that code is still useful and correct 
then why not? It's value lives on. However, If it's old and you are 
actively maintaining it to support new features like GUI interfaces and 
connections to IOT devices for data acquisition etc then leaving it as 
RPG/36 code is, well, 'less than smart.' (hows that? :-) )

Sorry folks but to me the question isn't "Is IBM Modernizing the 
platform" the question is "Are AS/400 Developers holding the platform 
back?" I think the answer is self evident in far far too many shops.

        - Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.Frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com - Personal Development IBM i timeshare service.
www.iInTheCloud.com - Commercial IBM i Cloud Hosting.

On 10/28/2016 8:55 AM, Justin Taylor wrote:
> Yep, IBM can't even drop the RPG/36 compilers dues to customer backlash.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alan Campin [mailto:alan0307d@xxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Thursday, October 27, 2016 4:36 PM
> To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: Externalizing I/O
>
> <<I''m coming from a RLA perspective because the new RPG Redbook that prompted this discussion used RLA, and I think most people would agree that RLA is the dominant I/O method for RPG.>> For no other reason than people won't change. They keep on writing the 1980 code again and again including RLA just as they keep creating un-normalized databases which, of course, is why the machine is dying. If RPG programmers won't change, companies move to new development platforms where people will use SQL and normalize their databases and build maintainable code. The iSeries is a far and away a better business machine but it does no good at all if we keep writing 1980 code. I see it every day. My opinion only.