Re: Mono on IBM i - Porting Mono to AIX and IBM i

On Wed, Apr 17, 2019 at 8:42 AM Joe Pluta <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 4/17/2019 1:48 AM, John Yeung wrote:

But as much as you want a simple, pat answer, I don't think it's as
simple as that, because to take the best advantage of a library, it's
helpful to be able to do at least a little bit of programming in the
implementation language, because most libraries don't have a
ready-made interface to CL or RPG.

Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. And that means I have to have a
development environment, and to go that route I have to decide whether
the ROI is there.

There's nothing to be afraid of. The development environment for most
languages can be as simple as whatever text editor you're most
comfortable with. You can use RDi if you like. When I say there's no
ready-made interface, that doesn't mean building the interface is
hard. In some ways, it could be argued that it's easier to invoke a
PASE program than call a system API or service program in ILE. And
there have even been working examples provided, notably from Jack and
Richard.

My guess is I need Visual Studio to do even simple development for
Mono, so that's a pain point right there. I could be wrong though, and
that would make a difference.

You don't need Visual Studio, by any means, but there's little reason
not to use it.

Yeah this is where I'm going to call "nitpick" John. :) What did you
think I was talking about? Wanting to develop standalone
microcontroller applications? Or perhaps write a graphical MMORPG to
run on the i? The overwhelming majority of work on the IBM i is
business work written in RPG (and some COBOL). So all I was looking for
was the direct utility of Mono in that environment. Just add "in an RPG
application environment" to the end of every one of my questions. :)

Joe, no need to resort to ridiculousness. I mean, you can do all those
things on the i, but there is room for open-mindedness without going
off the deep end.

The reason I consider the interfacing with RPG requirement not obvious
is because I program in Python on the i almost every day, and much of
it doesn't interact with RPG at all. (And we don't use Cobol at all.)
And while I have wrapped up some Python functionality using CLPs and
CMDs for my coworkers (one of which is definitely in the "I'm
*determined* not to learn anything new" phase of her career), to
*best* leverage Python libraries, it's a lot better to write Python
around them.

Even in the case of Java, which as you mention, has a fairly direct
way of being called from RPG, to really get the most out of a Java
library, it is actually better to use it from Java.

So I'm not being ornery or even nitpicky. I'm simply speaking from a
position that is apparently outside where you're looking, but I think
a lot of IBM midrange shops are similar to mine, and might benefit
from the PASE stuff in a similar way that mine has. I thought (and
still think) your shop could be such a shop.

John Y.