Re: Cloud and the future of IBM i

On Fri, Mar 6, 2020 at 10:27 AM Patrik Schindler <poc@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

So, with RPG or whatever if you can't put some into use right away you won't retain it. I really do not think that anyone with no exposure to it would learn it anyway on their own without an immediate opportunity to put it into use.

Why always RPG? There are other "native" languages available. Okay, no further comment on COBOL. ;-) C and C++ once were popular and if you look at what's available in PASE, there's seemingly no limit.

As far as I know, RPG is the best and most unique of the "native" IBM
i languages. CL is not strong enough for general-purpose programming,
and Rexx is wonderful but too weird and too obscure. So I think it
makes sense that people talk about RPG when they talk about IBM i.

PASE is a supplement. An incredibly valuable and important one, for
sure. It absolutely is a gigantic boon for the future prospects of IBM
i. But IBM i really revolves around RPG. If RPG isn't in the
conversation, then IBM i might as well not be in the conversation
either; because frankly, C, C++, and all the PASE languages work
better on Linux. And for that matter, they even work better on Windows
than they do on PASE.

I will grant that IBM i starts to look more special if you include the
sysadmin perspective. But I'm almost purely a high-level programmer,
and from where I'm sitting, IBM i and RPG are inextricably linked.

John Y.