Re: [IBMiOSS] Ublu open source language

Very cool project.

I dove into the userdoc repo folder and reviewed the Reference and User
Guide and that filled in some additional gaps (you've written A LOT of
documentation). I also found that there are html to markdown converters**
so that might be a way to easily get your documentation into the Github
wiki. I say that because I think if you put the User Guide in the
README.md then more people would understand what you've built and you'd
hopefully have more participants.

**https://domchristie.github.io/to-markdown/

Aaron Bartell
litmis.com - Services for open source on IBM i


On Sun, Jul 3, 2016 at 4:02 PM, Jack Woehr <jwoehr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Aaron Bartell wrote:

Just trying to wrap my head around what you've announced. Could Ublu be
categorized as a JVM DSL (Domain Specific Language) for IBM i?

I guess you could call it that. I call it an "object disoriented" language.

The language hides the object complexity of Java from the user, though
Ublu actually is a full Java interpreter (see the calljava command for
example).

This is not the first language I coded on top of Java. See FIJI http:/
fiji.sourceforge.net

I've been using jt400/jtopen since 1997 or so. If you look in the jtopen
source tree there's still some of my contributed example code under /qc

Anyway, in 2013 I had a customer who needed a lot of work on their
mission-critical AS400 environment and I started writing jtopen-based utils
to run on PC/Mac/Linux etc. in Java

I wove the utils together with shell scripts.

Quickly I realized that to do anything useful we had to pass objects from
util to util, not just textual results.

The utils became commands in the Ublu language which grew out of that
requirement.

Its design is based on what I could accomplish on the fly in the midst of
a hurried project.

Later I tidied it up. Somewhat :)

It's not a particularly beautiful language, though it looks, um,
"handsome" with jEdit syntax coloring using the provided jEdit mode.

It works. It's running on customer platforms. It has gaping holes and
obvious flaws, but it's useful.

If the members of the i community start to use it, I'll do more work on
it, but it's pretty generally complete.

One of the uses is to provide commands for helpdesk folks who cannot be
trained on the greenscreen.

With Ublu programs wrappered by shell script launchers autogenerated by
Ublu's gensh command, they can be trained to unstick things that get wedged
on the i 7 OS platform.

If you need to remote program/manage/monitor your IBM i platform from
another platform, Ublu is worth looking at.

Also, I can consult on this, hint hint .. :)


--
Jack Woehr # "There's too much emphasis on things
Box 51, Golden CO 80402 # like pawn structure in modern chess.
http://www.softwoehr.com # Checkmate ends the game." - N. Short

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