RE: Compatibility across releases as curse WAS: CF-Spec - another call for opinions

Buck,

Good speech, but...

Looking at the bottom line, most businesses don't want to spend money--okay
we don't care about them except for the initial sales pitch, granted.

But the move it or loose it attitude just doesn't work.
People don't move to new technologies even if they are forced to. Look at
OSHA. Unless they find a problem with the shop, the business will not
upgrade systems even if employee health is on the line. This is very
disturbing to me, but it is reality.

Why did people move to Windows? Better technology? No. OS/2 was better.
Better User Interface? No, the MAC was better. Better database? No, OS/400
is better. Better reliability? No AS/400 is better.

People move because they are sold. Unless and until a technology becomes a
commodity, you can't sell people on technology--typically. If my program is
obsolete, because OS/400 V5Rx makes it obsolete, then I stay on the release
prior to that one because I want my investment in this business tool last
until "OSHA comes in and forces me to change". (Metaphor)

The money is NOT in making RPG IV totally free format. The MONEY is in
getting customers to upgrade and/or purchase new systems. If those systems
are 100 percent compatible with their existing systems, and they save money
or fill a need, they will upgrade. But then only if IBM gives them an easy
way to upgrade--which they generally don't, there fore most people don't
upgrade...

For the RPG programmer, I believe the MONEY is not in getting a free format
feature in RPG IV. It is in providing them with a future that builds on what
they already know--not was a few (albeit a few dozen) people want. Most
AS/400 programmers want the ability to know their code is going to work and
that it will work on the next release as well. They want to go home on the
weekend and barbeque or swim, or go to the kid's soccer game, or go see a
movie (if a good one would be released <g>).

The CF-spec with or without parens, colons, slashes, asterisks provides none
of that stuff. CompSci is not important here. I'd rather have things
engineered so they work for the lifetime of the component, than to be
designed "correctly" as CompSci sees it. Because those "correctly designed"
components are going to become obsolete with the next wave of CompSci grads.
If a bridge were built by CompSci grads we'd have bridges that last for,
what? 12 months...

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