RE: Re[4]: New Opcodes - %SETCELL

[boldt@xxxxxxxxxx]

Colin wrote:
>Unfortunately, developments that you do on the company machine, belong
>to the company, which means you need prior approval from your boss
>before you can start distributing that software as freeware.

Then get your bosses approval.

The justification is simple:  You have a lot invested in your RPG
applications.  But todays computing world is very different than
10 or 20 years ago.  Look at Linux.  It is succeeding because of
a very active user community.  If you want the RPG community to
thrive, it needs the kind of synergy the Linux community has.

Or look at the Perl community.  It's one of the ugliest languages
ever slopped together.  But one of the reasons for its success is
the massive quantity of user-written, open-source code available
for it.  To see what I mean, look at <http://www.cpan.org/>.  To
summarise the cpan home page: cpan contains 600 megabytes of Perl
code mirrored at almost a hundred sites around the world.  In
comparison, how much RPG code is available on the net?  And don't
forget that Perl is 28 years younger than RPG and runs on
practically every system currently available, even the AS/400!

To be blunt, if I'm developing Linux or Unix software five years
from now instead of AS/400 software, that's ok by me.  But I know
most of you would rather continue working on the AS/400, and my
part of IBM wants to see that as well.

One of the reasons we added procedures to the language was to make
it easier for you to add your own "enhancements" to the language.
But what's the point if your own "enhancements" are used only in
your shop?  If your code is only going to be used in your own site,
then you could just as easily write them as old-style programs and
subroutines.  Developing "enhancements" as modules and service
programs allows for a much wider use of the software.

To get back on topic, if you want better API's for IFS, write your
own procedures and share them with others so they can benefit too.
Quite simply, now that we have procedures in the language, any
request for new function in RPG we see that could easily be
implemented by some code in a procedure is not taken very seriously
here.  We look for new function that can't otherwise be done easily
in the language today.

Cheers!  Hans


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