Re: New Opcodes - %SETCELL -- RPG400-L

Jeff,

You very well may be right in the cultural differences between, dare I say, PC
programmers and AS/400 programmers.

By that I mean that the demographics of AS/400 professionals is a bit different
than the PC freeware/shareware contributors.

As you stated, I also mean no offense, but the AS/400 crowd is a little longer 
in
the tooth and have given up "doing something for nothing" or maybe they've heard
"this is a great opportunity for you" one time too many without reward for it to
have any value.

Imagine that you are 20 something with a blank resume, residing in your parents
house, low cost of living.  Add to that a Perl script or Javascript or C++
module that you post (freeware/shareware) and receive thousands of downloads.
Maybe a kudo or two.  You've got the time and a PC and all the trial downloads
you can handle. Nothing else in your life.  You're making a name for yourself.

You take those download statistics/kudos to your next job interview.  What else
have you had to worry about for the last year.

Or maybe you are a book author and have to keep cranking out "bleeding edge"
solutions.  Publish or perish.  It's your job.

The past midrange poll either didn't include 20-29 or there were no responses.
The 3x and 4x age brackets are close and we don't live with our parents, we have
mortgages, spouses, children, aging parents, retirements, etc. that we fund.
Free time is a luxury.

Free time has high value, it's not given away freely.

I think it was Ben Franklin that said "If you are 20 and not a socialist, you
have no heart.  If you are 30 and still a socialist you have no brains."  Or
something like that.  Freeware is socialism, IMHO.

For the AS/400 community we support commerce (a kind way of saying "we do it for
the bucks").  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that to spend $100 
on
a service program is cheaper than one man hour of development.  And guess what,
that service program will cost the employer a day or two or three to develop.
It's economically viable.

There is a sufficient number of installed AS/400's for a conservative 1% market
rate to make it worth while to invest in the time/trouble to develop sellable
service programs.  Yes, it's a pragmatic approach to justify "shareware".

There's an old adage: "If you want a million dollars, ask a million people for a
buck."  The numbers are there.






Jeff Crosby wrote:

>
>
> Here's one opinion (and I don't even know if it's mine).  Maybe we
> AS/400 people are too pragmatic.  We like programming, but we're
> business people first and programmers second.  Maybe the Unix/Perl/C++
> people are programmers first and foremost.  They will do something in
> programming just to see if it can be done.  They will spend half their
> evenings regularly just 'hacking' around and discover stuff
> (serendipity) and then share it with everyone.  We think more about the
> business first and simply do what needs to be done from a business
> perspective.  Or maybe we're too selfish to share. <g>  Maybe the Unix
> world has to share to survive. <g>
>
> Now don't anybody get offended, that's not my intent.  I'm not
> suggesting that either group is more/less intelligent, or more/less
> capable, or more/less driven, or more/less selfish.  Different
> personalities within information technology may just gravitate to
> different platforms.  We don't all have the same level of
> bit-twiddle-itis. <g>
>
> --
> -Jeff

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