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Colin, In the context of John's post on the value of petitioning those 3rd party vendors still stuck updating code originally written in the 70's, I stand by my opinion. Just to clarify, remember that I said that the vendors don't give a rat's ass about the people who have to support and maintain the product, the _programmers_. They don't care that I (and every other programmer in the world) think their code is mangled piece of crap. They don't care that I have to drill down through 50 subroutines to find the function that I need to modify. They don't care that I get eye strain looking at code that makes it difficult to see that certain statements are commented out. Yada, yada, yada. No. The 3rd party vendors sell to the CEOs of the world. And so I wonder whether John's idea of petitioning to get packages rewritten in RPG-IV would be better done from the demand-side of the equation. That means that, somehow, we must communicate to the decision-makers the importance of including the condition of the source code as a factor to consider in buying 3rd party packages. And then proving to them that there is a real cost advantage to modifying newer, structured code over modifying ancient, monstrous spaghetti code. It means that MIS would have to be _legitimately_ involved in the decision making process (you'd be surprised) and that MIS managers must involve experienced programmers in reviewing vendors' source code. When pigs fly? Sigh... - Dan Bale -----Original Message----- From: Colin Williams [mailto:Williamsc@technocrats.co.uk] Sent: Monday, February 07, 2000 11:24 AM To: 'RPG400-L@midrange.com' Subject: RE: Using % type functions/using RPG IV Do you not think you may be generalising there a little bit. Most of the package vendors spend there money on giving their customers what they want eg enhanced functionality and interfacing to new technologies. Im not sure that they get many requests from customers for complete rewrites of their code, because the customers development staff think the coding style is out of date. If you have business critical applications running at multiple client sites, that work today, are you prepared to risk their wrath by introducing more errors, rewriting code that is proven and works. im not convinced. To do something like that requires a lot of support. -----Original Message----- From: Bale, Dan [mailto:DBale@TFSA.Textron.com] Sent: Monday, February 07, 2000 3:45 PM To: 'RPG400-L@midrange.com' Subject: RE: Using % type functions/using RPG IV John, One problem. The JBA's of the world don't give a rat's ass about the people who have to support and maintain the product. After all, they don't sell it to the programmers. Heck, at that level, they don't even sell it to the MIS department. They sell it to the CEO's. My gosh! If management had any sense of the nightmares brought on by the convoluted code in these million dollar packages... Well, .... well, well, they _still_ wouldn't give a damn. So you want to start a "Mass mailing" to the worst 3rd party vendors? IMH(but jaded)O, you'd be wasting your time. Sorry for being so blunt, but... - Dan Bale -----Original Message----- From: John P Carr [mailto:jpcarr@tredegar.com] Sent: Saturday, February 05, 2000 3:37 PM To: RPG400-L Subject: RE: Using % type functions/using RPG IV ""but there are some big-name software packages out there that are sticking to their 70's roots. "" Why not start a "Mass" mailing to the worst 3rd party vendors petitioning them to use new RPGIV design paradigms?? Maybe send them a sample of their own code, and one written "Better" using RPGIV and sign it as concerned customers? Raise the visibility of their @#$% code. One of the hardest parts of trying to get shops to use RPGIV is the argument that they "Still" have to maintain RPGIII vendor code. Tell the vendors that they are *NOT helping their customers with their products. kinda vigilante I know, but it's like trying to move a battleship with these guys. Well just a thought. +--- | This is the RPG/400 Mailing List! | To submit a new message, send your mail to RPG400-L@midrange.com. | To subscribe to this list send email to RPG400-L-SUB@midrange.com. | To unsubscribe from this list send email to RPG400-L-UNSUB@midrange.com. | Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: david@midrange.com +---
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