Re: Modernising the AS/400

It would be the "uneasy feeling that you've been had" if I had bought into
it.....sometimes there is value in being a great procrastinator or being so
snowed under you just don't have time to get into every new fad.

The major problem I see with JAVA is not the language itself, it's the same
problem I see with any object oriented language or anything that uses
ActiveX components or even ILE Service Programs.  It's that you are entirely
dependent on your library of "Parts" and how well you understand their
useage and how well you can communicate that understanding to other
programmers.

At my last company,   I built service programs containing probably more than
300 procedures, which were heavily used in many application programs.
However, no one else there is familiar with all those procedures, so I don't
know how all those programs will be maintained by the poor RPG programmer
who comes in cold.  While some are generic little day-of-the-week routines
that won't be hard to figure out, many are very big, very technical, very
specific to the application at hand and not at all the kind of thing that is
transferable to any other company.  Hence, no matter how talented the
maintenance programmer is, he's gonna be lost when he sees some of them,
especially if he like 90% of RPG'ers know nothing about ILE.

If I spend years developing wonderful JAVA objects that do everything under
the Sun ( pun intended ),  and then I transfer to your shop where you have
developed an entirely different set of objects that I know absolutely
nothing about, haven't I just been reduced to a wimpering novice again?  The
language may be transferable, but the knowledge base is not.

I'm not complaining, I love all the new features of ILE and use them
heavily.  I just haven't figured out how to handle this training situation
with just ILE procedures yet, much less real objects.  The 30 or 40 BIF's
that IBM has given us is hard enough to get everyone trained on without even
looking at all the home-grown ones that I build.  And even if I did get
everyone trained on them, they would not be available at their next shop.

How does everyone else address this issue?

----- Original Message -----
From: "L. S. Russell" <leslier@datrek.com>
To: <RPG400-L@midrange.com>
Sent: Friday, April 14, 2000 2:06 PM
Subject: Re: Modernising the AS/400


> > Nothing factual here, of course, just that uneazy feeling that we've
been
> > here before.
>
> Don't you mean the uneasy feeling that you've been had. Had by
> consultants, and early adopting pundits. Had by gurus with no real world
> experience.
> Pushed face first over a barrel and had.
>
> --
> L. S. Russell
> THE PEOPLES PROGRAMMER
> --
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