RE: Visual Age RPG and .NET environment -- RPG400-L

Joe, 
I believe that our young Jedi (Aaron) has stumbled
upon a giant breakthrough in the Microsoft programming
world. 

I took a couple of .net (ASP.Net & VB.net) classes a
little less than a year ago just to get an idea of
what it was.  Haven't used it much since, but I have
somewhat of an idea how it works.

What he has stumbled onto, is that now a Visual Basic
programmer can now write Web applications without
needing to learn lot of new web programming skills. 
When you get ready to write an application in
Studio.net, you select whether you are writing a GUI
or Web application, and whether you are writing inline
(JSP type) or external (Servlet type or JSP w/tag
libraries) applications. You design Web & GUI screens
pretty much the same way (drag & drop..this was the
main thing that impressed me, is how the buttons,
textboxes maneuvered and stayed put) Then the
Studio.net will write the interface code for you. (as
you said as a 'program generater')  

VB.net along with C#.net, & J#.net and whatever other
.net languages now all compile into the same object
.DLL code (supposedly) So it doesn't matter which
language you use.

I guess that you could use n-tiered approach to
developing .net applications, but with all this said,
you are still only writing applications that will
execute only on .net, Windows 2003 or whatever
environment.

I know that I got a bill for IBM iSeries software
support around the neighborhood of 60-70K for 3 years
and our microsoft licensing is running us around 300K
per year. (hate to put too much time into microsoft
for that reason alone)

Studio.net is faster than WSAD in initial start-upand
has an impressive GUI builder, but lacks all the 3rd
party plugin support and many, many of the other
features of WSAD & VisualAge for Java.

Anyway, sorry to spend too much time with this email,
since it really belongs in the Java, J2ee email
groups.

Don McIntyre  


--- Joe Pluta <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > From: Joe Pluta
> >
> > Of course, if your idea of web applications is
> big, monolithic RPG CGI
> > programs, I could see how something like .NET
> might seem like a step
> > forward.
> 
> You know what?  I'm going to just retract this
> statement.  If .NET fits your
> need, then it's the right tool.  It generates lots
> of code and keeps you
> from having to do the scut work of building an
> application.
> 
> Me, I don't believe a code generator can ever match
> a good programmer.  And
> I do believe a programmer should learn how to code
> from scratch prior to
> using a tool to do their job.  But as more and more
> developers are taught to
> use code generators rather than actually writing
> code, eventually there
> won't BE any programmers, and the point will be
> moot.
> 
> Joe
> 
> _______________________________________________
> This is the RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries
> (RPG400-L) mailing list
> To post a message email: RPG400-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options,
> visit:
> http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/rpg400-l
> or email: RPG400-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> Before posting, please take a moment to review the
> archives
> at http://archive.midrange.com/rpg400-l.
> 


__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more
http://taxes.yahoo.com/