RE: RPG and Web.. (was Using OO concepts in RPG)

[Buck Calabro <Buck.Calabro@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>If RPG is so wrong for the web, it should 
>be easy to say why.  

I don't remember quite this tone being used.  I do remember hearing that
there are more web-friendly languages available (even on iSeries.)  I don't
think there's any dispute that RPG can be used successfully for web
projects; so can ReXX.  The point becomes one of how much extra work is it
to do in RPG than an e-friendlier language?

For an all-RPG shop, we might be willing to go a long way just to keep it
all in RPG.  For a mixed language shop, the programmers would tolerate far
less extra work when they know they can do it in less time and with more
readable code.  Think about using C library functions for sockets and you'll
see what I'm getting at.  I'm arrogant enough to think I can write low-level
TCP/IP packets in RPG, having done a ton of communications programming.  But
I'm not willing to suffer the pain of debugging it all, when the C stuff is
right there, begging to be used.

By the bye, I don't now, and never will agree that lines of code is a decent
measurement of readability except in the most vague and general of ways.
Think of APL as an extreme example of this principle.  Readability is
inherently linked to changeability: can I change this code and be guaranteed
that the change will work the first time, and for all reasonably anticipated
cases?  Sorry, had to get that off my chest.

Back to the subject, a perfect example of this willingness to do something
in a less-powerful language can be found right here on these lists.  We have
often heard people ask how they can open multiple files in CL, or
close/re-open files in CL or all manner of I/O in CL.  Different companies
are willing to pay substantially different costs to get things done.  Some
places will cheerfully spend a year of a programmer's life to home-grow a
change management application, when buying one would be cheaper.  But their
programmer's time is already booked, as it were.

I think that this is a powerful motivator for many iSeries companies, and it
is what makes RPG so tenacious on our platform despite the availability of C
and Cobol (thinking back-end here.)  A typical decision might run: 'We know
RPG already, so we'll use it as long as it takes no more than 5x as long to
write in RPG.'  Because, the thinking goes, becoming proficient enough in,
say C, will take 5x the time to write it in RPG.

Summary:  RPG is probably not the BEST web language available to us; Java is
probably better.  That doesn't mean RPG is useless for the web, it just
means RPG folks will spend more time/money doing the same tasks than the
Java folks spend.  And that is a business decision, not a slam on choice of
language.

  --buck