RE: RPGIII to get a facelift?

["Bruce Guetzkow" <bruceg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Bob:

You're on the money about the marketing (what marketing?).  First,
market the product beyond "eServer" (whatever that means to CEOs).
Whatever you call it, the AS/400-iSeries-i5 (gee, has the name changed
this week?) is the best server on the planet...and only those of us that
actually work on it actually know that.

I'm in the process of converting to RPG-IV because I believe that is in
the best business interest of this company and fortunately have full
support (and "only" about 1500 source members).  I'm doing this by
myself and expect to be done in a few weeks.  Backward-compatibility was
a good thing, but it may be detrimental in the long run.  I have never
understood why a company would purchase a computer like the AS/400 to
run their business, then not keep current with versions/releases or
support (except where doing so would cause systems to stop working).
It's like buying a new car and deciding that changing the oil is a waste
of money...sooner or later, you find out why maintenance is important.
I think the same is true for the language version.

I would have no problem if IBM chose to drop support of older versions
of the language, giving companies a reasonable time to convert.
Although, one could argue that 10 years should have been enough.  ;-)
This could be a real boon to consultants, like the Y2K thing.  (Think
David will mind if we post rates here???)

Bruce Guetzkow
Information Services Director
United Credit Service, Inc.
Phone: 262-723-2902
Fax: 262-723-5568
Email: bruceg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Web: www.unitedcreditservice.com