Re: Bob's letter on V5R4 RPG stuff

On Wed, 1 Feb 2006 13:45:40 -0500
 "Richter,Steve" <Steve.Richter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jon Paris [mailto:Jon.Paris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2006 1:21 PM
> To: rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: RE: Bob's letter on V5R4 RPG stuff
> 
>  >> It is very interesting to me that this got added as a
> language feature
> over the hundreds of other things that could have been
> done
> 
> >The basic XML SAX support was added to COBOL in V5R3, I
> guess it was easier
> >for RPG to pick up and enhance that than to invent
> something completely new
> >like overloading.
> 
> >Besides - don't you think that XML support will get a
> hell of a lot more use
> >than overloading?  Much as I'd like to have that
> support, XML is much more
> >important at this point in history.
> 
> We need all the modern language features to be in RPG.
>  try finally blocks, data struct member functions, data
> struct inheritance, virtual functions, managed code.  As
> it is, I think a strong argument can be made that RPG
> programmers are stuck in a ghetto, not able to exit
> because very few of their skills are transferable to all
> the other languages currently used in computing. And the
> radical difference which is RPG compared to VB, C#, C++
> and Java makes the learning curve that much steeper when
> programmers skilled in those languages attempt to use
> RPG.
> 
> -Steve
>

What happens when XML goes away for the next flavor?  I'd
rather have generic tools than specific tools which can be
built externally from RPG using RPG and those generic
tools.

Bradley V. Stone
BVS.Tools
www.bvstools.com