Re: RE: Death of RPG38 and RPG36 -and- more! -- RPG400-L

Tom - I would have to disagree slightly... The AS400 in '88 was marketed asthe machine that could handle both 38 and 36 code with little migrationeffort. It had the new "native as400" which was mostly modernized 38 withsome 36 concepts included. IBM actively marketed & sold machines thattargeted the S36 crowd with black box models 236 & 436. I don't know theyear the 436 ended marking, but long after '88. Every Common I haveattended, I have reminded IBM'ers that a large number of companies werestill executing the old code, and some of these are large customers to IBM.Last Common I attended (2 years ago), i was again assured it will liveforever. They did recognize the customer use of the s36ee. Apparently nolonger. There are still software vendors still maintaining s36 code ( andyes I think it's a disservice to the customer...). I do 99% native codingand rarely touch the 36 code at my customers, but it still runs. This willbe like another Y2k to those companies who now have to make a choice. I'vedone many 36 to native conversions and they are messy. The tools only getyou so far. I'll be right there doing the work, but it will be painful tothe customer, and IBM will lose some of their long term customers (and sowill I).

btw- believe it or not, but some companies operate the same way they did 20years ago, make a good profit, have very happy customers, and like how theirsystem keeps on running. Their biggest and often only complaint is theunreliability of pc software!

jim franz

----- Original Message -----From: <qsrvbas@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

To: <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2006 8:06 PM
Subject: RE: RE: Death of RPG38 and RPG36 -and- more!

rpg400-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
  8. RE: Death of RPG38 and RPG36 -and- more! (Jeff Crosby)
With that said I am glad they are taking it away in some part
because now they won't have to support it which will
hopefully leave more time for new features in the latest
compiler versions.  But it just smells of Microsoft thinking.
 Know what I mean?
But the AS/400 came out in what? 1988?  That's going on 18 years.  I think
IBM went above and beyond. I can't imagine MS supporting business usersto
that extent.
Further, the news is about what will happen in the _next_ release ofi5/OS, not even V4R4 which technically isn't even available yet.
V5R4 will be supported for what...? ...at least two more years of course,and it will be viable for a few years longer. What we're talking about isongoing support for systems that were effectively obsoleted 20 yearsearlier. Not "new" 20 years earlier, but obsoleted.
Given a possible V5R4 lifetime, one way of looking at it is IBM sayingthat these software packages should be converted during the next tenyears.
Tom Liotta

--
Tom Liotta
The PowerTech Group, Inc.
19426 68th Avenue South
Kent, WA 98032
Phone  253-872-7788 x313
Fax    253-872-7904
http://www.powertech.com


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