RE: RPG, 10 years from now

Back before RPG IV was announced, IBM's Jack Vanos asked me (at COMMON) what the
name of the new language should be. I'm sure I wasn't the only one he asked this
question, but since I was a strong advocate of enhancing RPGIII it was logical
to solicit my view. I was adamant that the new language should be "RPG IV". 
The only other two names I thought of were:
PL/2
Esperanto 

PL/2 because PL/I was my favorite language and one of the lead
developers/designers of RPG IV worked on the PL/I compiler. Whenever he would
ask how should we do this or that feature, I would answer by saying "However
it's done in PL/I is the right answer."  Of course PL/2 was more in jest than it
was a serious answer.
Esperanto was another option but I was the Lone Ranger on this one. I thought
since we were stealing stuff from PL/I, DDS, Visual Basic, CL, and C that we
might as well name it Esperanto. If you remember, PL/I was originally built in
the same way but with the language popular at the time (COBOL, FORTRAN, etc.).

The RPG name is important. If you change the name, you effectively create a new
language. If you goal is to create a new language then do it, but get rid of all
the B.S. legacy carry-over from prior incarnations. Simply calling it "Purple"
doesn't make it "not RPG" if you keep things like:
"B" data-types
From-To column notation.
"Tic marks" on various specs for legacy purposes.
Data-type crap shoot (S in data structures, P in stand-alones, etc.)
Output specs designed in the 1960's.
etc.

With the advent of integrating C (and to a lesser extent, MI) in RPG IV via
prototypes and bound calls, you pretty much have everything you need in the
base/core language. Certainly objects need to be added that support methods and
member variables, but we're just getting used to qualified data structures. 

I remember when NetScape was doing this new language called "Object Script". It
was a typeless language that worked inside the browser/html page. At the 11th
hour, they decided, for marketing purposes to change the name of this scripting
language to JavaScript as SUN had started promoting its new platform-independent
JAVA language. They also modified the syntax a bit to more closely resemble what
SUN did in Java.


-Bob Cozzi
www.RPGxTools.com
RPG xTools - Enjoy programming again.


-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Mike Tobey
Sent: Friday, May 26, 2006 8:58 AM
To: RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: RE: RPG, 10 years from now

RPG will still be around in 10 years as well as it's successor.  At RPG
World last week George Farr asked if the language should be renamed, the
response was mixed, but why would he ask if someone hadn't brought it
up.  We all know how IBM likes to change names and I think there is a
good chance that RPG could undergo a name change.  IBM seems committed
to enhancing it into the future and I think that at some point (maybe
when it is completely free form) they will rename it.

Just my opinion.

Michael Tobey
Applications Analyst
Foremost Farms USA (Consumer Products)
mike.tobey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx