Re: RPG, 10 years from now -- RPG400-L

George gave the same, or at least similar, presentation at COMMON.

I majored in History, not computer science. But looking at the past andthe road down which we've traveled, though, it seems clear that Georgeand his team will update RPG to interact better with Internetenvironments. The XML support that was added in V5R4 is just a start.We can, of course, do much of that stuff now, but I think that they wantto make it "more natural" if for no other reason than to keep peopleusing (and buying) System i's. History, also, shows that they willdeprecate very, very little of what's out there now. That is, while youcan't just change an RPG36 source type to RPG and expect it to compile,it will work after some minor tweaking. And then you can run it throughthe Converter to get RPG IV. But the original RPG36 program (sorry,Bob) logic and op-codes will still work, albeit as an RPGLE source typenow. (And before anyone jumps on my case here, I am not proposing thatthis is ideal, just that this is what happens. And that IBM has ahistory of protecting their customers investments - except for those whoinvested in WSU.)

Anyway, back to our story: The next version will be totally free-formatand SEU won't work very well, if at all, against it. Love it or hateit, but learn WDSc. Just my WAG, of course. The one thing that mightget deprecated is the 5250 datastream, which doesn't work too well withweb pages. But I think that's more of a hardware, than software,thing. More probably the new op-codes (EXUI or whatever) will just"know" and the old ones (EXFMT) will still work fine.

I'm with Bob on the name change; "RPG" has to be in there somewhere.Maybe "RPG-TNG" (The Next Generation).



        * Jerry C. Adams
*IBM System i Programmer/Analyst
B&W Wholesale Distributors, Inc.* *
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albartell wrote:

>I doubt if it will be enhanced any further in 10 years, but it will still
be around. A compiler written today will still work in 10 years.

To the contrary, it will be changed more in the next 5 years than it has in
the past 15!  I am working on a blog entry for imho.midrange.com on this
exact topic.  I attended the rpgworld.com conference this past month and had
the chance to hear George Farr discuss "potentially" where the RPG language
could be going. Of course he has to be vague because they haven't completely
and publicly committed to the feature list, but what he was brining up got
me excited!

My favorite bit of info he shared was their thought process of determining
how the next versions of RPG will interact with the user. Specifically
speaking they were mentioning new OPCODE's like EXUI (vs. EXFMT) which would
give us the ability to "execute" a ui that was a web page, or maybe a WML
app for a blackberry.

The second bit of information that caught my attention was the possibility
of a name change.  I have mixed feelings about this because of IBM's name
changing history.  Maybe if I saw a list of new names for RPG I would be
more comfortable.  But regardless, for a name change to mean anything it
would have to be coupled with the release of new language features that
would make non-iSeries shops want to hop onto the iSeries horse for
application development.

The third bit of info that peaked my interest was the mention of making RPG
completely /free format including all specifications (H, F, D, etc).  I have
mixed feelings on this one too because right now it is fast to code H, D,
and F specs because everything just lines up and it is easy to read.  But on
the other hand this is our chance to get RPG into the limelight as the next
great language with a great framework (look at what rubyonrails.org has
accomplished in the last 1.5 years). Why can't RPG be the next RubyOnRails?
Why can't RPG be the reason NEW sales come to the iSeries vs. just being the
reason existing customers stay on the iSeries.  For that to happen we will
have to lose some of the specific feel we have for the language (i.e. H,F,
and D specs) so new programmers can easily learn it.

What if IBM went after RPG full force as much as they do Java?  What if they
made it incredibly easy to build web applications with it?  That coupled
with a solid hardware and OS platform would be priceless to people wanting a
solid web presence.

Aaron Bartell

-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Michael Ryan
Sent: Friday, May 26, 2006 8:14 AM
To: RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: Re: RPG, 10 years from now

I doubt if it will be enhanced any further in 10 years, but it will still be
around. A compiler written today will still work in 10 years.

On 5/26/06, steema@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <steema@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

HI - This is a Friday topic. But, I was having a conversation w/ thecompany Controller. He indicated that he was concerned regarding thelong term support for the RPG language. He is not an IT guy, but isvery industry savvy.
I immediatly laughed and said no way, the support will always be there.

Then he got me to thinking, what if he is right?

Does anyone else share this concern?

Steve
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