Re: Help! Boss wants to know why ILE?

[Jerry Adams <jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dennis,

You have received a lot of good pointers from everyone (!) on the list.  
Aaron makes a very good point that one does not have to jump off the 
deep end; it is possible (and, in my opinion, recommended) that ILE 
concepts be implemented gradually.  For example, I use subprocedures 
even though, in most cases, a subroutine would work just as well (but, 
boy, do I love those local variables).  I have yet to implement a 
service program, though. 

A slightly different tack to the "you'll lose your staff if they can't 
improve their skills," is that "learning and using new techniques is 
fun."  There's no rule or law that says programming has to be dull and 
boring.  I daresay that 99% of all normal business applications could be 
written in RPG II - but who the heck would want to do that?  Would your 
boss, who asked the original question, want to stick with RPG II even 
though it would work?  Wasn't there an investment in moving to RPG III 
and, then, RPG IV? 


By the way, what's the staff's (and boss') take on /free format?  .-)


        * Jerry C. Adams
*IBM System i5/iSeries Programmer/Analyst
B&W Wholesale Distributors, Inc.* *
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albartell wrote:
> Recommendation: Start out with some simple ILE implementations and see "how
> it feels".  Many shops think it is all-or-nothing out of the box, and that
> will only get you into trouble because you won't realize best practices
> until you work with it.  Test the waters with a small side project and see
> how things go.  I only develop *PGM objects when I want to have a program
> callable from CLLE or from the command line, otherwise ALL of my development
> is RPG *SRVPGM/*MODULE's.
>
> HTH,
> Aaron Bartell
> http://mowyourlawn.com
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
> On Behalf Of DennisRootes@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Sent: Monday, April 23, 2007 4:09 PM
> To: rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Help! Boss wants to know why ILE?
>
> Please help me come up with some good examples as to what makes ILE better
> than "business as usual".  Here's what I've used so far:
>
> 1.  It's faster - Rebuttal:  doesn't matter we have plenty of cpu and our
> machine screams as it is.
> 2.  Service program equals reusability - Rebuttal: we can just use a
> separate program for reusable code.
> 3.  Local variables - Rebuttal: if they are inside a separate program it
> doesn't matter.
> 4.  System maintenance - Rebuttal: instead of service programs or
> subprocedures we have separate pgms so it's the same thing.
>
> It's not that the boss wants to stop us from using ILE, she just wants to
> know what makes it so much better than plain 'ol RPG IV that she should
> invest the man hours it's going to take to bring our whole dept up to speed
> on ILE.  And I just am not coming up with anything that's very convincing.
>
> So please, if you have any good arguments, let me know.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Dennis
> --
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