Re: RPG on the Tiobe Index

From: Hans Boldt
And yet by your own admission, you do watch the TIOBE index!
Why keep track of the numbers if there's no value to it?

I don't put much stock in indexes that track Internet requests or book sales. I write a lot of RPG code. But I don't search the Internet or buy books on RPG. I refer to the IBM manuals or search Midrange Archives. Is that just me?

If IBM were to publish the number of compiler licenses sold each year, I'd probably watch that.

Also, I have argued that RPG is not appropriate for certain tasks,
such as CGI programming. But I believe you yourself have made
that point too!

CGIDEV2 and other toolkits make RPG a good language for CGI programming. But on the other hand, CGI is not the best architecture for Web application development, and IBM doesn't appear to be interested in extending it.

So, the community is kind of on our own, or using 3rd party interfaces. In the past few years, my colleagues and I have deployed hundreds of RPG based web applications. And they compete favorably against J2EE, MS .Net, and PHP alternatives.

Nathan.