Re: RPG V?

["M. Lazarus" <mlazarus@xxxxxxxx>]

Hans,

 I fully agree with you that there are plenty of other, far more 
useful areas that would benefit the RPG community than making 
everything free form.  The hardest part, and by far the area with the 
most impact is the C spec, which has already been taken care of.

 -mark


At 1/8/10 09:30 AM, you wrote:
> Bob Cozzi wrote an article on what a fully free-form RPG V language
> might look like, based on rumors that IBM is working on such a thing. I
> have my opinions on the subject, and I'd be curious to know what others
> here might think.
>
> (See http://systeminetwork.com/article/what-rpg-v-might-look)
>
> What do I think? As the principle developer behind free-form calcs, you
> might think I'd be happy to see a fully free-form language. But I'm
> finding it hard to get excited about the concept. I think IBM missed
> it's window of opportunity years ago. There was a lot of excitement
> surrounding the release of free-form calcs. IBM should have capitalized
> on that buzz immediately, and followed up with additional free-form
> specs in the immediately subsequent releases.
>
> But, at that time, the concensus was that there weren't really any
> significant advantages to making other specs fully free-form, and that
> other enhancements took priority. That's probably still true today. I
> think RPG still needs some work in certain areas, such as namespace
> support, an IBM-supplied procedure library, and externally described
> procedures.
>
> What do you think? Is there a need for RPG V? If IBM is indeed serious
> about an RPG V, what might the rationale be?
>
> Cheers! Hans