hi Chamara,
You are dying. I am dying. Every living thing is dying. None of us
will be here 100 years from now. (Except maybe Susan Gantner, who
doesn't seem to age.) We don't refer to ourselves as "dying", because
we'll hopefully still be here for a long while. And so will RPG.
IBM said in the mid 1990's that everyone would either be coding Java or
flipping burgers. Maybe that "prophecy" is just coming to pass slowly?
But, I only know of few Java shops on IBM i. Indeed, my surveys have
told me that more people use PHP than Java. Maybe IBM doesn't know
everything?
RPG still accounts for 70% of the software and development on IBM i.
Granted, that's smaller than it was 20 years ago... so I guess you
could say it's "dying". But, 70% is still a big number. If RPG were to
die today, the platform could not survive it's loss.
Power Systems is IBM's post popular server machine right now. They sell
more power systems than any other. The hardware has gone from being a
tiny niche player to one of the main server brands in the industry, and
they now have one of the largest market shares in the Unix industry.
IBM i is IBM's highest revenue operating system. It makes more money for
IBM than AIX, Linux or Windows. IBM continues to invest in IBM i
regularly... they released 7.1 two years ago, they released 6.1 two
years before that, etc. I'm guessing that another release is coming
very soon.
And, RPG is still 70% of development on that platform.
So why do you think it's dying?
And, by your definition, what ISN'T dying? Windows has seen a sharp
decline in revenue and market share. Fewer and fewer people are byuying
new PCs running Windows. Is Windows dying? It's still the #1 operating
system on earth, and has billions of installations. Surely, you can't
call it dying?!
You suggest IBM might not be investing in RPG... but... what does that
mean, exactly? They've come out with a new RPG version in every
release, and every release has had new features... So what do you mean
by "not investing"?
Frankly, I'm sick and tired of this whole subject. For the past 20 years
people have told me that RPG is dying. It's all FUD. Nobody has ever
produced any evidence of it dying, and gee, it's still here! Is it
declining? That's awfully hard to measure, but it might be. But,
everything in IT, aside from iOS and Android, is declining. So what?
By that definition, everything is dying.
On 2/16/2012 10:42 AM, Chamara Withanachchi wrote:
Hi,
There is some talks going on in Sri Lanka among some developers they say
RPG is dying and IBM is no longer invsting on it.
But I know that is not the case, sad thing is Sri Lankan IBM also saying
rpg is dying and their support is 0 on RPG. Infact they do nothing for us
who is in this arena (no events no seminars nothing)
May b this is being discussed in this list but I like to get some more
details on the subject especially I like to hear some thing on this from
Barbara Morris, Scott, Aaron Bartell, John and Susan or any one who knows
about this.
Thanks
Chamara withanachchi
IBM certified RPG specialist
midrange.com
