Re: Is RPG dying

I would tend to disagree on a few points. Especially the point the RPG was
never a state of the art language. You may not consider the current format
to be state of the art, but when it was first introduced I would contend
that is was very much state of the art.

You don't like static, so don't use static binding, Make a program then
you are not statically bound. This has been available for literally
decades.

I don't use all the functionality your looking for in my programming, So I
don't feel fit to comment on namespaces. And I feel lack of open source
components is more of a statement about the users than the language,
Cozzi, Klement and many others have put out service programs full of
components. But lets face it, RPG programmers have been creating their own
for so long, they tend to build things themselves and not go looking.
Bob Cozzi had a development tool years back, I actually liked it compared
to Code 400, I think your 3rd point negates the last point. It really is a
language used for one platform, Given that, how many IDE's do you expect
to be created? Especially since your competition was IBM selling one with
they system. Even if you wanted a 3rd party IDE your company still had to
buy IBM's tools.

Just my opinion.
I fully admit to not being the most advanced programmer. But using CGIDEV2
I write web pages. When click a button, or fill in one selection, that
EVENT causes an RPG program to run and do something to update the screen ,
part of the screen or a file. Not, really event programming but it looks
that way to the user, who could care less how I program it. It just has to
work.




From:
"D*B" <dieter.bender@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To:
"RPG programming on the IBM i / System i" <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date:
02/20/2012 03:47 PM
Subject:
Re: Is RPG dying
Sent by:
rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx



just to clearify:

- RPG is not a modern language!
- RPG is not state of the art and it has never been!
- RPG is just an improtnat language for one platform, I like (the
platform) and maybe some others too
- even ILE RPG 7.1 has severe drawbacks!!!
just to name some of these:
- it has no sufficient support for namespaces
- it's not prepared for event driven programms, because it has nos support
for multi threading (yes, I know the keywords for the H-specs)
- the compiler does not support error handling
- static binding was an outdated concept, at the time it ws introduced to
ILE RPG
- it's complicated to have multiple connections with embedded SQL (yes, I
know, what an activation group is!)
- it's not supported to controll activation at runtime (yes, I know
ACTGRP(*NEW))
- there are very few components available (yes, I know, there are some -
I'm one of the guys publishing Open Source and Freeware!)
- there are no development tools which are competitive with Eclipse (yes,
I know WDSC or RDI, or how it might be named today, but where is
refactoring???)

D*B