Re: Computerworld lists obsolete job titles

Gary >> I do take exception to SQL being termed "modern" and you must go to
SQL-based databases to "modernize". I've stated it many many times: Get
away from the terms "modern" and "modernize" when you really mean decouple
your database from your user interface.

John >> I agree that sometimes "modernize" is not the best term to use.
But
it's often not a horrible term either. To be honest, I think it's usually
used fairly. I think decoupling the database from the user interface *is*
a
"more modern" thing to do than tightly coupling them. Modular is "more
modern" than monolithic. RPG IV is definitely more modern than RPG III.
Genuine date fields are more modern than numeric fields being used as
dates.
Numeric fields with room for 4-digit years are more modern than numeric
fields with room for only 2.

I agree with Gary here, in the sense that being objectively specific about
what may be good (or not, depending on the context!) about something is
preferable to me, and more useful (in that I know what to do with it), than
using a subjective term such as "modern" (which leaves me thinking "so
what?"). "Subjective" not necessarily in the sense that one might question
whether something actually be currently in vogue, but subjective in the
sense that the word "modern" carries the extra freight of someone's
judgment
that being in vogue thus signifies "better", which is not always true.

René A Valencourt, CCP, MCTS
Senior Programmer/Analyst
IS Department
CTB, Inc.
A Berkshire Hathaway Company



-----Original Message-----
From: RPG400-L [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John
Yeung
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2014 3:50 PM
To: RPG programming on the IBM i (AS/400 and iSeries)
Subject: Re: Computerworld lists obsolete job titles

On Thu, Dec 4, 2014 at 1:40 PM, Monnier, Gary <Gary.Monnier@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Funny how so many believe SQL is "modern". SQL is actually about

40 years old. It was first devised in the early 1970s with Oracle
utilizing
it in the late 1970s.

Well, to a lot of people, "new to me" is tantamount to "new". ;)

But to be fair, modernity is about much more than age. Java, for example,
is roughly 20 years old now (initial public release in 1995, though in the
works since about 1991). The most stark example of something defying its
age is Lisp, which is one of the earliest languages around (arguably the
second-oldest high-level language, after Fortran), yet it still has
advanced
features that are unmatched in any language today, besides other "dialects"
of Lisp.

While SQL is pretty old, it still *feels* modern, the way Lisp still feels
modern. If you are familiar with a lot of languages, you'll know what I
mean. SQL is a very high-level language, much higher than RPG. How far
removed a language is from the "bare metal" of the hardware is a rough
proxy
for how modern it will feel.

I'm not against SQL. I'm not against file I/O . I'm not against Non-SQL

databases and their data access methods. As always, you use what is best
for a given situation or, what you have available.

Certainly no argument there. I like that you included "what you have
available". I'd also like to remind folks that "best" is a very complex
measure, involving lots of competing concerns. There's very rarely one
thing that is so clearly and dominantly best that it's the only reasonable
choice.

I do take exception to SQL being termed "modern" and you must go to

SQL-based databases to "modernize". I've stated it many many times: Get
away from the terms "modern" and "modernize" when you really mean decouple
your database from your user interface.

I agree that sometimes "modernize" is not the best term to use. But it's
often not a horrible term either. To be honest, I think it's usually used
fairly. I think decoupling the database from the user interface *is* a
"more modern" thing to do than tightly coupling them.
Modular is "more modern" than monolithic. RPG IV is definitely more modern
than RPG III. Genuine date fields are more modern than numeric fields
being
used as dates. Numeric fields with room for 4-digit years are more modern
than numeric fields with room for only 2.

Really, I don't have much quarrel with "modern" and "modernize" as long as
the *gist* is that there is an effort being put forward to try to improve
things. Not just changing to something new for the sake of change or for
the sake of newness, but *taking advantage* of things that are *newer* than
what we had before, to make things *better* than what we had before.

John Y.
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