Re: Fooling around with VRPG

On 5-Nov-07, at 12:01 PM, Joe Pluta wrote:

I'm not sure how to address the points made here, but let's see what we can
do.

I'm not sure how I can respond either Joe since about 90% of what you wrote appears to relate to some vision you must have had of me speaking to you in the night or something - it certainly had little to do with what I _actually_ wrote.

For a start I didn't say PHP was better - in fact I said ZERO about PHP. (By the way PHP added OO in 1999/2000 - half of its lifetime ago - not that that is at all relevant)

I didn't say evolution of a product was a bad thing - how could as big an RPG advocate as I am possibly say so? The point I was making (apparently badly) was that _every_ EGL predecessor has been marketed to the System i community and each time it has been a miserable and expensive failure for IBM. Of course EGL is a vast improvement - but VAGen was a pretty darn good product in its time and it went nowhere - I and others were on the road for months promoting that puppy. Indeed even the venerable CSP itself was a pretty good product - again in its time period.

Also you are defending EGL (against someone who didn't attack it by the way - merely voiced their opinion of its likely success/failure) on the basis of how _you_ plan to use it. If IBM were selling it that way I'd still have some reservations but not as many. But they are not. They are selling it as the second coming - and certain IBMers (you know who they are) are _still_ telling people it is an RPG replacement. Not George Farr thank goodness but ...

I'm not getting into a debate on this - I expressed my own personal opinion. Others will take it or leave it. My personal belief is that EGL will attract some customers - probably more than its predecessors, but it will not gain significant market share in the System i community.

I would be delighted to be wrong - but I don't think I am.

Jon Paris

www.Partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com