Re: EGL vs. Java

Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen wrote:

We have looked at HATS, others have looked at VARPG, and I am not the decision maker but even I as a newcomer has a general feeling that you cannot DEPEND on these things being there for you in X years. That makes me and my very conservative colleagues very reluctant to even LOOK at these smart new things. We do not have time to invest heavily in blind alleys.

I agree with this sentiment, Thorbjørn, but here's the difference. The tools you're talking about are completely System i-centric. That includes the venerable Net.Data, which was as powerful a scripting language as many of the new generation.

EGL, however, is not System i-centric. It is mean to be used by everyone to code everything. It's a PIM, platform independent model, which means that as new technologies come along, they can just tweak things here and there to take advantage of the new technology without disrupting your development.

But at the same item, unlike all the other tools out there, the EGL team has a core of System i-knowledgeable individuals (and folks who are learning about it whether they like it or not <grin>), and they're making that the System i is addressed from the start, rather than as an add-on like most languages.

So from that standpoint, you have the best of both worlds. A platform-neutral language that IBM is investing heavily in across ALL its product lines, but with plenty of built-in System i smarts.

Joe