RE: Re: Re: XML, RPG, Web Services, Joe = Holy War was -> RE: Re: Modify the IE Browser

John Taylor wrote:


>> The RPG community is what we make it.  You, Aaron, Joel,
>> Scott Klement, you're all throwing stuff out there.  I'll
>> admit, I haven't done much.  And it's nowhere *near* the
>> number of people contributing in other languages. Why?
>

> Perl, Python, Java, etc., are freely available, and able to run on a
> home PC. RPG is an expensive product which only runs on an expensive
> hardware/OS platform. This means that:

True, although Aaron's post about ediconsulting.com was interesting.

> 1) The required tools are available to far fewer developers. Yes, I know
> about Netshare, but is it reasonable to expect someone to pay an extra
> fee in order to provide free labour on an open source project?

No, it's not, and I would never suggest that it is.  Again, the post about
free timesharing is interesting.
I don't know what sort of access Aaron has to an iSeries, I can do "hobby"
programming on one of the ones we have around here.  That may be the
exception and not the norm, but I'm sure I'm not the *only* one.


> 2) Given the high cost of purchase and ongoing maintenance fees, there
> is an expectation that the vendor (IBM) should be doing more to satisfy
> the demands of the user base. If there is a need for an IFS Toolkit,
> then that's a pretty clear indication that a standard, vendor supported,
> library should be released.

That would be wonderful.  But when is it coming?  And what do we do in the
meantime?  Wait?  Let the PC guys say "I can do it!  Give it to me!"  That
just opens the door to more PC based development.

We're relegating RPG to second-class status.  The danger is that, as RPG is
viewed as being less and less capable, some thirty-something MBA (and I
resemble that remark) sitting in an ivory tower might decide that all the
company's business logic needs to be rewritten in Java, because RPG is a
"dead" language.  I'm sure you know of some company that's decided to do
that.  And it's probably been a disaster.

> Of course, the above assumes that a person also has the time and passion
> for persuing such projects. I think it's safe to say that the midrange
> development community is a bit older than our colleagues in the Perl
> community, which usually leads to greater demands upon one's time. The
> typical RPG programmer may be trying to juggle a full-time job, a
> family, household projects, and (hopefully) continuing education. Is it
> reasonable to expect them to also place a significant priority on some
> open-source software project?

No.  If someone doesn't want to contribute, that's fine.  They're under no
obligation to do so.  And personally, I don't see the problem with being a
consumer of open-source software without producing any.  Consumers help
find the bugs, consumers help come up with new ideas to extend the
software.  They're not parasites.

I'm not trying to insinuate that all of us have some sort of obligation to
contribute to RPG based open-source projects.  What I *am* trying to say is
that all of us would and do benefit from them.  Even if we're strictly
consumers.  RPG will never be Perl or Python, but it could be a lot better.

I suppose that now it's time to put my money where my mouth is and start
contributing more (while continuing to learn ASP and J2EE on the side as a
hedge ;-)

Mike E.