RE: Re: XML, RPG, Web Services, Joe = Holy War was -> RE: Re: Modify the IE Browser -- WEB400

Joe,

I love these ding-dongs about which language is the best for what job. 

They might help wake up some of the sleeping giants, that still believe the
RPG400 is still the answer for everything, and who don't realise that in
todays environment, you need to be able to mix and match your tools.

Of course, no-one like that is on this list!

Cheers
Colin.W 

-----Original Message-----
From: Joe Pluta [mailto:joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: 08 September 2003 14:34
To: 'Web Enabling the AS400 / iSeries'
Subject: RE: [WEB400] Re: XML, RPG, Web Services, Joe = Holy War was -> RE:
Re: Modify the IE Browser


> From: Hans Boldt
> 
> as well as in other languages that aren't RPG. 
> http://pythonology.org/success

Again, I'm dumbfounded by the fact that a guy who works on the RPG compiler
is so steadfastly working to prove how other languages compare to RPG.  In
any event, none of these are business applications.  There's not an
industrial-sized database in the bunch.

As to the "success" here's one of the high points in those "success
stories":

"Python is open source which means we can fix bugs in the interpreter
ourselves."

Oh yeah, that's what I need to hear.  "Hey John, would you distribute
this patch to all of our sites?"   "I can't, they're not all on the same
version of the interpreter!"

Yes indeed, I want a forked development environment where I actually have a
different interpreter than everyone else.
 

> (What's a VHLL? To be honest, I'm not really sure myself.

No, but you're willing to use the term.  You have a future in marketing.


> But
> consider that a language like Python fully gets away from the concept 
> of programming at the bits and byte level, and everything is an 
> object. For example, the traditional concept of an assignment 
> statement of moving bytes doesn't exist in Python - the assignment 
> operator in Python assigns object references, not values, to names.)

You're moving the address of something.  Nothing new.  But you are saying
that Python has no primitives, which I can't believe is good for
performance.


> (And just to be clear - I'm not suggesting everyone drop RPG and start 
> writing all their apps in Perl or Python or Ruby or C++ or whatever.

I have no words here that won't sound sarcastic.


> RPG definitely has its place. But there seems to be a lot
> of FUD floating around about some things that are not RPG, and I'd 
> just like to try to dispel some of that.)

What FUD?  It's not supported by IBM and it doesn't work well with other
languages.  I don't see that dispelled.  No, the only unclear statements I
see are the new buzzword "VHLL" and this constant "5 to 10 times" more
productive.

Of course, we've yet to see anybody talk about maintaining a large-scale
Python application, and in fact, we've heard Perl called a "write-only"
language, because it's difficult to read your own code.  So any productivity
numbers are a little premature at best.

In any event, I'd love to see how fast a Python programmer can throw
together a subfile maintenance program on a 5250 display.  I'm guessing the
RPG guys would have him beat, especially if they had a skeleton program to
work from (which is our equivalent to all those wonderful libraries).

Anywho, enough Python-bashing.  It's just that it seems somebody ought to
stick up for good old RPG, and since the guy who actually WRITES the
language won't do it - and in fact, is its primary detractor - then somebody
else has to do it.

Joe

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