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After reading this article, the imagination takes control. I can see in my mind's eye meeting rooms of thousands of companies, where every three or four years a meeting is convened to discuss the complete rebuilding of I.T. simply because a new language has been discovered. Budgets are approved, and the work begins, concluding in three or four years with an entire reworked enterprise system. At which time another meeting is convened. . . . . . . . . . . . . ad infinitum Dave
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Java is now the dinosaur!
David, Good analogy. And, exactly the reason we didn't have that meeting at our place to jump on the Java bandwagon! chuck Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer. "David Abramowitz" -
Java is now the dinosaur!
"The investment bank runs many of its newer math-heavy applications -- such as options, futures, and derivatives -- using just Linux and the Apache server." Linux and Apache are not languages. You can't write applications using those things, without some underlying programming language. Obviously the person who wrote the BW article doesn't understand this.Comment
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Java is now the dinosaur!
Conceivably you could write programs only using a shell within Linux. If this is the case, then I should think that the organization will develop some serious issues. DaveComment
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Java is now the dinosaur!
Let's see if I understand this correctly. The referenced article describes how use of Java is diminishing relative to the use of other web technologies, such as LAMP, and this provides some justification for sitting still and not moving to more current technologies? If this is true and the IT world is moving on to LAMP, it would appear that much of the iSeries world is not just one generation behind, but now two generations behind. For sure, there are dangers with being on the "bleeding edge". However, the flip side is that if few people in the iSeries community are willing to look at newer technologies, the iSeries community will always be in "catch-up" mode, never in a position to lead and set standards. Personally, I think LAMP is worth a look for many iSeries shops. The gap between traditional RPG/COBOL development and Java is IMO too great for many iSeries shops. LAMP fills that gap nicely, and can certainly be used in an iSeries environment. Here's one document describing PHP on the iSeries. Happy Holidays! HansComment
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Java is now the dinosaur!
My goodness, what terrible advice. It's one thing to have an appropriate interface for the application and audience, another entirely to recommend the equivalent of interpreter BASIC generating HTML to replace RPG. There is not a more powerful business computing model than the OS/400 ILE architecture of native I/O and SQL in RPG, COBOL, Java, and C++ dynamically or staticly linked compiled object code. Business continues to use it because nothing has replaced it, and with suggestions like this nothing will. rdComment
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Java is now the dinosaur!
Huh, how about that. So, which fortune 1000 companies using java have abandoned java since this revelation? Just curious! If you look, you'll probably find articles stating that RPG is a dinosaur too but it sure feeds my family, and RPG is about 30 years older than java. And, since when is AJAX a replacement for java? AJAX has to call a server side program (java servlet, PHP, RPG, etc) to carry out the request. ChrisComment
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Java is now the dinosaur!
Ralph: With all due respect, I strongly recommend learning at least the basics of the LAMP architecture. LAMP is the clear choice of a substantial number of businesses on the internet. Why? Because there's a heck of a lot of functionality in the LAMP stack, with a heck of a lot of support in the wider IT community. The article referenced at the beginning of this thread shows PHP usage at roughly 36% in North America. That's a substantial number of businesses, and clearly refutes your assertion. In comparison, what's the percentage of businesses running on RPG CGI? Look, I worked for more than 22 years with RPG, so I'm intimately familiar with both its strengths and weeknesses. I'm also familiar with at least some of the capabilities of LAMP. Picking on Python since that's one of my favorite languages, it has more capabilities in the standard class library than in all the add-on service programs available for RPG. In fact, using the standard Python class library, you can instantiate a simple HTTP web server using about 3 lines of code. But in practice, no one uses just the standard class library. Programmers use any of a number of available web frameworks that provide a higher level of abstraction and productivity. This is also true for other 'P's like Perl, PHP, and Ruby. (OK, "Ruby" doesn't begin with 'P', but the "Ruby on Rails" framework is becoming more and more popular.) To re-iterate my point, RPG add-on service programs provide mere wrappering for the CGI API's. In Perl, Python, and Ruby, the available class libraries provide entire frameworks which make web development very easy. Programmers using these tools are much more productive as a result. (I suppose you could argue that PHP is one such framework.) And the great thing about these tools is that you can run them on your iSeries machine, either in a Linux partition or natively. Happy Holidays! HansComment
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Java is now the dinosaur!
Hi Hans. Yes, we are lucky to have your insight, but I think it is terrible advice, minus the obvious that learning is enriching, perhaps hopefully in more ways than one. Given the orientation to the AS/400, I am assuming this is business oriented advice, requiring business decisions to install and/or activate PHP on a partition of the company's AS/400 environment, then choosing among all that we have to learn and deal with, including all the work we have to do, to learn and develop some prototype applications on which to base decions on whether to roll out production apps in this environment. On top of that, if in OS/400, the M in LAMP is replaced with DB2/400, else we are talking about installing the LAMP stack on a Linux partition and coming up to speed on all this as well as another OS. All worthy goals given copious amounts of time, but unless it provides compelling benefits for the business and IS's ongoing production, it is terrible advice. And I for one see no compelling benefits from this environment. Now if we're not talking about furthering the business and we're talking about broadening our individual programming and admin capabilities to give us more career opportunities should the business decide that OS/400 is not their future, then as advice to go set up Linux at home and learn wonderful new things with LAMP in hopes of getting a job with it someday is not bad advice, but not good advice for RPG programmers either. For the same reason it is doubtful that a business would replace RPG with PHP for business programming, it is doubtful to me that much business programming that RPG programmers do is being done out there in PHP and thus the job opportunities wanted. Nearly all the work is in J2EE and .NET as well as the ubiquitous C++, and if LAMP is supposed to be baby steps in getting there, one needs to know whether they even want to get there. As far as hobbyist and self-enrichment and doing good things with one's own web site and other more altruistic aspects of this, then yes, it is ideal and I recommend as well. I've had a phpBB forum web site for three years, made mods to the PHP open source forum software, used PHP on my home page to read from the MySQL database to dynamically display information, all good stuff any programmer would find rewarding and enriching, but not in more than one sense. As for the lack of functionality to call from RPG compared to Java or even a P script language, yes, I agree, invoking functions from other languages and having those calls automatically bound within an ILE program should be second nature to us, but it isn't. It needs to be. Happy Holidays to you too, Hans. rd P.S. to readers: In discussions on my web site http://www.justiceforchandra.com on a request from a family to NASA to help enhance a surveillance video, I posted a sample of an enhancement algorithm I developed awhile back. The example is a pseudocolor waterfall that is an interesting graphic someone may want to use. You're welcome to take a look and use it. Just go to the home page and click through.Comment
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