After five days my Request For Enhancement, RFE, to give the latest form of RPG its own name was rejected.
I was encouraged by the positive feedback it has received from you, the IBM i community. It is currently the RFE with the most votes in August, 24 votes more than the one in second place. A big "Thank you" to all of you who took the time to vote.
Monday morning I was surprised to see that the IT Jungle newsletter had picked up this story too. You can read it here.
What now? I have to admit I am little bit disappointed this was rejected. I am left having to say "totally free format RPG" when talking about this version of the programming language we know and love, rather than "RPG for i" which would be so much easier to say and understand.
The link to the RFE is here, you will need an IBM id to enter the site. If you do not have an IBM id you can create one on the login page.
Hi,
ReplyDeletewell, I‘m not surprised, that IBM rejected it - we‘re still talking about „Big Blue“ and they didn’t honor any critic about „names“ in the past.
My colleagues and I are mostly calling it not „totally free format RPG“ - we say/write „**free“ or „**free RPG“, simply because the „**free“ makes the difference. OK in Germay „*“ is called „Stern“ (star) and not „asterisk“ - so in English it’s not so easy.
It is a disappointment that IBM is not listening, BUT.
ReplyDeleteSimon you are a mover and a shaker! Get together with a few other movers/shakers (Jon,Susan,Alex,etc) and come up with something that makes sense. I highly suggest it has a version number.
Then publish this all over. Here, IT Jungle, Wiki for RPG, LinkedIn, etc.
The followers of the movers/shakers will either embrace it or go back to their stubborn ways.
The worse, a cease and desist letter from IBM Lawyers. :)
I would like to see a name that does not include the letters "RPG". It is hardly language used solely for Report Generation. How about "i#" or "i++"? Something befitting the modern language that it is.
ReplyDeleteI partially agree with Doug. It is hardly a report program generation language these days. However, in the rest of the world, the "++" and "#" tags denote something specific, i.e., object orientation and built-in graphical design. I don't think we want to add to the confusion.
DeleteMaybe a simple change, like "iPG" would work. It is a language that allows for the generation of programs of all types that run on IBM i (and, unfortunately, nowhere else).
How about RPFree?
ReplyDelete