This is part III of a trilogy of articles regarding the usage and evolution of software development languages. Part I can be found here and part II here.
All of these technologies have issues to address. 20 years ago we were all happy with green screens for business applications with centralised platforms, then came client server with Windows and the distributed computing model became mainstream. Then along came the Internet and the return to HTML thin clients and now the evolution once more learns towards Rich/Smart clients.
The irony for me as that I have witnessed many people move on from the 4GL world of the nineties to emerging 3GL (albeit object based) technologies i.e. J2EE (Java) and .NET compatible languages etc.
With the extra layers of complication (some call it abstraction) added due to business usage of the internet I am seeing more and more tools coming onto the market that claim ‘code generation’ capabilities. You only have to look at the OMG’s ever growing list to see that once again people are looking for the holy grail of application creation as projects overrun and costs escalate.
I do see a trend towards total code generation once more. IBM has launched a 4GL called EGL. This looked quite promising and might me worth a look but to me it is not yet as mature as others.
The difference between tools like Plex/2e and this new breed of tools is that the ‘so called’ newer tools generally only cater for the singular environment and often really only create the initial code that requires manual intervention and coding in the generated language. In my mind, these tools have yet to evolve as far down the road as Plex/2e.
Plex and 2e both have their unique selling points.
2E is pretty easy to use and probably has a 3-6 months learning curve for a developer to become very proficient. Quicker with excellent training and in-house support. Software development room 101. Item 3. Always spend decent money getting a guru to help you set up your environment and train the developers. Too often mistakes are made is the early stages of application development. This is especially true when using new tools.
Plex will take longer (12 to 18 months) as it supports inheritance, shipped and customer business patterns, meta coding and many more target development platforms. It really is the Daddy of ARAD (Architected Rapid Application Development), hence the learning curve but the payback after this is judged in weeks, months or even years off a development projects timeline. And with the great pricing of the tool and generators nowadays, it really is an option to help protect you against the constant upskilling costs associated with other technologies.
When you also consider that the tool has localisation, application version partitioning built into the tool. From the single skill set perspective your developers will always remain current. That said, you would always create the optimum patterns and platform level code if some of your developers have the lower level skills.
I have been programming computer systems in Plex and 2e for 16 years and these systems have used the best aspects of these tools and have always been database focused applications.
These have been in Finance and Banking, Debt Management, Mortgage Application and Processing, MIS, Project Management, Time Recording and Environment Management. These were deployed on System I (now IBM Power System with ‘i’ as the operating system (RPG and RPG ILE code), Java, C++ server code all with either C++ or Java (Swing) clients.
With the plans for these tools heading towards .NET C# clients and the C# server code in 6.0 already available. The recent announcement of the WebClient partnership between ADC Austin and Websydian means that the future looks really bright.
Time will tell what will happen and often these battles are not won or lost by the technologies, often they are decided by the marketing budgets.
However, I know what playground I want to play in. And if you need a guru to help you. You should contact me.
Thanks for reading.
Lee.
All of these technologies have issues to address. 20 years ago we were all happy with green screens for business applications with centralised platforms, then came client server with Windows and the distributed computing model became mainstream. Then along came the Internet and the return to HTML thin clients and now the evolution once more learns towards Rich/Smart clients.
The irony for me as that I have witnessed many people move on from the 4GL world of the nineties to emerging 3GL (albeit object based) technologies i.e. J2EE (Java) and .NET compatible languages etc.
With the extra layers of complication (some call it abstraction) added due to business usage of the internet I am seeing more and more tools coming onto the market that claim ‘code generation’ capabilities. You only have to look at the OMG’s ever growing list to see that once again people are looking for the holy grail of application creation as projects overrun and costs escalate.
I do see a trend towards total code generation once more. IBM has launched a 4GL called EGL. This looked quite promising and might me worth a look but to me it is not yet as mature as others.
The difference between tools like Plex/2e and this new breed of tools is that the ‘so called’ newer tools generally only cater for the singular environment and often really only create the initial code that requires manual intervention and coding in the generated language. In my mind, these tools have yet to evolve as far down the road as Plex/2e.
Plex and 2e both have their unique selling points.
2E is pretty easy to use and probably has a 3-6 months learning curve for a developer to become very proficient. Quicker with excellent training and in-house support. Software development room 101. Item 3. Always spend decent money getting a guru to help you set up your environment and train the developers. Too often mistakes are made is the early stages of application development. This is especially true when using new tools.
Plex will take longer (12 to 18 months) as it supports inheritance, shipped and customer business patterns, meta coding and many more target development platforms. It really is the Daddy of ARAD (Architected Rapid Application Development), hence the learning curve but the payback after this is judged in weeks, months or even years off a development projects timeline. And with the great pricing of the tool and generators nowadays, it really is an option to help protect you against the constant upskilling costs associated with other technologies.
When you also consider that the tool has localisation, application version partitioning built into the tool. From the single skill set perspective your developers will always remain current. That said, you would always create the optimum patterns and platform level code if some of your developers have the lower level skills.
I have been programming computer systems in Plex and 2e for 16 years and these systems have used the best aspects of these tools and have always been database focused applications.
These have been in Finance and Banking, Debt Management, Mortgage Application and Processing, MIS, Project Management, Time Recording and Environment Management. These were deployed on System I (now IBM Power System with ‘i’ as the operating system (RPG and RPG ILE code), Java, C++ server code all with either C++ or Java (Swing) clients.
With the plans for these tools heading towards .NET C# clients and the C# server code in 6.0 already available. The recent announcement of the WebClient partnership between ADC Austin and Websydian means that the future looks really bright.
Time will tell what will happen and often these battles are not won or lost by the technologies, often they are decided by the marketing budgets.
However, I know what playground I want to play in. And if you need a guru to help you. You should contact me.
Thanks for reading.
Lee.
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