Using C on the i5

I recently wrote an article for the System iNetwork iDigress publication about how the i5 seems to be stuck in a rut because the rest of the world thinks its only RPG that developers use on the platform. You can see the article here Article
There are a number of responses to the article which can be found here but I also had a number of people write directly to me. The main responses were about how right the basic assumption that people only relate RPG with the i5 was but some did think the article was saying RPG should not be used! Thats not what I thought I wrote but at least there was a dialog, I feel there is a place for all languages on the platform as long as they are supported. The i5 supports a plethora of languages and the strengths of each have to be understood before you decide which elements should be written in what language. But if the industry (the media have as big a part in this as IBM does) don’t start to publicize the act that the i5 does support all these other languages instead of just pushing RPG in every article we will never get the traction in the developer community we need to succeed. Just thinking Java is the answer to all the problems is also a problem, the language is never going to be as efficient as RPG, C, Cobol and the likes, but it is good at providing a level of portability and code reuse so if thats important you should use it.

I stated that I have never written a single line of RPG code yet still have a number of successful products running on the platform. These products are required to run very efficiently and use a number of API’s and TCP/IP networking functions so C was the better language for me to use. I wrote an application for a major UK bank a number of years ago which again was written in C, the bank initially said it had to be written in RPG but agreed after initial trials to it being fully written in C. When questioned why they wanted RPG it was because they didnt understand the support the AS/400 (as it was then) had for the C language. That support has grown over the years whhich has allowed the language to compete for application components that require DB access, this is something RPG was king for previously.

I hope the debate continues and people start to see how the i5 can provide many benefits to its users and developers alike.

Chris..