Why I Dislike Code Generators

Those of you who follow the midrange.com lists probably are aware that I’m not a big fan of application code generators.

This includes (but is not limited to) …

* Case Tools (AS/SET, Synon, etc)
* EGL
* SQL Pre-processors (RPG SQL, COBOL SQL, etc)
* JSP (to a limited extent)
* Various 3rd party application generators

The reason is simple … the code you write is not the code that executes.

Opensource RPG shipped with IBM i – now’s our chance!

There are a good handful of IBM’ers that take the time to be friends with me despite my sometimes harsh criticisms of their products 🙂 Such is the case as of late while I was attending an IBM ISV Advisory Council meeting and got flustered over a modified feature being implemented in Java when it…

RPG Open Access

Aaron Bartell wrote about the new RPG Open Access (RPGOA) feature available for IBM i. The biggest problem with RPGOA is the cost … it’s not included in the base OS or RPG compiler. The cost is $500 – $5000, based on your system tier. As the IBM i community has demonstrated repeatedly … charging extra…