“Who is Jon Paris” and other questions
<quote>Oh boy! Who is Jon Paris, and what is this article? It's as if somebody was writing about python circa 1997.</quote>
I'm a 45+ year computer professional and spend my waking hours trying to introduce my peers to new concepts. Python is not news to me, but it is new to the IBM i as an official offering. Note "AS/400" hasn't been made for over 15 years.
<quote>Very odd. It's like somebody's been hiding in a cave since 1995 and just discovered python, object-oriented programming and HTTP.</quote>
Been writing web programs for over 20 years. Done Smalltalk, Java, PHP, ... But like many of my peers find it hard to "think" in OO and have never had 6 or 8 months to do nothing but OO. Real world Procedural programming kept getting in the way.
<quote>He's previously been writing RPG for the AS/400. That's pretty much exactly like living in a cave since 1975.</quote>
That's just silly. Modern RPG IV would not be recognizable to anyone who learnt 1975's RPG . It is a good language for writing core business applications. Those boring ones that need to do precision math with numbers that have decimal places. Things like bank accounts, inventory, etc.
 IBM i is a highly integrated platform and because of that many customers are unwilling to use anything not "blessed" by IBM. I personally find that frustrating but I understand it. There has been a version of Python 2 available for many years which was ported by a group of users. But it wasn't sanctioned and so few use it.
There are many other comments I could respond to but I'll leave it there for now. Happy to continue the conversation if anyone cares.