| James J. Gavan 2004-09-28, 3:55 am |
| William M. Klein wrote:
>What Chuck reports for the two Unisys systems closely resembles my *impression*
>of what has happened in the IBM mainframe environments. (z/OS "supports" OO -
>but it isn't used much; while VM and VSE do not have OO support).
>
>Personally, I have never known how much this is a "chicken-and-the-egg" issue.
>On workstations (particularly Windows) there are "extensive" (semi-)language
>independent Class libraries - most notably for "GUI" development. In fact, the
>most common (not only - but most common) way to do GUI's is via "OO" interfaces.
>
>For mainframes (IBM and - according to my understanding of Chuck's comments)
>there are NOT any "commonly used" class libraries (for any programming
>language). Without off-the-shelf class libraries (and application needs that
>they meet) there doesn't seem to be "demand" for OO programming (or programming
>languages) - without common usage of OO programming, there isn't demand for
>off-the-shelf class libraries.
>
>OBVIOUSLY, this is a "generalization" and there are some exceptions, but this
>does seem somewhat common to me.
>
>NOTE:
> Even if J4/WG4 add "collection classes" *and* (although I doubt it will
>happen) mainframes offer such classes, I don't think this will (significantly)
>increase the use of OO on mainframes. What needs to happen (for OO to "take
>off") is for some vendor to provide OS-independent, Language-independent, class
>libraries that actually MEET current application demand (for something other
>than GUI interfaces). As most mainframes already support MOST of the things
>that applications need to do on mainframes, I don't see this happening (as I
>don't see good business cases for their development).
>
>If there were OO class libraries for
> XML
> SQL databases
>
>*maybe* these would be used on mainframes (and increase the use and demand for
>OO there) but without this, modular programming is viewed as meeting the
>"maintenance" issues that OO (purports to) solves and there simply is no need
>for old or new development using OO.
>
>
>
Agree with your comments. But *even* if all the *IFs* were in place how
soon before installations would upgrade to the 'brightest and latest'.
From your Share knowledge - has there been a significant move to IBM
Enterprise - and I'm not talking OO ?
(It's rather ironic, Richard 'knocks' MS$ 'for being in charge' - isn't
that paralleled by Big Blue and all the nifty features they provide -
from a message well over a year ago - you don't even need to use COBOL
verbs to access COBOL files !).
Jimmy, Calgary AB
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