Re: 4GL / New Era question.

> I heard a few new things today, can anyone confirm them? > > 1. It is relatively easy to convert from 4GL to New Era. Do you mean 4GL code or 4GL programmers? Code can be converted but it really depends on how much of your code is screen oriented. I personally would recommend that you re-write your apps because you can then make full use of the language. With programmers, it is a little more difficult. I would say it takes nearly a year to train a 4GL programmer to code NewEra. If they know OO then it would take 3 months. One of the major shortcomings is the training course which makes them competent window painters but does nothing about the teaching them the language. We have a list of ten questions we ask at interviews and they are all taken from the Language Basics manual. The highest score so far has been 2/10 and some of these programmers have been using NewEra for 18 months. > 2. New Era is a healthy product, going places, and will be a big player > in the lucarative GUI market. To me this really depends on how the product is used. How the product is used is very dependent on how Informix trains their customers. At the end of the day, the only way to write mission critical systems is to hand-code the programs using a robust language. NewEra has a very robust language but most "NewEra" programmers don't know this language because Informix trains them to paint application, not write them. > 3. It is possible for NewEra code, which runs on a PC, to also run on > Unix , character based, terminals with little conversion (where I guess > mouse clicks become keystrokes). ie they use the same source code > stream. There is character visual class library which can be used on terminals. I have not seen this but I have been told that you don't need to change your code and you need X-Windows on the Unix server. David W Chan GO5 Ltd dwc@cix.compulink.co.uk