Re: 4gl: Better than sliced bread?

Jim Gordon writes... > > Why pay large sums of money for C programmers when you can buy a > C library and code from it using a reasonable meta language which > most any programmers can pick up and use. Not only that but I can > library my 4GL code along with additional libraries of C code and > combine the lot into whatever I require. Thanks for your reply to my post. That's basically what I wanted to confirm to myself: That 4GL doesn't have something that I don't suspect that would make me, personally be a gajillion times more productive (like the Informix sales literature would have me believe). I *definitely* believe that 4GL is a great tool in an environment where one can have a bunch of 4GL programmers with a couple of C programmers for when one really needs C! > I take a general view. You use the tool best suited for the job > whether that is C, 4GL, PERL, C++, shell doesnt matter. What is best > depends on the costs. But remember the cost is not just the > development cost. Maintenance and enhancement is where your cost > really goes up. It is a waste of money to write in C and then spend > time and effort maintaining that code if it can be maintained more > cheaply in a language (whichever) that is easier to read and > understand. But C is so very easy to read! :-) Well, it's more readable than Lisp, anyway. (Seriously, for me C is very readable, but I admit that I'm perhaps not the typical case.) >> <is there any hope for me?> > None. Its too late you have become a C guru and there is no hope! > Sorry. :-))) Shucks. My parents had such high hopes, too... Bill -- Bill Foote bill@pds.com PDS Corp, Los Angeles, CA USA uunet!promdist!bill