S
scott_auge
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Progress at it's core (at least OpenEdge) is OLTP. Online Transaction Processing isn't the most exciting thing in the world and I guess in the end is a bit abstract for new programmers who are excited about the look and feel of their programs - Colors! Beeps! Movement! I'll admit to wanting to be a developer for some NASA project when in college - computers in spaaaaaace! But reality for me is "record shuffling" pays the bills and it has done well for me so far. So until you find a way to get a programmer excited about the details in an accounting system, or a loan system, or a service system, or a law system, or an inventory system, etc. there really isn't going to be to much excitement for Progress. There will not be a "look at this cool video system I made, or cool music system I made, or Facebook/MySpace/Friendster system I made" blah blah blah. The language isn't made for that stuff. When it comes down to interests there are two - what is interesting to me (the programmer) and what is interesting to the world (the app.) Ya need to get new programmers (usually young people) to look past their interests and see what the rest of the world wants. The age old way of doing this is the ole "if you scratch my back, I'll scratch your back." They need to understand that Progress is a back scratcher that they can use to achieve the above. Now there is living on anothers plantation issue at work too. Most of the good stuff made out there is in C or C++ (take a look around your Linux system) or PHP for the web goodies or whatever is going to be free for mobile development (believe me, it's coming.) The point I am making is that those languages are free except for the books and even those are free if you want to spend time reading PDFs and watch some videos. They are free to develop in and free to redistribute your app in. Progress obviously doesn't even want the development to be free so it is chained to people who want to pay a couple thousand for the tools or people who want to work on OLTP systems (they will already have some education in development.)
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