-3

I've recently joined a firm, where we are working with Progress 4GL from OpenEdge, release 11.6.

As I have quite some experience in other programming environment, I'm really surprised by the extremely old-fashioned tools and technology (I started working with Delphi 4 in 1998, and this was already more modern than the AppBuilder and Procedure window of OpenEdge Progress programming environment), e.g. basic things like breakpoints, watch window, basic logging facilities, ..., are non-existent.

What are the more recent technologies which take over from OpenEdge/Progress 4GL?

Improve this question
9
  • 2
    "Most" things have replaced by JavaScript/Kotlin/Swift for the client side, Java/C#/Node/various other things for the server side. But unless you've got the authority to throw away your company's entire stack and do a from the ground-up rewrite, you're not going to be able to use that information for much. Is there an actual software engineering problem you're trying to solve here? Commented Dec 22, 2020 at 11:19
  • 2
    Almost certainly: you can't. They're using a massively out-of-date technology, and I'm going to guess relying on a small number of legacy contracts to keep the cash coming in. When those legacy contracts go away for one reason or another, your employer doesn't have a viable business model. Unless someone at the executive level in your company is prepared to make a high-level business decision to pivot the company's focus, it's running on borrowed time. That borrowed time may still be 20 years (COBOL is still used), but it's borrowed time all the same. Commented Dec 22, 2020 at 11:40
  • 3
    But none of this is a software engineering problem: this is a business problem, so I’m voting to close this question. Commented Dec 22, 2020 at 11:41
  • 1
    Are the tools still supported by their vendor? (The vendor still seems to exist at least) You would need to contact that vendor to answer questions you have about how to continue supporting these existing systems. The employer you've joined is clearly "locked in" to the vendor so it's likely in the vendor's best interest to have some support options available which would allow you and your employer to continue to operate. Commented Dec 22, 2020 at 11:45
  • 2
    @Dominique in which case, I'd suggest opening dialogue with OpenEdge and look at how best to work with them to ensure you and your employer can continue to operate - it sounds as if you're heavily reliant upon their ecosystem, and as with most such cases of being tied to a proprietary platform, the only feasible options usually (other than starting again from scratch) tend to involve building a close support partnership (ideally with one eye on a path to evolve away from their platform in the long-term, but the first job is to make sure you can keep the lights on over the coming years). Commented Dec 22, 2020 at 12:35

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
2

Sounds like you're using the hopelessly old procedure editor.

Progress has a newer IDE called "Progress Developer Studio" that's based on the Eclipse platform. I'd suggest talking to your Progress sales rep about it. There's also a "classroom" version that's free.

As for the nay-sayers, the 4GL is competitive for getting the business application job done and there's enough of a customer base that it'll be around for some time to come.

Improve this answer

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.