Where Should all the 4th Gens Go?

ARSDeveloperGuy writes "Fourth generation languages are cool, but there seems to be little to no effort being spent to standardize them. The current state is commercialized pseudo-languages are created to allow vertical apps to be expanded. (ARS Remedy, Siebel, Oracle JDeveloper) The concepts of a form, field, and workflow can be standardized, and when you look at many of these languages they aren't terribly different. Why don't we create a standard and start writing "workflow converters" for these powerful languages? That would allow conversions to happen more readily, maybe even to an open source offering like OpenSourceCRM."

Comments

Never going to happen!

[FriedTurkey]

As much as I would like to see it, fourth generation languages are never going to standardize. Most are derivatives of a standard well known languages like C or Java. Teaching yourself the 4thGen language is never that hard. Most of the vendors have 10+ years in a language that would break existing code on a upgrade. Plus it would make it easier for a migration to a competitor.

I don't believe OpenSourceCRM has a 4th generation language. All of the open source CRM packages I have researched are really just collections of code without any application level programming abilities. Customizations would involve changing the low level source. I guess open source packages feel there is no need to separate the functional programming from technical programming. An application server that runs the same business code for a web page as an integration is a must. Some companies are never going to take a CRM application seriously if a customization involves changing a PHP file. It may work great in a small environment but it will never replace Siebel or OracleCRM unless it packaged with a developer application that generates "forms/page" and compiles 4th generation code.

Re:Why bother?

[david duncan scott]

And as you probably know (but the great mass may not) Chuck Moore called it FORTH in part because FOURTH was too long for the original development system's filesystem.