PowerBuilder Conferences: Charlotte Recap, ISUG-Tech coming up
It was great to see so many PowerBuilder folks in Charlotte last week for the 3 day regional user conference. I expected a large turnout from the North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia areas but was surprised that customers came from all over the US (Texas, Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon, Washington, Michigan…and more…) as well as Mexico, Australia, and multiple provinces in Canada! It’s more proof that PowerBuilder developers are some of the most committed and loyal out there, and for good reason – their apps work, and they’re highly productive using PowerBuilder.
It was nice to see so many familiar faces and old friends, as well as hear about how folks are not only still actively using PowerBuilder for their existing apps, but building new applications and modules. Dave Fish held a few sessions on PowerBuilder as well as an overview of the River Definition Language .
The keynote featured Appeon CEO Armeen Mazda and customers got a close up look at how easy it is to deploy a PowerBuilder app as a native iOS or Android application. Some long time PowerBuilder folks also presented, including Buck Woolley of DW Extreme fame, and Chris Pollach
Customer feedback at this event was aligned with what we’ve been hearing through email and other forums. Top issues include PDF (i.e., SaveAsPDF,) focus on Classic PowerBuilder and moving core .NET functionality into that IDE, and a statement of direction from SAP.
Next month, another event, the ISUG-TECH Conference, 2014 will feature PowerBuilder as well as other SAP products, including the launch of ASE 16, and opportunities to learn about SAP’s strategic HANA platform. This event will also be another multi-day conference with options for pre-con training. Looking forward to more customer interaction and feedback!
Thanks for organizing and attending a great show.
PB needs to complete its integration with .NET so PB application developers can take benefit from .NET features and investments. Today, we are ending up doing a lot of work in .NET since PB is unable to do and then integrating them with PB. There was a PB strategy to get to PB.NET and we need to continue to move in that path and deliver.
It will take many many years for PB to duplicate stuff from .NET into PB classic and I would call trying to do this a Very Bad Mistake!
I can understand the bias towards providing the same features in PB classic by PB plug-in developers since their tool will not work in PB.NET and makes them Obsolete.
Please spend development efforts wisely to maximize PB Developer Productivity and not make them go to other programming languages to accomplish tasks.
Please make PB.NET a reality where everyone sees the benefit of migrating away from PB classic and migrates to PB.NET.
Eagerly waiting for PB15.
Most of the developers at the conference - in fact, all but one - stated that they simply do not use PB.NET. Sue Dunnell confirms this is about the same percentage as she has seen from every other location at which she has been in attendance.
Meanwhile those "obsolete" developers are still creating new apps, maintaining existing apps, and creating new functionality for good old fashioned PB Classic apps. Their productivity is unmatched by any other language or by any other tool in existence, and they continue to learn and grow their skills and tool (thanks, Appeon) while remaining employed as PowerBuilder Classic developers.
I'm glad that PB.NET is not a complete waste of shelf space, and that a few people are using it. However, it makes far more sense to spend time and energy on a tool used by 95%+ of the PB developers than to focus on a tool only a very small percentage of a small community currently use.
JMHO and YMMV,
Olan Knight