A new article on the ITJungle.com website asks if Zend's support of PHP on IBM's System i machines could be the "next RPG", replacing the current language as the language of choice.

For years, the System i platform and its followers have marched through the wilderness of development languages, seeking a suitable replacement for the aging RPG, whose benefits aren't a good fit for a Web world. Now, some platform advocates see the server-side scripting language PHP stepping into that role.

The bulk of the article is an interview between Alex Woodie (of ITJungle.com) and Duncan Kenzie, president of Excel Systems. They cover topics like:

• Duncan's first perceptions of PHP
• why he decided it would be a good language to go with
• how it works in their WebSmart software
• differences between Java and PHP impacts
• the ease of the shift for RPG programmers to PHP