RE: the ASSET issue again

I'm an RPG programmer and rather like As/set in a perverse sort of way.   It
does have its shortfalls in terms of navigation within the source hence the
reason I wrote the Asset Action Diagrammer tool at my last place.  

Also you can do a lot of stuff much easier in RPG because of the extra op
codes that aren't available in As/Set.

I think the one reason people dislike As/set so much is that at V3.0 to V5.0
of BPCS they had some good awful programmers around who tried to write
programs in a highly subroutined way.   ie to read a file required 7 or so
routines - PUR500D3 is a great example and any of the window programs.

Plus the boolean logic of if statements is tedious to debug.

I've done some work on Synon II in the past and that produced seriously bad
RPG code as well.  In fact its screen handling was terrible - moving data
between at least 2 different sets of work fields between reading the
database file and put the data on the screen. Plus numerous called
subroutines which are empty.  I don't think that poor RPG is the sole
provenance of As/set.

Don't know if my old firm are still selling the Action Diagrammer product
but its worth checking out.  I can't live without my hooky copy.

Cheers
Graham



> ----------
> From:         Lacelle, Marc[SMTP:LACELLE@rcmint.ca]
> Sent:         18 September 2000 13:49
> To:   'BPCS-L@midrange.com'
> Subject:      RE: the ASSET issue again
> 
> Hi Ho.
> 
>       I for one use ASSET/ADK as a development tool and find it quite
> useful. I am not an RPG or RPG-ILE programmer and never intend on being
> one.
> ASSET/ADK offers is a simple alternative to RPG. You almost can do
> everything with this tool. Yes, RPG is more powerful but,  a program
> written
> using ASSET will take the same amount of time to run as a program written
> in
> RPG. The code generated from a program using Asset will be much smaller
> than
> a program written using RPG, it will take me a few days to come up with a
> complex ASSET/ADK program where it may take a week or more using RPG.
> 
>       If the execution time for a program is the same and the length in
> time to write the code using ASSET is lesser than RPG. Why knock the
> product. 
> 
>       You are correct in the saying that the source provided by SSA for
> BPCS is pretty bad. We call it spaghetti language over here, but lets not
> forget SSA are in the business of making money. If they had two line
> source
> for every program they had, we would not need them. 
> 
>       PS: It think the people who dislike ASSET are RPG programmers.  
> 
>       Marc Lacelle
>       Royal Canadian Mint
>       
>       
> 
> > ----------
> > From:       Chick Doe[SMTP:Cdoe@barton-instruments.com]
> > Reply To:   BPCS-L@midrange.com
> > Sent:       Saturday, September 16, 2000 3:32 PM
> > To:         BPCS-L@midrange.com
> > Subject:    the ASSET issue again
> > 
> > there's been a lot said in the last couple of days about SSA and AS/SET.
> > while i am not a fan of it, i can understand the logic of writing code
> in
> > AS/SET that could then be compiled and run on multiple environments. yes
> > you will sacrifice performance, but if the intent was to provide
> improved
> > functionality at less cost, then i can understand the logic. whether
> this
> > was ever delivered or not is another question. 
> > 
> > but what drives me absolutely insane is SSA's practice of commenting out
> > lines in both the AS/SET source and in the resulting RPG source. much o
> > the complexity in trying to read these damn programs is just trying to
> > decipher which lines are still executable statements and which are now
> > comments. my guess is that well over half of all statements in their
> > programs are old lines of code that are now comments. TAKE THEM OUT AND
> > GIVE US SOURCE PROGRAMS THAT CAN BE READ!
> > 
> > chick doe
> > barton instrument systems
> > 
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