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  • Subject: Re: Reinventing Code
  • From: Scott Halliday <scott.halliday@xxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 05 Apr 1999 16:09:02 -0230
  • Organization: Personal

When RPG II was released the logic cycle was considered a new and
innovative approach to programming. A way of speeding up and supposedly
simplifying the programming process. While to an extent this may have
been true, there was a significant learning curve for programmers to
become competent ie: comfortable with the logic cycle. 

Since RPG II's introduction, the industry has learned the real cost of
software development is not the cost or the time it takes to write but
rather the cost of maintaining it afterwards. Today generally accepted
methods such as the use of structured programming techniques have made
code more readable and easier to support. (Unfortunately even these
methods, in the hands of a lousy programmer, can still lead to difficult
to read and hard to support spaghetti code.) Programmers need to embrace
methods of writing well structured, well documented code so that it is
easy to read, easy to understand and therefore easy to maintain.  

Just as goto's have been replaced with Do loops, the RPG II logic cycle
has been replaced with structured programming techniques. 

As someone who programmed using RPG II and the logic cycle for a number
of years, I suggest, to those RPG II programmers out there still using
the logic cycle, to have a little heart and consider the poor
programmer(s) that may have to go in and support your code down the
road. Its time to give up the logic cycle and move forward with the rest
of the industry. RPG II is not about to make a comeback and nor would I
want it to. As an X logic cycle programmer, the structured approach is
better and easier to work with for everyone.

Even considering the fact that the RPG II logic cycle works very well
for level break and matching record processing, a programmer needs a
good understand of the logic cycle in order to take advantage of it.
Most programmers don't and few if any are learning. At some point in
time, the code you write will end up being someone else's responsibility
and chances are good they will not familiar with logic cycle processing,
so why crucify them with it. Hell, I'm familiar with it and I hope I
never have to pull out the books and work with it again.            


Scott Halliday
Senior Systems Consultant

Pat Barber wrote:
> 
> Not using a feature that the language has had for over 30 years
> is foolish and wastes company time reinventing a "new" method
> just to say you can do it. L1(et al) & and for that matter M1(et al)
> have a place in the big picture.. I have heard the ranting & raving
> over bad coding practices for years... some even have a valid point,
> but to ignore somthing because:
> 
> (a) you don't understand it
> (b) you don't like it
> (c) it's not structured code
> (d) that's not the way you were taught
> (e) it uses the "cycle"
> 
> is a serious oversight....
> 
> I don't care for some of the newer "features" because I think it
> just clouds the picture for people who have to follow your snazzy
> way of writing code, but that doesn't mean I won't try to learn the
> new method for the sake of some future project that would require
> that particular feature... A good bit of the "new" features are very
> handy & strangely enough, "they" replace things programmers have been
> doing for years(the hard way)...I have been writing programs for a good
> mamy years now and the methods I use are out of habit, not "style",,,
> 
> I was taught(at a service bureau) you "will" write code that "anybody"
> can follow or you will no longer have a job here... That was years ago,
> and I have used that "style" ever since..
> 
> Just my ranting & raving.. Not pointed at anyone in particular...
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