Re: Midrange Knowledge test

On Wed, 31 Dec 2003 00:39:52 -0800, "James H. H. Lampert" <jamesl@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

>And RPG, as a language, has exactly one thing to recommend it
...
>"The Cycle."

That is hardly fair. What RPG really has to recommend it is that you'll find
it on 90+ percent of AS/400's. Usually, RPG is the only bought compiler on the
system. The two primary reasons for this is to extend vendor applications
which are typically written in RPG, and RPG is the "traditional" AS/400
language.

Now, to get back on topic. if we're talking about midrange knowledge and
skills, and by midrange we really mean AS/400, then RPG is germane to the
discussion.

To steal a phrase from Joe Pluta, how many line of business applications have
you seen written in Java running on the AS/400, much less another platform?

>RPG is
>inherently a pain in the fundament to debug, because that rigid source
>format makes it a pain in the fundament to trace control structure
>nesting.

One of the nice things about the columnar layout is that arguments (factor 1,
factor 2) are in the same place and therefore easy to scan by eye.

I've heard that recent versions of OS/400 give RPG a free-form syntax that
lets you indent control structures as much as you like.

Loyd
--  
Mediocrity: It takes a lot less time and most people won't notice
the difference until it's too late. <http://www.despair.com/>
loyd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx  ICQ#504581  http://www.blackrobes.net/