Re: Free Form RPG Opinions Wanted -- RPG400-L

Joe Pluta wrote:

From: Hans Boldt

I have absolutely no idea why you think that could kill off the RPG
IV base. All older programs will still compile. And if you don't
want to use free-form calcs, you still have the choice not to use
them. As others have pointed out, free-form calcs should be used
only for *new* programs or modules, and I agree whole-heartedly with
that.

That's because you don't work in application development, Hans.  What you're
saying is that all development shops must now support TWO formats, fixed and
free-form, with fixed for old and free for new.

So when you modify a program, do you use fixed or free?  Does it depend on
the amount of work involved?  And do my programmers have to know both
syntaxes, or do I have "old" programmers and "new" programmers?

AIEEEEEEEEE!

Look, no one is being forced to use /FREE. If you're maintaining old fixed-form code, stick with it. If you run most old code through a fixed to free converter, you'd just end up with even more ugly looking code. And so you'd lose all the benefits of moving to free-form code. So you're probably better off limiting the use of /FREE to new code (or total rewrites).

Regarding supporting different formats, isn't that an old problem anyways? For example, you have old code that uses resulting indicators. But after %EOF, %OPEN, etc were introduced, how many shops adopted standards that mandated their use instead? Or, how many prefer using EVAL to MOVE?

You know the old cliche, that change is the only constant in this industry. Standards evolve, and new tools must be learned. Always. First there was the HTTP Server, now there's Apache (as another example).

So yes indeed, you have "old" programmers and "new" programmers. But that's always been true, even before the existence of free-form calcs.


By using my simple, straightforward suggestion of allowing every supported
free-form opcode to have an fixed format extender such as (X) that treats
extended factor 2 as the same syntax as free-form, then you can have a
campaign to slowly wean everyone off of fixed and onto free.  They can learn
to take advantage of the new BIFs, while at the same time figuring out how
to deal with all the old MOVE instructions.  And once everything is
converted, then a single pass to move to free format and you're done!  This
is a much smoother transition than what you've currently got.

Actually, I don't totally disagree with the idea. But then again, if you're having trouble understanding free-form calcs, I suspect you might also have trouble understanding other new features as well.


And no, I'm not giving up on MOVE, or at least a %MOVE BIF, but I am at
least accepting for now that it ain't there.

I think we're still waiting for compelling reasons for such features.

Cheers! Hans