RE: Resistance to change (was free format question)

This is a unique perspective.   I don't agree with it at all, but I have to
give you points for coming up with a way of looking at this that took me
completely by surprise. 



-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of James H H Lampert
Sent: Thursday, June 23, 2005 10:00 AM
To: RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: Re: Resistance to change (was free format question)

In my case, it's not "resistance to change"; if it were 
that, then why am I fluent, to varying degrees, in 3 
assemblers and over a dozen HLLs, in multiple dialetcs?

What I DO resist, and resist vigorously, is the practice 
of evolving a langauge to where it has lost all the 
defining characteristics of the one it evolved from, but 
continuing to call it what it no longer is. For example, 
BASIC is a language, evolved from FORTRAN, that requires 
line numbers, uses them as statement labels, and has no 
local variables or external calls. The QBASICs TBASICS, 
and so forth, evolved from BASIC, but are NOT themselves 
BASIC, having lost every characteristic that defines 
BASIC, and I refuse to call them BASIC. They are 
DERIVATIVES of BASIC, not DIALECTS.

Likewise, RPG has a highly stylized syntax based on column 
positions, and it also has excellent file I/O, and an 
implicit "DO UNTIL LR IS TRUE" loop surrounding every 
program. If you don't bother learning how to use The 
Cycle, though, then there's little reason for you to be 
using RPG at all, and if you take away the 
column-position-based syntax, you may end up with a great 
language, but it has ceased to be RPG.

--
JHHL