RPG400-L wrote:
Perhaps he is an employee of the company that owns the system rather
than an outsource grunt but it seems more likely to be the reverse.
At least one other scenario seems reasonable.
Picture an organization with two developer groups. One group is
hot-shot
C programmers; the other is solid-business RPG programmers. A number of
years ago, ILE comes along with RPG IV. New development embraces ILE
and
new business programming is within ILE using RPG IV. This includes
embracing free-format when it comes along. All of the new stuff is
really nice; like what we all hope for.
Now, a year or two or three ago, a push is started for a new business
app. Maybe a few hot-shots get transferred into business-solid. Because
it's all so well done, the previous C programmers who transfer can
actually get up to speed fairly easily.
But, ILE/RPG IV is all they know. That's what they started with. That's
what they learned.
Last week, however, an older app is determined to need an enhancement.
This is one of the monolithic monsters that's been around since S/38
days. There is no expectation that this monster is going to be
converted
to RPG IV just for this little subroutine to clean up some data in one
of the fields. The available developer knows practically nothing about
MOVEA, never seen CABEQ, never used BITON/BITOFF op-codes, hasn't
battled The Cycle nor MR nor program-described files.
With all the fancy stuff in RPG IV as your foundation, with no
experience doing it the 'old way', where do you start? How do you know
what's reasonable as a technique?
I'd probably ask some RPG forum for pointers.
If someone actually _begins_ by doing everything the 'modern, correct'
way, what happens when s/he runs into the 'old, legacy' way? It's one
thing to scan through the table of contents of RPG/400; it's another to
understand how to put the older op-codes together to create a decent
solution.
Just thinking of alternatives.
Tom Liotta
midrange.com
