Re: Need some advice

Buck wrote:

The basics of OO are available to all of us for understanding. We just need to view what we do in the appropriate ways.

I write my own commands all the time, am comfortable with converting C
structures into RPG DS specs and in my vanity, I like to think I have a
handle on the basics of OO.

None of that prepared me for polymorphism. Books with kindly gentlemen
on the cover with examples of animals for classes just didn't help me
out. I don't do enough Java to make that conceptual leap I guess. I'm
not saying that an RPG guy can't pick up polymorphism the same way I
picked up RPG, but it seems a lot harder.

Agreed. Of course, The Cycle didn't exactly prepare us all for fully
procedural files either. But getting the basics of RPG helped with RPG
II. And RPG II helped with learning RPG III. And...

As for me, I might _start_ thinking about aspects of polymorphism by
looking at how DSPFD reacts when used with a PF-DTA and with a PRTF.
Inheritance elements from *FILE can be seen above the differentiated
elements. I might think about CRTDTAARA with either *CHAR or *DEC and
how that affects CHGDTAARA and RTVDTAARA.

It gets a little tricky when going beyond basics to function
overloading, etc., and even harder when trying to make the jump from
"object based" to a more complete "object oriented", but ya' gotta start
somewhere. If changing to something new didn't have, well, new stuff, there'd be no reason to change or grow.

Might as well start with the familiar.

Tom Liotta