Re: Convert from free to fixed

I'm really old school, but I have to agree with dieter on this one. If I always forced myself to use newer techniques when I do non-trivial modifications to an old program, I would learn them better and they would become the default techniques faster.



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message: 5
date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 19:15:28 +0200
from: <dieter.bender@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
subject: Re: Convert from free to fixed

I've seen programms running with MR indicator, CAB Operations, internal
described records, multi format files living for years in an ancient world,
programmed in the style of the roary sixties. You must be very carefull to
hold the value of your software and one important point is maintainebility.
About 10 years ago I've had the opportunity for a COBOL mainframe project,
because they didn't find enough people to maintain 30 years old COBOL
programms.
The stuff of a software project has to be educated continousely and the
programming style must evolve to be not too far behind the actaul style of
coding and a look to the world outside of the RPG ghetto might show the
direction! I didn't recommend to throw programms away, or to rewrite for
beautyness, but, yes, I would not implement additional subroutines to this
software and more than this. With every change or error correction I would
refactor one part after the other and enhance especally modularisation.

D*B



Jim Horn
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