Re: Impossible to even think about rewriting in RPG

On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 6:21 PM, James Lampert <jamesl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I use modules all the time. And procedures and functions. And mixed
language.

And you do all this with PDM and SEU? Certainly nothing wrong with
that, if you can swing it. I just imagine there has to be a faster,
easier way.

My objection to /free is that (1) it doesn't really do much that can't
be done *just as legibly* in standard ILE RPG format,

This is almost entirely subjective, but I happen to agree.

and (2) it wasted
time, essentially grafting a subset of PL/I onto RPG, that (at least
IMHO) could have been better spent on things like porting PL/I to ILE
(with list-directed and data-directed interactive I/O fully
implemented), or making certain SQL-only fields and constructs available
in native RLA, or providing easy display file support for InfoWindow II
extensions to the 5250 data stream.

Hmm... when you mentioned PL/I, I actually thought in my brain
"PL/SQL". Now *that* (or non-Oracle equivalent) I could actually see
myself and my coworkers using (and would address the issue of better
SQL support).

(Yes, I know you can indent in /free, the same as you can in most other
languages. But I've learned not to trust indents to accurately show
nesting, particularly when multiple programmers are in the source.

Completely true. And this is the beauty of using indentation itself
to determine block structure, rather than braces. (Python is the most
famous language to do this, but it's not the only one, and more
languages are popping up that do this.)

Or use an IDE that does nesting analysis on the fly
(something that could have been added to SEU!)

A better SEU would be nice. But how far can it go, with the green
screens? And I don't just mean character displays, because character
displays on the PC and Unix have supported some really great editors.

John