RE: Welcome new members

IMHO:

COBOL's big advantages:

1)      free-format
2)      long field names
3)      commands are meaningful, not cryptic
4)      indenting is supported

COBOL's disadvantages:

1)      Only jobs available are for maintaining old code, and even those are disappearing.

RPG's big advantages:

1)      READE - COBOL can take dozens of commands to accomplish this

RPG's big disadvantages:

1)      In another 10 years, RPG _might_ match COBOL 68 features if RPG development continues at        current pace.

2)      Narrow columns

3)      Most commands are cryptic and dont make much sense.  Code lines are smashed together and        are not very readable.

4)      No indentation allowed

5)      Reading RPG is like reading a novel keyed into columns of a spreadsheet - not pretty!

6)      RPG has a nasty habit of forcing field values into other fields with the same name.  RPG        programmers have wasted millions of lines of code and work fields to circumvent this    feature! 

7)      RPG has little of no concept of a record.  It deals strictly at the field level.  So it is      difficult to save off or deal with an entire record.

8)      Only jobs available are for maintaining old code, and even those are disappearing!

just my 2 cents to get the ball rolling!

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris.Chambers@v2music.com [mailto:Chris.Chambers@v2music.com]
Sent: Monday, November 22, 1999 6:34 AM
To: COBOL400-L@midrange.com
Subject: Re: Welcome new members

Good idea - that presumes that we know both - which I do not - so come on all
you bilinguists - pros and cons of both please!

Chris

Bob Larkin <blarkin@wt.net> on 22/11/99 05:36:26

Please respond to COBOL400-L@midrange.com

To:   COBOL400-L <COBOL400-L@midrange.com>
cc:    (bcc: Chris Chambers/London/V2 Music)
Subject:  Welcome new members

Welcome to all of our new list members.

Now, let's have some fun. Maybe a lively discussion on RPG -vs -...., on
the other hand, maybe not.

Bob Larkin

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