Re: Java versus RPG on iSeries

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To: java400-l@midrange.com
From: jamesl@hb.quik.com
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Reply-To: jamesl@hb.quik.com
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 13:26:13 EDT
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Subject: Re: Java versus RPG on iSeries

Granted, RPG is a stone-age language. (One of the cartoons decorating a

partition near my desk shows RPG etched into a stone tablet.) Granted, too,

that it's not a language I care to work in any more than absolutely
necessary
(the same can be said for C, and I dearly wish the designers of
Java had been
PL/I jocks, rather than C jocks).

But when a program is
simplified by the simple fact that it can hop on the "RPG
Cycle," and ride
through a file, it can be worth the bizarre, plugboard-based
syntax of the
language, even if other compilers are handy.

No programming language is the
right tool for every job. That's why a
programmer should be fluent in as
many as possible, and willing to use
whichever is the right tool for a
particular job, even if it happens to be one
he or she finds personally
distasteful. I suspect that a great deal of the
truly awful commercial
software on the market is the result of somebody trying
to use C to write
something that ought to be written in a combination of one or
more true HLLs
(which C is not) and assembler. Using C where assembler would be
more
appropriate contributes to bloat, and slows execution almost as much as

using a true HLL for such cases; using C where a true HLL would be more

appropriate leads to hidden flaws and slow development time, almost as much
as
using assembler for such
cases
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JHHL