Re: An odd thing -- MIDRANGE-L




RE:     Re: An odd thing

Ya,  That was a fun trip.  Hence my joke about a "Free" compiler.  
The vast market surveys (by every conceivable party) was overwhelming to 
stay with the Fixed Format.  I agree with Al with about your chances of 
"holding your breath".   

John Carr (with the H)
P.S. Greg Veal and Rick Deshone were there also along with a bank of 
News/400 people.  

P.P.S.   If you are coding more than 20% of the total program, in my
opinion you're doing something wrong.  There are only between 5 & 15
unique types of programs(Approx).  Your shop should have skeletons that
handle 75-95% of the boiler plate code and the programmer should only 
have to keyin a very small percentage of the total.  
-------------------

Al Said;
At the time that RPG IV was being completed, Paul Conte had proposed a
language that he called 'RPG/free'.  He wrote a letter to the then GM of
the AS/400 Division suggesting that RPG IV would be a big mistake.  This
(partially) caused RPG IV to be delayed from V2R3 to V3R1, and caused IBM
Toronto to do a lot of introspection as to wether a totally free form RPG
was the way to go.  Two Barsa employees were involved in that work, along
with other notables such as Jim Sloan, Charlie Massoglia, Sharon Hoffman,
Jon Carr, Russ Popeil and Bob Cozzi (If I made any omissions or accidental
inclusions, I apologize, this was several years ago.)

The conclusion of that work was that there are many free-form languages
available, and the columnar format of RPG made it distinct.  If you want a
free-form language, pick another.  

If you plan on holding your breath for a free-form RPG language, I would
suggest checking your life insurance first.

BTW, the current thinking in the IBM executive community is that JAVA will
be the end-all language for everything.  Holding your breath until this
thinking changes is probably a safer bet,

Al


>>>>>Still, if I were advising in this case, I'd probably go with RPG (or
>>>>>even C) before COBOL.  Next year, I might say Java, who knows!
>
>
>Having programmed in RPG II, RPG III, ILE RPG, COBOL, CL, Awk, Visual Basic,
>Delphi, Java, C, SYNON and SQL, I would NEVER pick RPG as my first choice!
>
>Yuk.
>
>When IBM FINALLY sees the light and makes ILE RPG COMPLETELY free-format,
THEN
>I'd be inclined to lean that way.
>
>(I do admit, however, the ILE RPG is a VAST improvement over any previous
>incantations)
>
>Peace,
>
>-- Don "Quixote" Schenck
>
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>umidr
>
>

Al Barsa, Jr. - Account for Midrange-L
Barsa Consulting, LLC.  
400 > 390

Phone:  914-251-9400
Fax:    914-251-9406





Private mail should be sent to barsa@ibm.net
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