RE: An odd thing -- MIDRANGE-L

Jeff,

<toungincheekmode truthlevel=high>

And the Crowd goes Wild!!!

This sounds just like the end of the movie "Revenge Of The 
Nerds" where everybody admits to being a Nerd.

I to have been playing the Midrange Game (GSD, CCP, PRUF, 15D, 
etc) for almost 20 years now.

Now days I tiddle bits inside images, am a C++ convert, do a lot 
of Win95/NT programming with C++, still do a lot of AS/400 work, 
have even deployed a Real Live functioning LOB Java Program (see 
http://www.supnet.com/ibmleadira.html), and otherwise spend my 
time on the bleeding edge.  Not braging, but just showing that 
us "Old Farts" can not only keep up with the kids, but far 
surpass them.

But, at 2am when I need one more silly report and my brain is no 
longer functioning (or at 10am during my prime time), out comes 
the RPG compiler and I declare an Input Primary file and Use The 
Cycle!

Hey, that's a new acronym: UTC!

So all of the other UTC programmers out there, Come out of the 
Closet!  Just because the kids are too lazy to figure out a good 
tool is no reason for us to throw one out.

</toungincheekmode>

And that is why The Cycle has gone out of favor.  It is not 
taught in the schools anymore.  So instead of learning the 
language being used, they take the "easy" way out and re-invent 
the Cycle.

Regards,
Bob Crothers
Cornerstone Communications

-----Original Message-----
From:   Jeff Crosby [SMTP:jlcrosby@fwi.com]
Sent:   Wednesday, December 31, 1997 8:53 AM
To:     MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
Subject:        Re: An odd thing

Booth,

> I ask because so often it seems like people make fun of using 
the RPG
> cycle, and when they do it makes me feel just a little bit 
older again.

SOAPBOXMODE(*ON)

Don't feel bad/old.  I've been around for 20+ years using RPG 
and am
probably unique in what I am about to say.

Any new RPG program I write gets written in RPG/ILE.  Any RPGIII 
program
that I must touch for any reason, I convert it to RPG/ILE.  All 
opcodes
are EVAL, IF, DO, and WHEN whenever possible instead of MOVE, 
MOVEL,
IFxx, DOWxx, DOUxx, and WHxx.  I actually use pointers in 
RPG/ILE to map
arrays and fields to the same storage location instead of 
hardcoding
FROM/TO positions in a data structure.  My PC's AS/400 
connection is
TCP/IP.  As soon as consistent device naming is available under 
TCP/IP,
all PC's will be changed to that.  Why am I telling you all 
this?  So
you know that I do indeed use 'new' things when appropriate or
beneficial.

That being said, any new report program I write in RPG, I use 
the cycle
and make no apologies for it, political correctness be damned. 
 Level
breaks and subtotals are so much simpler that way.  If someone 
has a
problem with that, that's exactly how I look at it;  it's 
_their_
problem, not mine.  Use the strengths of the language to do the 
job.

Anyone that can understand SQL with it's "set-at-a-time" logic 
as
opposed to "record-at-a-time" logic of a 3GL language can 
understand the
cycle.  Just think of the cycle as the RPG version of 
"set-at-a-time".

SOAPBOXMODE(*OFF)

--
-Jeff

jlcrosby@fwi.com
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