Re: IBM pushing Java

Date:   3/21/99  1:33 AM

RE:     Re: IBM pushing Java

From: boothm@ibm.net
>I have a question along these lines:  I refer to much of the old code that
>I see as being brittle.  I don't know exactly why I started using that term 
>but it does seem appropriate.  Touch something, and something breaks 
>somewhere else.  change a line of code!
>and suddenly some whole section starts behaving differently. 

>Have others noticed this?  Does this word make sense to others, or am I 
>speaking badly?  It is important to me because I feel we must constantly
>fight against this brittleness or suddenly we have applications that are
>no longer useful or repairable.  

>Its usually at this point that I hear the "We need some PCs to do this" 
>speech.

Booth

One of my early mentor's Robin Chakivarti(I spelled it wrong), used to say
that "Our systems absorb change about as well as a battleship absorbs 
torpedos"

That's what you mean about brittleness.  Does the average RPG programmer 
know anything about "Module Cohesiveness" ?  Like, what's the difference
between "TEMPORALLY COHESIVE" and "FUNCTIONALLY COHESIVE" ?  This is the 
idea behind OO.  Things like Encapsulation and Abstraction are ususally
not in the front brain of most RPG programmers.  

Even though languages like Java are more geared to implement these concepts,
I would beg to argue that the tenets of OO (like the terms above) can
be implemented in RPG.  

We just generally write "Bad" code.  But generally it's not the language's 
fault.  Sure, if you want to write bad systems, RPG will do it's part
to really help you.  (just like COBOL would)

I maintain that if you take the average programmer's design paradigms
and give her/him Java,  You will get crap.

Power-tools can be used for Power-mutilazation

I'm doing a session in Boston next week(and Toronto Next month)
on this topic.   Called RPG & Maintainability.  I go into these
topics with examples.

If we design our systems in a "Functionally Cohesive" way, 
(Even in RPG) they will not be "Brittle"

John Carr
EdgeTech
Have Classes, Will Travel


   at 09:56 AM, John Carr <74711.77@compuserve.com> said:
BTW,  With that management attitude,  How come you still aren't useing 
>RPGII ?    And I bet they are the same Management who complain about 
>their applications are getting older.

>John Carr
>EdgeTech
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