RE: FW: Random

Booth wrote:
>oh great.  now we've got "downto"s.
>
>Sorry Hans, I know these are great additions and everyone else will be
>breathing hard for a week but I don't see a big difference between this
>and a DO loop with a "downto" added for glamour.
>
>Please excuse me being grumpy.   I don't see these enhancements adding a
>thing to RPG's competitiveness, or to the AS/400's appeal to the business
>community.
>
>I'll regret sending this I know, but damn... "downto"s?

And I'm sure I'll regret replying, but...

DOWNTO?  I suppose that's just a bit of Pascal influence.

Adding to RPG's competitiveness?  Heck, we always tend to
add a few easy to implement "nice to have" items to each
release.  I know many RPG programmers tend to look backwards
to maintenance of older programs and support of older
releases.  We here in the lab tend to look forward.
Enhancing the language does nothing to help maintenance of
old existing programs, but it will help you write new
applications in the coming years.  I suppose at the very
least, this is a signal from us that we certainly believe RPG
will still be around in the future.  Why would we enhance the
language if we didn't expect people to take advantage of the
enhancements?

Regarding FOR in particular, in my opinion, 5 years from now,
new RPG programmers will think of the DO opcode as an ancient
relic of the language seen only in maintenance of old
programs.

Cheers!  Hans

Hans Boldt, ILE RPG Development, IBM Toronto Lab, boldt@ca.ibm.com


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