Re: Book: RPG for the Cobol Programmer

I was an AS/400 Cobol programmer...until the box forced me to learn RPG.  In
1988, I took the RPGIII course at the IBM tower in Atlanta.
The transition was not that hard.  The first thing that you'll love is the
EXFMT.  Soooo much better than the write-read display file in cobol.  First
thing you'll hate is 6-byte field names...but we're over that now with
RPGIV.  You'll hate indicators, but now, you should only use them for
display file and printer file control.

RPGII sucks and I refused to use it before RPGIII came out.
RPGIII, to me, is RPGII with a little Cobol smudged into it.
RPGIV, to me, is RPGIII with a little C smudged into it.

I have done some RPG coding for a S/36.  Basically, I wrote the first
iteration of code in RPGIII, then changed what I had to to make it work on
the 36.

I believe having Cobol skills before using RPG is an asset to the
programmer.  On the first day, you're looking for loop constructs, array
processing constructs, etc.

If you don't believe it, follow a programmer who has never had anything but
RPG into his code.  If he hasn't be conscientious about "keeping up", it can
be kinda nasty.  Reminds me of a self-taught basic programmer.

But, to give my answer to the question, I have not seen such a book.

The opinions expressed here are just that...opinions, and mine, at that.

AS/Resources, Inc.
William A.(Tony) Corbett
IBM Certified Specialist - AS/400 Developer
http://www.asresources.com
corbett@asresources.com
404-784-4737


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