RE: Sequence error in MR

Why is MR 'old hat'?  Because it has been around since the beginning of
RPG?  If so, does that mean that all other language elements still
hanging around from the beginning are 'old hat' also?  Is new always
better?  Of course not.  Like it or not MR is a part of the language and
may from time to time have a place in a developers toolbox.  It's been 6
years since I wrote my last MR program and today I may use an SQL
solution such as Rob gave an example of if confronted with the same
situation.  That doesn't mean that I will remove MR from consideration
when trying to solve a programming problem.  As for programmers having
to follow behind not knowing MR processing, yes, they should learn the
language.  Who knows, they may even like it. <grin>

Rick

-----Original Message-----
From: G Armour [mailto:garmour400m@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2003 3:12 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Sequence error in MR

--- "M. Lazarus" <mlazarus@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>   MR processing is not understood by many, since it's considered "old
> hat" and is probably not taught much.  But why overlook a powerful
tool?

> Read the chapter on it and understand it!

IMHO, the reason why MR processing is not understood by many is that 99%
of the programmers working today never programmed by wire, on the
original
RPG platform!  I don't "consider" MR to be old hat, it *IS* old hat!
Does
Cozzi even discuss MR in his latest RPG-IV primer?

I understand MR, but I'd have to brush up on the technical details if I
had to debug an MR program.  I suppose that if I regularly maintained MR
programs, I might protest less.  Thankfully, that is not the case.

Probably the best reason to rewrite is that, unlike myself, most
programmers have never seen an MR program.  Pity the poor programmer
who's
never seen MR before and has to maintain/fix such a beast.  Yeah, go
read
up on it in the manual, waste a few hours trying to get a handle on MR,
fix the problem (maybe; how many others will get pulled into the morass
before it's over?), and forget what you just learned about MR cuz you'll
never see it again.

That should be an important consideration, unless one is looking for job
security.