Re: What good is ILE?

W.

I believe I over-reacted - I'm so used to the open nature of this list, that not seeing your name took me aback

Your questions have led me to look again at this, and to find that it is a difficult question to nail down.

As I mentioned in another reply here, for me there is a simplicity in using service programs for functions used across multiple programs and/or applications. A similar benefit can be gained, as you suggest, with multiple single programs.

I have seen where re-use is accomplished with /copy - both prototypes and calc specs. This would not have the benefit of smaller size - and it seems that individual programs recompiled in ILE are not necessarily smaller - again, this benefit might come best when there's a single service program with procedures called from a lot of programs that no longer duplicate that code in each of them.

I consider service programs to be similar in function to DLLs in Windows and some kind of library thing in Linux - I forget. The practice is well-accepted there, and I've adopted that attitude, I guess.

Regards and apologies for my peevishness!
Vern

On 2/3/2013 10:35 PM, w 4038 wrote:

Hi VernThank you for your reply. Also, thank you for your replies to the multitude of questions that have been posted to these forums over the years. I have learned a lot from the wise council that you and others freely give.
(Public display of sincere gratitude is now over, so I'll get back to the business at hand.) What good is ILE?ILE doesn't enforce structured and modular programming. And I was doing that before ILE. I was taught structured technique in universtiy back in the 80's and the professors enforced it. I'd fail assignments if they ever found a GOTO! As soon as I got a job, I kept up those good techniques. (Plus, I am far too lazy to write the same piece of code twice.) You are correct that I intentionally mentioned all those terms as a type of "FUD". But that was the point. All that "FUD" (or more complexity as I prefer to call it) and I still don't see any great benefit. You wrote that ILE gives a smaller object size. Is that a great benefit? Perhaps it was in the 80's, but is that still true today? I didn't realize that compiling CL as ILE improves performance. So I concede, that could be a benefit. How much does it improve performance though? Enough to justify more
complicated programs and compiles? I don't know, but I am asking. Which brings me to the question of anonymity. I apologize for that. I don't have the confidence that others have and so I prefer not to have my name public. I do hope you'll still consider my questions valid though.Thank you
> Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2013 21:59:42 -0600

From: vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: What good is ILE?

I don't see your name, so this essentially anonymous -but I'll mention
one thing

Maintenance. How many places do you have the same code in many of them?
Of course, we shouldn't do that, but we probably do. When a change is
needed, there is just one place - the service program - that needs changing.

Now YMMV - depends on a number of things, one of which I hinted at above.

The other answers to this have been around the world many times -
anything related to more structured, modular programming techniques,
applies to this question.

You mention all these "binding" things - I find that it is a bit of FUD
just to list them. Once you've set up bindery language, you're done, and
additions are easy to do. Statid vs dynamic vs by reference - you
basically choose one, and you're done again.

Another one? Object size.

Another one? Just compiling CL programs as ILE gives you a great
performance boost with almost no effort - great ROI. Why NOT take the
low-hanging fruit?

Others will have more to add.

<not-letting-you-know-this-is-vern>

:)

On 2/3/2013 7:17 PM, w 4038 wrote:

What good is ILE??
Before ILE, if you needed to call program B from program A, a simple CALL statement did the job.
All you had to worry about was the library list and it was up to you to pass parameters correctly.
Then IBM introduced ILE.
Now you can worry about, Activation Groups,Binding Directories, Binder Language, subprocedures, service programs, Static Binding, Dynamic Binding, Bind by Reference and some I can't recall right now.
Sure, it's nice that the compile checks to ensure that passed parameters match, but what other benefits are there? The benefit isn't speed. Newer hardware resolves that.
All the complexity just increases the potential for coding errors.
So I ask great minds of the Midrange List, what good is ILE?

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