Re: Development Standards

[John Yeung <gallium.arsenide@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Dec 9, 2016 at 2:19 PM, James H. H. Lampert
<jamesl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> If you're writing an RPG program that needs (1) to process every record in a
> file, or (2) needs an event loop, let it take a ride on The Cycle.

I can get behind that. The cycle is kind of controversial; but to me,
using it where applicable is one way to play to RPG's inherent
strengths.

> Use the language that is (of those available) the best suited for the
> program (or module) to be written, and use its strengths.

First, let me say I noticed and appreciated the qualifiers that were
included there. You normally just see "use the best tool for the job"
(or its even worse brother, "use the right tool for the job", as if
every job has exactly one right tool). I mean, it sounds nice, and
yeah, if you've literally got a hammer and a screwdriver and some
nails and some screws, it's pretty clear how you would apply this
advice.

But programming languages are very complex tools indeed, and
real-world problems are all kinds of crazy shapes and sizes, and they
interact with each other, sometimes in unpredictable ways. It's hard
to measure languages against each other definitively enough to come up
with "best", even for fairly isolated problems. And then you have to
factor in who is wielding those tools. And there is a certain value to
only having a very small number of programming languages in use, even
if you have many available to you. Whether this outweighs the
advantages of having a richer toolset is hard to say.

I don't think I could ever begrudge an IBM i shop for using RPG as its
official "language for everything" even if I personally don't consider
it the best language for a large chunk of that shop's problems.

John Y.