Re: Development Standards

[PaulMmn <PaulMmn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I take issue with your comments that the style of a 'cycle' program 
is significantly different from 'linear' programs.

In every 'linear' program you create your own 'cycle'-- whether it's 
a do-while or a do-until, you're telling your program to loop until a 
certain condition occurs.

In a 'cycle' program the logic of the loop assumes you're going to be 
processing a series of transactions, probably read from a file.  So 
the cycle just hands you the input records one-at-a-time.  Then your 
logic does something with them.

As far as being harder to read and more difficult to maintain-- that 
depends on the programmer, and whether the programmer used 'spaghetti 
bowl' logic.  I'm sure there are just as many hard-to-read linear 
programs as there are hard-to-read cycle programs!

In a linear program certain blocks of code are conditioned by the 
data being read-- is this an order header or a detail line?  You can 
use the same logic in a cycle program.  You can use subroutines.  You 
can chain and print on-demand.

Monoliths are what they are-- it's the programmer that builds them! 
Deciding what goes in a single program is what the 
programmer/developer's responsibility.

I grant you, that you don't have the advantages of service programs 
(although you can use a call, with its extra overhead).

--Paul E Musselman
PaulMmn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

.



At 12:23 PM +0000 12/11/16, Joni V. wrote:
> As a young one, the problem I have with cycle programs is not that I 
> don't understand them or can't use them.
>
> - They lead to monolithic programs
>
> - Are harder to read
>
> - More difficult to maintain
>
> - Blocks the use of newer features
>
> - The style of a cycle program is significantly different from 
> linear programs.
>
>
> So taking the arguments above into account, our more experienced / 
> older technical experts agreed to disallow them in our coding 
> standards.
>
> I have seen one new cycle program in the last four years, it was a 
> one-shot program for a migration of the database where almost all 
> records from a file had to be updated. I have to admit it was very 
> performant.
>
> Joni