On Tue, Aug 20, 2019 at 1:43 PM <dlclark@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I disagree. The issue is interoperability. Yeah, those other
languages play *very* well with themselves but do *not* play well with
others. We knew that and *that* is the issue. It is not a question of
whether there are *ways* to work around the issues. It is the fact that
those issues exist.
The mindset I'm talking about is the difference between
"Well, we can't do it my way, so we'll have to find some other way."
versus
"What ways do we have? Great, let's use one of them."
I fully agree that in some circumstances, with some requirements, some
ways will not be as desirable as other ways.
The trick is to leverage each thing for what it is.
Rexx is an objectively *bad* language to use when you want to
implement a procedure which will be used as a function in RPG. I think
we agree on that.
My objection to characterizing Rexx as having an interoperability
problem is that *in the context of this thread* Rexx was brought up as
a way to take the place of CL, where you want something that can do
what CL does, but also works with SQL more easily than CL does.
If the CLP being built has to return parameters to some caller (and it
has to use the CALL/PARM mechanism that *PGM objects use), then I'll
grant it's not a good candidate for being replaced by a Rexx program.
But if returning parameters isn't a requirement, then it very much
*is* a good candidate for being replaced by a Rexx program. OP never
said whether this was a requirement or not.
My message wasn't that Rexx can be used everywhere that a CLP can, if
only you have the right mindset. Not at all. My message was that Rexx
is *great* for scripting, and with the right mindset, it can pay
dividends. It's severely underused for things like job schedule
entries or command processing programs, for example.
More than anything else, I think I'm just trying to fight against the
mindset that everything has to be written in CL or RPG, and by
extension, that information passing has to happen in the way that CLPs
and RPG programs pass parameters. I think a lot of people are too
quick to say "but I can't get parameters out, so never mind" when
actually, depending on the situation, maybe an *even better* idea is
to turn what they already have upside-down. It's not always going to
work out that upside-down is better, I fully understand that, but I
think people are missing a lot of opportunities.
John Y.
midrange.com
