Re: [IBMiOSS] RPG easier/harder to use than other languages?

On 7/5/2017 6:13 PM, Aaron Bartell wrote:

*>The Venn diagram of PASE and ILE pretty much has no overlap.*

Note you can run PASE and ILE in the same IBM i job, so there's that for
overlap. Not as much as you were probably hoping for but I wanted to make
sure everyone knew that. You can learn more here:
https://bitbucket.org/inext/vlang-rpg

In my humble, the power of IBM i is not that it can sequentially run
disparate, incompatible programs in the same job.

The power of IBM i is the seamless interoperability between the various
parts. I can embed SQL in my RPG and I can embed RPG in my SQL - with
very, very little plumbing. I can embed Java in my RPG and RPG in my
Java - again, very little plumbing. I can embed C in my RPG and RPG in
my C. Each can send parameters to the other and get results back.
Directly. Not via an intermediate storage medium like a data area, user
space, scratch file, data queue or anything other than CALL/PARM.

CALL/PARM is immensely powerful. I can build function calls which are
easily, independently testable. Those tests form a suite which gets run
for every change, verifying that the integrity of all the prior work
wasn't affected by the latest mod. Those suites form a living
dictionary of the business functions, the rules, the bounds, the edge
cases that we guarantee are correct.

For me, PASE is like invoking functionality via RPC. It's better than
nothing, but it's not better than CALL/PARM, and it's not equal either.