Re: RPG IV and CF-spec "keep it IBM"

[dhandy@xxxxxxxxxxx (Douglas Handy)]

Buck,

>I think the beef is that Toronto is spending time on CF-specs rather than
>other things.
>
>That's where I agree with the "Don't work on CF-specs" posters.  If there
>are other, more important items to work on, hit those first.  Then do the
>CF-specs.  

Refer to my response to Chris.  

>I am having a difficult time understanding the argument that "it's no longer
>RPG."  

I never said that.

>   As far as I'm
>    concerned, Toronto should have made RPG IV
>    incompatible with RPG/400.  

I have to disagree with you here.  Getting people to try RPG IV seems
hard enough when you can convert it easily.  If existing code couldn't
coexist nicely with RPG IV and if there was any incompatability when
converting legacy code, it would be a harder sell to convince mgmt.

>Certainly, the addition of CF-specs won't make it as self-extendable as C 
>    (or even the much maligned CL!)  I don't get how adding
>    CF-specs makes the language "less RPG"

RPG became extendable with V3R2/V3R6 when they gave us sub-procedures.
Yeah!!  But without variant data types and full operational descriptor
support (which BTW is *not* Toronto's fault), we don't have the
ability to do some of the extensions we could otherwise.

CF will have no affect on the extendability of RPG IV.  And I agree,
it will not make the language "less RPG".

Doug
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