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

Bob,

>Not sure of your point. ...

>but seriously I don't even
>mention the CF-spec because this small group of Midrange-L's RPG400-L are
>the only ones that know about it. It is my goal to keep it that way. <g>

My point was that I doubted you had thousands of people telling you
they didn't want CF specs (or any optional component for that matter)
added to the language.  And you have pretty much confirmed that is not
the case.

What you evidently were trying to say is that you have had lots of
managers express concern not over CF, but over RPG IV itself because
of lack of skills and availability of programmers who can maintain it
or make effective use of it.

I also readily concede the vast majority of current RPG programmers
don't know RPG IV yet.  And they probably never will.  They don't
follow forums like this, go to any seminars, or even read trade
publications.  They happily code the way they always have, and always
will.  Ignorance is bliss, until somebody else has to maintain it. <g>

I, for one, don't want decisions on what should be added to RPG IV to
be based on these folks.  Let them keep coding in RPG II and RPG III,
where they are in their comfort zone and already know how to use
advanced techniques like using MULT to convert dates in a single
statement!

Regarding managers' concerns, you've already indicated the rate of
adoption appears to be (slowly) increasing.  For better or worse, I
think this is in large part attributable to the (ill-) perceived need
to finish Y2K projects prior to trying RPG IV.  As Dave Shaw correctly
points out, CF is not being added to publicly available versions of
RPG IV "today" anyway, so there will inherently still be a period for
continued ramping of the adoption rate.

For those thousands and thousands of people who already won't allow
RPG IV because of fears over maintainability, adding CF isn't the
obstacle.  As you say, they don't even know about CF.  And if they
aren't even using RPG IV, I don't see why their phobias should be the
basis for limiting the language.

For those of us who do allow use of RPG IV, we've already made the
commitment to use programmers who are willing to learn RPG IV.
Actually, in a sense, this helps by weeding out applicants who have no
desire to learn and grow and who want to continue to do things the
same obstinate way until they retire.

As we both know, learning to use RPG IV syntax when you already know
RPG III syntax is trivial.  What is harder for people to grasp are
ideas like service programs, subprocedures with local or static
variables and return values, implications of the various D-spec
keywords, conditional compilation directives, condition handlers, etc
not to mention things like ILE concepts such as activation groups.

It is hard for me to imagine a shop moving to RPG IV without also
allowing at least some of these more esoteric concepts (to RPG III
programmers).  The new syntax is trivial in comparison, although I am
by no means intending to imply that I think these concepts are hard to
learn.  My point is that using CF vs C does not involve learning new
concepts, only a simple syntax change to concepts they'd already have
to know to code the same thing in a regular C spec.

It is hard (for me) to imagine someone could be capable of learning
and maintaining RPG IV but not be able to at least read the same code
written in CF with *very* minimal training.

That is why I don't buy the argument that it will inhibit the adoption
of RPG IV as we know it "today".  

Also, have you noticed that with each enhanced release of RPG IV, that
more and more of the program gets written using extended factor 2
constructs?  As more BIFs get added and/or your collection of service
programs grows, expressions become an increasingly significant portion
of the calcs.  Even in V3R2 source, it is common for me to have long
sections of code with absolutely no or only an occassional regular
opcode (typically for I/O or date operation, some of which I
encapsulate in service program subprocedures anyway).

I realize that whitespace is important for readability, but IMHO only
using the right-half of the statement does nothing to help this cause.
OTOH, these sections of code already read very much like CF, but
without the added readability of indentation, and with significantly
more expressions requiring line continuation.  Both of these factors,
IMHO, reduce the readability compared to how I envision CF.

Bob, I think it is obvious that neither of us is going to change our
position any more this time then we did when we argued over it prior
to RPG IV's initial release.  

You can continue to beat this horse and say "Neigh! Neigh!" but it
appears Hans & Co already have CF in the plans.  Seems like a good
time to stop to me! <g>

Doug
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