RE: CF - One last question -- RPG400-L



John wrote:
>Thankyou Buck,
>You captured the exact flavor of my comments/concerns.
>As for keywords,  The other languages mentioned "Grew up"  that way,
>We are talking about taking a 90degree turn  in this language
>when we say "Starting tomorrow the following words are keywords".
>
>This CF thing is obviously "Going in",  and   I still think that we don't
>know
>what the Real impact to our coding will be.  Nor do we know all the
>ramifications that it will have.
>
>I believe that Barb, George, Hans, will do their best giving us what they
>think we
>want/need,  but over the last 10 years I have found,  that sometimes what
>they
>think they hear we wanted,   is not what we sometimes think we said.
>
>I'm just always  cautious about a change this big.
>They only ONE chance to get it right.
>Once it goes in,   IT AIN'T NEVER COMING OUT.

Hi John!  We do appreciate your concern.  This is certainly one of
the more controversial things we've done in a long, long time.
Even V3R1 of ILE RPG wasn't this controversial, IMHO!  That's why
we've been much more open about this, asking for public input on at
least two separate issues regarding the design.  My gut feeling now
is that there will be no further "tweaks" to the function (other
than bug fixes) and that what we have now is what will ship.
Several times now, I expressed the desire to see the discussion die
down, only to bring on more through my own questions.  Hopefully,
this is it now!

So far, this has been an interesting experience, using the internet
to help us nail down the design of a new function.  In the past,
we've had to rely on the advice of a relatively small number of RPG
users, often in face-to-face meetings.  (For example, Charlie
encouraged us to beef up support for overlay subfields and Bob
shamed us into allowing numeric on %CHAR.)

But now, we can reach many more.  Those RPG users with internet
access may not totally represent a true cross-section of all RPG
users, but this group probably best represents those who are most
interested in the leading edge stuff.  As I believe you know, I'm
a big fan of "brainstorming".  My colleagues here know that I often
suggest "wild and crazy" ideas, which sometimes result in ideas
worth pursuing.  As a result of discussions on this mailing list,
I've added at least half a dozen items to our proposed enhancements
list, most of which will probably appear on our next poll.  And
some ideas brought up in this mailing list have already made their
way into the compiler.

Cheers!  Hans

Hans Boldt, ILE RPG Development, IBM Toronto Lab, boldt@ca.ibm.com


+---
| This is the RPG/400 Mailing List!
| To submit a new message, send your mail to RPG400-L@midrange.com.
| To subscribe to this list send email to RPG400-L-SUB@midrange.com.
| To unsubscribe from this list send email to RPG400-L-UNSUB@midrange.com.
| Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: david@midrange.com
+---