RE: the hoopla over free-form code (was GOTO)

Hmm...

I learned the basics of programming while working in a McDonald's when I was
18.  I got to take on various roles including "Shake Man," "Bun Man," "Fry
Man," and "Grill Man." (There were no women working at McDonald's in those
days.)  Each of these roles required doing the same limited set of tasks
over and over again.  Having nothing better to do, I worked very hard at
optimizing each one.  I got real fast on the grill. <g>  I guess I could go
back to it, but I dunno, the newest thing on the menu when I was there was
the Filet o' Fish.  There'd be pretty long learning curve.


-----Original Message-----
From: Eric DeLong [mailto:Eric.DeLong@pmsi-services.com]
Sent: Monday, November 06, 2000 12:39 PM
To: "RPG400-L@midrange.com" 
Subject: RE: the hoopla over free-form code (was GOTO)


     LOL! 
     
     ***NEWS FLASH*** 
     
     McDonalds has announced the development of RPG for Java today in 
     response to IBM's announcement that all RPG programmers should 
     learn Java or become burger flippers. "McDonalds has no use for 
     these legions of RPG programmers", so in an effort to preserve 
     their labor structure, they have developed RPGfree/Java. 
     "Hopefully, this will satisfy both IBM and the RPG developers. This 
     product has been developed by a team of sixteen year old 
     burger-flippers in an attempt to protect their futures within the 
     McDonalds organization." 
     
     Critics of this project note that this version of RPG is not 
     backward compatible with IBM's version of free format RPG, due to 
     the lack of statement terminators and the support of the GOTO 
     statement. All inquiries should be addressed to Billy, lead 
     developer and shift-leader, McDonalds #3514. 
     
     <laying low> 
     eric.delong@pmsi-services.com 


______________________________ Reply Separator
_________________________________ 
Subject: Re: the hoopla over free-form code (was GOTO) 
Author:  "L. S. Russell" <SMTP:leslier@datrek.com> at EXCHANGE 
Date:    11/6/00 1:43 PM 


I hate to poke into this discussion but I think maybe (hopefully) the 
folks at IBM are doing something smart here. 
     
Why do anything at all to RPG, specifically, why make it a free form 
language? 
It works very well as is. 
     
Could it be that the IBMer's are planning to port RPG to the other 
platforms where UDB is available? 
If that was the next step then everything would make sense, I mean the 
name change and everything. 
     
I have never written a lexical analyzer, but I would think that code 
written in the free format RPG could be very easily proted to C++ or 
Java and vice versa. 
     
A move like this on IBM's part would mean that us RPG dinosaurs could 
last through the next ice age. 
I am not saying it will happen, I don't have that much faith in IBM, but 
I am saying that it would be cool if it did happen. 
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