RE: Re[3]: Bitwise ops in RPG

["Richard Jackson" <richardjackson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

If allowed to germinate, this thread could easily become a discussion of
"closed" versus "open" systems.

Considering the tenuous market position that the AS/400 is in, IBM will be
thinking about what to change to improve market share - something to compete
more effectively with Unix-like platforms that also avoids being squished by
the 390 people.

For the most part, languages don't sell computers and profits come from
sales.  However, a large range of languages support developer creativity and
application variety and those factors do sell systems.  Finally, although
those factors do sell systems, perhaps they will contribute to sales in the
core marketplace for the AS/400.

W-code is the interface to the optimizing code generator back end for IBM
compilers.  I believe that it is the only way to create an ILE program at
this time but it is not the only way to create a program on the AS/400.  I
think that the PRM is still there and you can feed it with MI.  Before you
think very hard about this, I will concede that you really want W-code but
MI is not completely useless for your purposes - you just have to do a lot
of run-time development work for yourself.

I believe that there is another issue with w-code - it is used all over the
IBM product line.  Therefore, if you get the interface information for
AS/400, you can also use the same compiler (if you port it) on other IBM
platforms.  If this very old recollection is true, that partly justifies the
cost for the interface information.

Richard Jackson
Richard Jackson and Associates Ltd.
IBM Business Partner
mailto:richardjackson@richardjackson.net
http://www.richardjacksonltd.com
Telephone: 1 (303) 808-8058


-|-----Original Message-----
-|From: owner-rpg400-l@midrange.com [mailto:owner-rpg400-l@midrange.com]On
-|Behalf Of Eric N. Wilson
-|Sent: Friday, November 17, 2000 1:51 PM
-|To: boldt@ca.ibm.com
-|Subject: Re[3]: Bitwise ops in RPG
-|
-|
-|Hello boldt,
-|
-|Friday, November 17, 2000, 5:15:45 AM, you wrote:
-|
-|> I believe the W-Code documentation is available as a PRPQ, but
-|> the licence fees limit its availability to serious developers
-|> only.  And when I say "serious", I really mean "SERIOUS".  It's
-|> a technology intended only for compilers and not for user
-|> programs written in "W-Code".
-|
-|Thanks Hans, it is too bad that it is so expensive... I would love to
-|see an Object Pascal implementation on the AS/400 along with some of
-|my other favorite pet languages (LISP, Prolog, etc... I know that I am
-|pushing the limits of syntax by calling either one of those a compiler
-|:-) Perhaps IBM in it's new sense of openness could release this as,
-|dare I hope, freely available material so that more languages could
-|become available on the AS/400. Nah that would make too much sense :-)
-|
-|You say that it looks a lot like 8086 ASM, I would hope that it would
-|look more like 68x00 ASM, which always made a ton more sense to me!
-|Seeing as W-Code is geared toward an abstract virtual machine and can
-|handle low level language constructs with aplomb I do not see why a
-|Object Pascal compiler that emitted W-Code would not be a great
-|idea... I would assume that W-Code would be a extremely thin layer
-|over the PowerPC instruction set.
-|
-|Without getting you in trouble, does it support object oriented
-|features such as multiple method signatures, *this (to use C++
-|nomenclature), and inheritence? Or is that something one would need to
-|roll on their own? Is the language syntax "extensible" like a
-|macro-assembler or even better like Forth? :-)
-|
-|Ok that is probably more than enough about this non-RPG topic. Oh I
-|would really prefer the AND, NOT, XOR, OR bitwise operations rather
-|than bifs because of the need many times to AND multiple bit masks
-|together to come up with the final bit mask. (I like to do as many
-|things that are logically related in one line as possible and let the
-|compiler manage work variables for me :-)
-|
-|Thanks
-|Eric
-|
-|
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