Re: Standards and Egos (was RE: ILE Propaganda) -- RPG400-L

No, Peter, you are supposed to use standards so as not to end up in that
situation!

But,  you could adopt a standard for new development, i.e.. what language
new modifications were to be written in. But only if you could enforce that
standard down the line.

I know of a company which markets their software package in 19 countries. It
has thousands of objects. The standards are adhered to in all the different
countries, so the US division has hired developers from the other divisions
(not necessarily making the other divisions happy) but when the developer
shows up, he can be productive right away even in US specific modifications
(of which there are _many_).

But what is a "trivial" standard? I think I saw mentioned in one post that
which indicator to use for the help key was one. I don't think so. By
standardizing what indicators to use for help, and what ones are free for
temporary use, etc. it keeps programmers from having to scan each program to
find those things. Also, if a programmer writes a routine that has to be
implemented in several programs, it keeps it from stepping on other people's
code.

If you wanted to adopt standards, you'd have to make a (long) plan for
implementing them. Of course, that would only work if you could enforce them
down the line, because otherwise all those programmers that "know better"
than you will just ignore them.

----- Original Message -----
From: <Peter.Colpaert@honda-eu.com>
To: <RPG400-L@midrange.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2001 12:38 AM
Subject: RE: Standards and Egos (was RE: ILE Propaganda)


>
>
> Trivial decisions...
>
> I've heard of them, but that was a long time ago.
>
> I have tried implementing a 'standard' in the environment where I work
now, but
> that's nearly impossible, since the application is used in 10 different
> countries, each with their own local modifications.
>
> Moreover, the application itself (if you can call it an application, I
like to
> refer to it as the junkyard) consists of RPG II programs in S36 procedures
> (yuck), RPG 3 programs with cycle logic, internally described files, level
> breaks and all that nice stuff, RPG/400 programs with externally described
> everything (except printer files of course, who needs external printer
files?)
> and even some ILE-esque programs written with an RPG 4 skeleton nobody
> understands since the programmer who pronounced it 'the new standard' was
fired.
>
> Even something as trivial as whether or not the Enter key is used to
proceed to
> the next screen is not the same in every program.
>
> So how do they expect us to use standards in such an environment?
>
> Just my two Euro-cents.
>
> Peter Colpaert
> Analyst-Programmer
> Honda Europe NV
> Langerbruggestraat 104
> B-9000 Gent (Belgium)
>
> Peter.Colpaert@honda-eu.com
> ----------
> A computer scientist is someone who, when told to 'Go to Hell', sees the
'go
> to', rather than the destination, as harmful.
>

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