RE: Cycle Processing vs. Doing it my way

["York, Albert" <albert.york@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I think we need to put this in perspective. The cycle is only useful for
programs that read a file from top to bottom and have level breaks. This
narrows the number of programs down considerably. Usually it's report
programs..

Now there is nothing magic about the cycle. It reads a record, compares the
current value of certain fields to the value in the last record, and sets on
indicators when they change. All of should be able to write a program that
does that..

I have used the cycle for many years and am very familiar with it. However,
I don't use it any more because too many people don't understand it.
Therefore I code the cycle logic myself. As I said, it's not rocket science
so it doesn't take me that much longer than using the RPG cycle. And I don't
have to worry about trying to explain to the maintenance programmer du jour
what I'm doing. It's all in the code.

We can say that anybody who uses RPG should know the cycle, but the fact is,
they don't

Finally, the only thing that using the cycle buys you is being able to
create a program faster. This should not be the only goal in writing a
program that will be used in production. When you consider the actual number
of programs where it could be used, and the relatively small difference in
coding time, it doesn't seem like a big deal to me to "roll your own".

Albert York