Re: Cycle Processing vs. Doing it my way

[Martin Rowe <martin@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 2001-12-08 at 20:10, jpcarr@tredegar.com wrote:
>
[snip]
>
> Jon
>
> I agree with your reasoning about the audince knowledge level being a
> factor.
>
> "... Automatically eliminate a large group of programmers from being able
> to
> simply grasp the intent...."
>
>
> That being said,   It floors me that these same people may be the ones that
> think that this type of thing..
>
>
> lavrec -f a -i P -d 1 -q 100 -R l -c 2 -s -r 44100 -a 16 -v 2 svcd.avi
>
>
> Is easier to grasp than Total time, Detail time.

Now that hurts ;-) Guilty as charged... As it happens I did understand
the cycle (in a limited fashion) when I was first trained in RPG on a
S/38 (in '90) but was told that it was rarely used. In the event, the
first production program I had to maintain after my training was a
MAPICS pick list routine that required a completely different printout
from the one it was producing at the time. It actually took me a day
*blush* to realise it was a logic cycle program :( I had to bend it
quite a bit (approved by more experienced staff) to get it to do what
was required, and have had a dislike of cyle programs since.

I *have* written a few of them since (with a 'few' being defined as
fingers on one hand) but only for processing source members & the like.
I think my beef is that it's doing things behind my back. I like clear,
concise code that's easy to follow, and easy to maintain. I *hate*
indicators too, for that reason, as I feel they obscure logic, even if
they are convienient. About the only ones we have at our site are a
handful an ex S/34 programmer wrote in his short stay with us, and
no-one likes working on them :(

Aside: As for lavrec, I just use the GUI instead, as I'd still need to
refer to the man page to work out what options I needed ;-) (don't use
it often enough) Linux is improving though, as many commands use long
options, like --all as an alternative to -a, or --human-readable for -h
- easier to read, just more to type (examples from 'ls' - which even
QShell has). If I'm putting them in a script, the long options are
better for self documenting what's going on, much like fully prompted
commands in CL.

> Is the above code easier to understand than matching records?

In my case, yes :)

> John Carr

Regards, Martin
--
martin@dbg400.net  jamaro@firstlinux.net  http://www.dbg400.net
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