Re: Using STATIC

Tom Daly wrote:
> This thread has been really interesting.
>
> So is there OO in RPG's future, Hans?

There are two ways to answer this question:

1) You can already use Java objects today within RPG programs.  So,
objects are already in RPG's present.

2) Should we turn RPG into an OO language, just like C was turned
into C++?  As far as I'm concerned, *NO WAY*.  I've said it before,
(and I've at least hinted at it previously in this thread,) that if
you want to do OO programming, you should use an OO language.  In my
opinion, an OO RPG could never be as good an OO language as most of
the current alternatives.  If we wanted to make RPG into a good OO
language, we'd simply end up with an *incompatible* language that
would largely duplicate existing OO languages anyways.

This is strictly my opinion (and should not be considered to
represent the opinion of anyone else in this company), but if you
currently don't know anything about OO, the best place to start is
to learn the language Python.  It's an easy language to learn and
has a nice object model that excludes a lot of the complexities of
other OO languages.  Once you get the hang of doing OO in Python,
you could then build on that experience to move on to other more
common OO languages like Java or (brrr) C++.  (Java and C++ may be
more popular and more complex than Python, but they're not
necessarily more powerful.  And some pundits claim 10X productivity
rates just by using Python.)

Oh yeah, one more thing while I'm on the soapbox:  If you want to
learn OO, try to start out right and learn proper OO design.  You
can find a good gentle introduction to the concept of "design
patterns" in the book "Design Patterns Explained", by Allan
Shalloway and James Trott (ISBN 0201715945).

Cheers!  Hans