Re: Free Form RPG Opinions Wanted -- RPG400-L

Joe Pluta wrote:

Can you write an ERP system in Python in three lines, Hans?  Write an MRP
generation.  Write a finite forward scheduler.  Write any of those things,
and I'll agree with you about Python.  But see, you said it yourself, Python
has a great class library - that is, other people's code.  It's not the
language you rave about, it's the amount of pre-written code you can call.
But if the code ain't there, you can't do it. ...

Why not use code that's already written if it's available? After all, one of the best attributes a programmer can have is laziness, eh? Why the urge to write everything yourself? Is code you write yourself somehow "better" than pre-written code available in an API, in a class or function library, or in an open source or commercial service program? Even if you could write code that's somehow better for your application, using existing code (if available) can help you implement a solution much faster. That's true in *any* language, and in any operating system.

An ERP system in Python? Why not? Likewise, would you implement an HTTP server in RPG? Or Space Shuttle mission design applications in RPG? Or CGI (that is computer graphics) applications in RPG? Or project tracking applications in RPG? Or pharmaceutical identification applications in RPG? That's a small sample of the types of applications in use written in Python. It's even being used by some groups in IBM! (Actually, for the last RPG enhancement survey, I used a Python program to summarize the results.)

I agree that Python isn't quite up to commercial applications standards, if only because the existing language and class libraries don't properly handle decimal data. But that's still not stopping some people from developing ERP apps in Python.

Of course that doesn't help you if you're dealing with existing code written in some specific language. All the new language features and all the new languages and tools don't help much at in that arena. But that's true everywhere, and not just in the RPG world with the /FREE debate. If your existing application is written in RPG, other languages don't help much, and vice versa.

You want to make RPG programming easier, fine.  Just do it fairly and
evenly.  Removing the MOVE instruction is neither.  But then again, I'm
going to do something you neglected to do... I'm going to ask people if they
like the MOVE, and how it affects their planned adoption of free-form RPG.
I'll let you know what I find out.

How many times must you be told before you understand: The MOVE opcode is not disappearing. If you want to continue using it, fine by me. If people put off moving to free-form because it doesn't support MOVE, then that's okay too, as far as I'm concerned. The choice is there, and you can choose to take it or not.

The bottom line is this: Free-form calcs were added to the language to help programmers write *new* applications. If nothing else, it is a statement that we in IBM fully expect that RPG will indeed still be used for new applications in the future, programmed using more modern standards.

Cheers! Hans