RE: What the compiler does, or not?

["Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: Hans Boldt
>
> If you want to nit-pick, call me a "programming language designer".

I don't want to nit-pick.  And you are not designing RPG, you are
maintaining it.  Enhancing to be sure, but maintaining it nonetheless.  You
are its caretaker, and you are absolutely, incontrovertibly beholden to the
mass of legacy programmers who use the language that you have been entrusted
with.  Bjourne Stroustrop you are not.


> Sure, perhaps we are forcing some notion of "proper programming on
> thousands of RPG programmers".

Please do me the courtesy of quoting in context.  Or perhaps there is no
difference in your mind between "your idea of proper programming" and
"proper programming".  That may well be because that is the crux of the
entire issue.


> The main point of free-form calcs is to improve the clarity of your
> programming.

Hans, thanks, but I really don't need you to clarify my programming.  I have
written hundreds of application programs in use in hundreds of sites around
the world.  My code is scrutinized on a daily basis by thousands of end
users, and it's perfectly clear.  Clearer than yours, I think.  I wouldn't
want you in my shop making my code clear when your idea of clarity is this:

   x = %editc(y:'4')

That is not clear to anybody who doesn't understand the edit codes of RPG as
well as the syntax of RPG BIF calls.  They have to at the very least use a
reference manual to identify the exact meaning of the cryptic '4'.

Seriously, I don't want you changing our language.  Enhance it, fine, but
don't make it "clear", please.  If you want to "design" your own language,
do an open source project or something.  Let us working stiffs be.

Joe