RE: Please vote for Syntax check in /FREE!

["Bartell, Aaron L. (TC)" <ALBartell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<jt>
I
didn't get very far in college, but I got far enough to understand the
concept of how a *statistically random* sample can allow a small sample to
accurately measure the whole.  (You do NOT have a statistically random
sample with these polls, btw.)
</jt>

Most programmers that are concerned about where a language is going get
involved in a community like this.  I could ask my little brother what he
thinks of RPG, but he only took it for one semester in college.  

<jt>
You think procedure overloading is anywhere even CLOSE to a necessity in
**business application** design??   If you took a poll of ALL the RPG coders
(and I mean every last stinking one of us, not the people who frequent these
lists) then making RPG more object-orientated would be SO far behind
improving SEU that it wouldn't EVEN show UP as a choice on the poll!!!
</jt>

Hmmm. . . Have you actually tried some of the easy to use features of
OO/Modular programming in other languages?  They are very nice and yes RPG
could definitely benefit from them.  What kind of applications do you write?
Maybe your particular area of programming doesn't require these new features
- though I find that hard to believe.  

As far as needing more functionality in SEU. . . that's what WDSc is for.
Sure it would be nice to have a server side GUI editor that didn't rely on
Java or my WindowsXP to run, but if we waited for that we wouldn't have a
better editor for quite some time.

<jt>
I'm not gonna be popular with this list, of course, but imo (and I'm
*fairly* certain the opinion of the VAST majority of ALL RPG coders) you
wasted a lotta resources implementing /FREE, before you EVEN thought through
how to effectively syntax-check the stuff.
</jt>

And where do you get your statistics?  Joe Pluta? <VBG>

<jt>
I'm sure it's made ToroLabs very popular with the folks that frequent this
list though, and is part of Software Group's "grand" design to FORCE all
coders to move to Java.
</jt>

Not improving RPG forces people to Java.  

<jt>
I apologize to those on this list, and IBM, who actually believe that
operator-overloading and object-RPG is a necessity for business application
design...  It isn't.
</jt>

Assuming the compiler team doesn't also update SEU, what do you consider
valid, much needed enhancements to RPG?  Just curious.

Aaron Bartell
Citizen of the iSeries Nation ;-)