RE: Please vote for Syntax check in /FREE! -- RPG400-L

| -----Original Message-----
| [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Hans Boldt
| Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 9:13 AM

First off, thank you for taking the time to read this post which I (for
obvious reasons) don't take for granted.  And thanks for further time to
reply.

| jt wrote:

| Well, the current discussion is about method (or procedure or
| function) name overloading, not operator overloading, as someone
| else pointed out.

Yes, and I already acknowledged my error in my reply to John Taylor.

|
| OO languages with method name overloading:
| C++, Java, C#, Ada 95.
|
| OO languages without method name overloading:
| Eiffel, Smalltalk, Ruby, Perl 5, Python, Object Rexx, Modula 3.

Interesting.

| Is method name overloading necessary for OO? No.

This, to me, in not central to the issue.

| Does RPG need to become OO? No. Definitely no.

| Would procedure name overloading be useful to RPG programmers? Quite
| possibly,

Perhaps you can supply an actual example from a typical Business
Application, because Buck and Joel Cochran did not manage to come with any.
All they showed was that they would prefer to wait for a new feature, rather
than implement the examples they gave in currently available technology.
Plus some of their specific examples (as others in addition to myself have
pointed out) would not even WORK.  And the examples showed, rather, the
STRENGTH of procedures instead of the the value of procedure overloading.

| and we here in RPG development are not averse to the idea.

Why not?

| And as far as I'm concerned, it would not bring you any closer to OO
| in the language.

Seems like splitting hairs.  I'm not good with the lingo, admittedly.  I've
got old Meyer's and Booch books here I've skimmed, at best, but will study
them more if it would help.  But I believe it would be more practical to
discuss this in simple terms anyway:  What helps get custom Biz Apps
developed, and what gets in the way.

I and a some other posters have some no small experience in this regard,
which I believe the RPG development team lacks.  I would be surprised to
learn (pleasantly surprised, 'course) if there is much RPG app development
experience on the team.  But I believe there are a fair number of very vocal
posters who don't have a real good idea of what RPG even CAN do currently,
but who like to believe they have a real GOOD idea of where RPG just HAS-ta
be headed.

Everybody falls into this latter category, to some extent.  But some more
than others.


| OO is about a heck of a lot more than crufty,
| hard-to-learn, or fancy syntax.

I would add that RPGIII isn't/wasn't about a second-rate languange that's
fit for simpleton's, at best.

| Regarding Greenspun's opinions on Java, read them carefully please.

I did.  Skimmed most-a the comments, but have wanted to revisit them anyway.

| A google turned up this blog entry that I thought was interesting:
| <http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2003/09/20#a1762> (I don't know
| if that was the one you were referring to.)

This was the link I posted.  (I made QUITE a few different points in my
various post, and the majority were not addressed because of that, I
assume.)

| Basically, he is echoing
| what many others have said, that using a scripting language provides
| many productivity advantages over Java.

My recollection was that he also, (I believe from actual experience in his
class) found that C? and VB coders accomplished same task in much less time,
which are not scripting languanges.

| Other commentators say
| pretty much the same thing, with some saying that programming in
| Python (to pick one particular alternative language) offers a 5-10
| times productivity advantage.

I've listened to what "they" say for 2 1/2 decades now.  Few offer metrics.
Most offer, what Don Park (I think, couldn't find link) of MS calls,
Software Engineering by anecdote.  I like Tom DeMarco's methodology of
videotaping and measuring results and running "code wars" and such.  I've
seen the this-technology and the that-technology promise these gains TOO
many times.

However, what I've read and what I've seen and what Tom DeMarco measured
(back in late 70s, iirc, and I don't know if he's still doin this kind-a
stuff, or who is) was that the most effective programmers offer productivity
of 5-10 times the "average" programmer.  So I can't help but wonder how
much-a the "this-technology offers a 5-10 times productive advantage" isn't
explained by the phenomena.

| (BTW, note that most of these scripting languages fall into the
| category of OO languages *without* method name overloading.)

Again, then I wonder why this doesn't call into question the efficacy of
procedure name overloading.  (Which, I noticed, a lotta posters have loudly
claimed is REQUIRED for them to do their job properly.)


| Anyways, perhaps you could remind me which specific article by
| Greenspun you were referring to? In what I've read by him so far, I
| don't see any relevance to RPG.

(See above.)  I believe it calls into question some-a the maxims that a
lotta people that post here live by.

And contrary to what you posted, Hans, an awful lotta the points I raised
were NOT addressed, yesterday.. and one in particular:  I would guestimate
that there are some half-a-million, mebbe a million RPG coders.  Just a
swag, but somewhere in the vicinity of the right order-of-magnitude...  Now
there are how many on this list??  On this poll, the highest vote-getter
(which you claim was by ballot-stuffing) was.. what?...  39 or so???  I
posited that you don't have a statistically random sample, and the data you
are collecting is misleading, Hans, and I don't actually recall ANYbody
saying that you're sampling DOES reflect the needs of the RPG community.  I
sure DO recall many saying that I don't have a clue, but don't recall
anybody posting any facts that said this method of determining the course of
the language was unbiased, a-tall.  It was just taken as a given that
anybody who SHOULD have ANY say in the course of the RPG languange would
already be on this list, (or one similar).

And don't recall if I posted or not, but he (and/or she) that determines
which items get to be voted on has already determined the outcome, for the
most part, "right from the git-go", right?

And, I believe, that largely explains how RPG gets a "=+" operator, which I
feel pretty safe in saying most RPG coders would say is "crufty,
hard-to-learn, or fancy syntax", yet the requirement for a syntax-checker
gets somehow overlooked.  (And yes, I use the term "hard-to-learn" loosely,
but in comparison to "ADD  1  X" which is self-explanatory, ie intuitive,
not all THAT loosely.)


Lastly, I'm not suggesting compiler-development by voting, btw, because I
have some experience developing software.  It's tricky business determine
the sometimes-subtle difference between what ANY user needs, and what they
say they need...  I know that much.

Thanks for time, to those who bothered.