RE: Benefits of Sub-procedures -- RPG400-L

Some points I would disagree with, and some points /very/ well-taken.

Imv, particularly these:

| This is sort of a hot button for me...  There's ever more pressure being
| placed on us to produce the highest quality software, with the richest
| feature-set, and snazziest interfaces.  Make it perfect and idiot-proof
| and
| stable and portable.  But write it all in RPG...


| Can her reaction be a surprise? He's gone and suddenly she has a
| non-useful
| application and bosses breathing down her neck.

And, as a manager, I've never been in this manager's shoes.  So I agree that
she SHOULD-a reviewed the code up front, and told that programmer off to
begin with.  In my experience, EVERYbody wants to dictate shop standards,
but few wanna live with the consequences 5 years later.  (Average stay of a
coder has gone UP to 2 years?!?)  I agree the manager had alternatives, but
then I wasn't in her shoes.

But as a contractor, as I said in my reply to Jon Paris last night (which
haven't seen show up), I've seen it a lot and it ain't no fun.

One of the choices top managers hafta face (or, I should say, CAN face) is
do they have the payroll to hire the TOP dollar for TOP talent, and is that
talent available in the market, or off-shore.  In order to spend (what
amounts to a lotta extra time, in many cases) developing in the lastest
wizz-bang techniques, when it's not really clear which are the wizz-bangs
and which are the bangs-for-a-buck types of techniques.

And if you have a manager/executive who is doing ANY coding, you almost
certainly have a small shop without a lotta payroll budget, let alone
training budget.  (Which is not synonomous to backwards shop run by morons,
though it appears similar in some ways).



Uhhhhhh... Rob.

"You regret"...???  And where would you be now if you had a poop-pot full of
applications coded in UIM, better off or worse off...?

Bob, I've scoured the Net a little, and most-a the comments I've seen the
past couple years have been about what the replacement of HTML should look
like.  HTML4, HTML-strict, XML, RSS, RDF???  These things are a long ways
from being worked out, but the consensus sure seems to be that HTML is
crappy.

Booth, your a contractor, right?, and probably value your independence.  It
was probably not "the man" who was breathing down her neck, but her users...
Just guessing, 'course, just as I'm guessing you have a keen appreciation
for the reality that an independent contractor has to be (in general) MORE
responsive to user's needs than a larger contract software biz.  (Something
I've been a tad negligent on, m'self, lately.)


| -----Original Message-----
| From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
| [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Bob cozzi
| Sent: Friday, October 24, 2003 11:08 AM

| -----Original Message-----
| From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
| On Behalf Of rob@xxxxxxxxx
| Sent: Friday, October 24, 2003 9:45 AM


| "DeLong, Eric" <EDeLong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
| Sent by: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
| 10/24/2003 09:08 AM


|
| -----Original Message-----
| From: Booth Martin [mailto:Booth@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
| Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2003 8:35 PM

| Can her reaction be a surprise? He's gone and suddenly she has a
| non-useful
| application and bosses breathing down her neck.
|
| In a perfect world all IT shops would have 20% or more of programmer time
| budgeted for training. But alas... it will never happen.
|
|
|
| ---------------------------------------------------------
| Booth Martin http://www.MartinVT.com
| Booth@xxxxxxxxxxxx
| ---------------------------------------------------------
|
| -------Original Message-------
|
| From: RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries
| Date: Thursday, October 23, 2003 5:26:28 PM
| To: RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries
| Subject: RE: Benefits of Sub-procedures
|
| .....
|
| Another horror story I have heard in the past year - another colleague
| of mine had written a stand-alone application completely in RPGIV. He
| even designed his database with 10-character field names and date and
| time fields. He used sub-procedures. Then he cut his hand with a
| band-saw and was out on medical leave for 2 1/2 months.
|
| Needless to say, one of his managers had to make a change to his app.
| She didn't understand any of it, so, she re-wrote the entire thing in
| RPG/400. When he came back off of medical leave, he was told he could
| not use any RPGIV at all, ....
|
| Bob Cagle