Re: converting string to a numeric

Amen.

Steve

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "'RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries'" <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, July 28, 2004 11:40 AM
Subject: RE: converting string to a numeric


> > From: Of Hans Boldt
> >
> > But that was then, this is now. Memory today is cheap, and you don't
> > have to worry as much about allocating lots of storage. CPU's are now
> > lightning fast, so performance isn't so much a concern.
>
> "Cheaper" and "faster" are relative.  I worked in 8KB with a sub-MHz
> processor.  Yes, we wrote differently when processors leaped to 8MHz and
> we could have 64KB.  But there were two kinds of programmers:
> programmers who threw out good programming practices and wrote as if
> they owned the machine, and programmers who kept good programming
> practices and instead added more features and functionality rather than
> bloated code.
>
> And what happened?  We got to multiuser machines, where more than one
> user needed the memory.  And the bloated, crappy programs crashed and
> burned, while the well written programs thrived.  We're getting there
> again.  Just because you have gigabytes of memory doesn't mean you have
> to use them.
>
> This idea that megabytes and megahertz are cheap is what got you a
> Portal product that requires 4GB of main storage just to run adequately.
> Or desktop programs that require 2GB to install.
>
>
> > But the goalposts have moved since
> > the S/3x days. Programming is different now, and older programming
> > styles are becoming more and more passe.
>
> This is so much hokum.  Every generation of programmers likes to think
> that they're doing some groundbreaking new breakthroughs in programming,
> but truthfully most algorithms were discovered in the 60's, and we're
> just reimplementing them with new tools.  That sounds trite, but look at
> the examples.
>
> For instance, scripting languages (macro processors) are the rage in the
> "new programming paradigm".  Basically, they're just extension of the
> macro assemblers of the 70's.  Or how about OO?  Now we find that
> there's another way to do things - it's called Procedural Java.  Cracks
> me up.  Or how about this?  JDBC added a great new feature: an
> updatable, scrollable cursor.  It allows you to create a view over a
> table and then read forwards and backwards, updating each record one at
> a time.  Of course, we've called THAT a logical file for about 20 years,
> but hey, "it's new to them!".
>
>
> > As Chris P has pointed out, no one - NO ONE - in any other language
> > community would (or could) even imagine Java or C or C++ or Perl or
> > Python or whatever as a fixed-form language. And no one in any of
> those
> > community could possibly imagine assignment operations that worked
> like
> > RPG's MOVE and MOVEA.
>
> That's because nobody in that community ever programmed an ERP suite.
> It's clear to me that the people who created Java never had to run a
> month-end process.  It's the same with the SQL folks who don't
> understand why CHAIN is such an important instruction in business
> programming.  It's because they've never done any business programming.
> Just like the people who pulled the MOVE operation out of RPG free.
>
> Joe
>
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