RE: Trivia: How many lines of code are allowed in an RPG Program?

Buck, you are enough of a luminary <g>, and you ask a fair question.  It,
and my response to it, was omitted from my original post for brevity
because, as you know, this can easily turn into a topic of holy war
proportions.  However, since you have dangled the carrot...

Yes, time is money.  Who wants to spend a week (plus) dismantling a program
so that you understand what is going on and then writing new from scratch?
Assuming you're even given the option.  How often is such a program
modified?  If this were a one-time shot, I might swallow pride and just
change the constant or add code that is completely isolated.  What type of
app, and how critical to the operation of the organization is it?  Payroll?
Year end financials?  Do I get a company-issued flame suit when it goes into
production?

If you want to talk about costs, how about the cost of properly testing the
modified program?  Frank, you *are* testing this, right?  How will you know
what to test, to ensure that your modifications don't MAKEAMESS of
something?

It would be bad enough if this is 4GL source, but 32k lines?!?!?  You want
to talk about the risk of writing from scratch?  I have had to modify a few
Synon programs in my career, nowhere near the 32k lines, but horrendously
difficult and complex anyway you slice it.  No documentation, no
(meaningful) comments.  Such a program would just about be an automatic
write from scratch candidate.

I know, I know, I sit from an ivory tower in this post.  In real life I may
well be told to modify something ugly like this and I can yell & protest all
I want, but if I want to continue getting a paycheck...  But, I *would* yell
& protest.  ("yell" = "speak firmly")

db

> -----Original Message-----
> From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx / Buck Calabro
> Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 2004 12:32 PM
>
> Are you certain this is a compiler limit, or merely an SEU limit?  Try
> copying the member to a PF.  Update it with DFU or your favourite file
> utility and then copy it back to the srcpf.    You can also look into
> storing it as a stream file instead of as a source member.  Code/400
> doesn't have this limit if I recall.
>
> Though I am less than a luminary, I would answer the 'just rewrite it'
> folks with a simplistic question.
> When faced with a monster program like that, how can you be SURE that
> you haven't broken a connection between two very distant bits of code?
> To modularise this beast you would pretty much have to start from
> scratch.  Many times, these things aren't even written by people; they
> are the output of 4GLs and the like, so that makes it even more
> difficult.
>
> It's really hard to go into a program like that, intending say to make
> an array larger and add a few lines to check the index and find out
> that you have to spend the rest of the week dismantling it because SEU
> won't handle that many lines.
>
> Personally, I agree that it would be better to have smaller programs,
> but sometimes it isn't worth the trouble to take an old program there.
>   --buck