RE: New RPG programmers

["Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: James H H Lampert
> 
> Then again,
> practically EVERYTHING peculiar to C is a big GOTCHA most of the time,
but
> very useful once in a while.

Which is in itself a great minus point against the language.  There's
very little to tell a programmer that the break is missing
(intentionally or not), so in those rare cases when you do use it
intentionally, it's likely going to cause the next programmer a problem
-- they may either not understand what it's doing, or even more
devastatingly, they may "fix" it and then wonder why the program doesn't
work.  This is the definition of what I call "clever" programming,
something I consider the bane of civilized application development.

This is similar to the ability to overload operators in C++.  Sure, it's
cool to be able to do that, but how often is it really necessary?
Especially as compared to how often can it cause great grief to a
programmer who is just learning.

One really nice thing about RPG is something Buck alluded to: it's just
not that hard of a language.  You don't need a PhD in Computer Science
to be able to write good, solid application code.  Or read it, for that
matter.  Whereas in many of the more "advanced" languages, you can get
lost just trying to understand what the syntax means, much less the code
itself.

Joe