|
What I DO resist, and resist vigorously, is the practice of evolving a langauge to where it has lost all the defining characteristics of the one it evolved from, but continuing to call it what it no longer is. For example, BASIC is a language, evolved from FORTRAN, that requires line numbers, uses them as statement labels, and has no local variables or external calls. The QBASICs TBASICS, and so forth, evolved from BASIC, but are NOT themselves BASIC, having lost every characteristic that defines BASIC, and I refuse to call them BASIC. They are DERIVATIVES of BASIC, not DIALECTS.
Likewise, RPG has a highly stylized syntax based on column positions, and it also has excellent file I/O, and an implicit "DO UNTIL LR IS TRUE" loop surrounding every program. If you don't bother learning how to use The Cycle, though, then there's little reason for you to be using RPG at all, and if you take away the column-position-based syntax, you may end up with a great language, but it has ceased to be RPG.
-- JHHL
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
This mailing list archive is Copyright 1997-2024 by midrange.com and David Gibbs as a compilation work. Use of the archive is restricted to research of a business or technical nature. Any other uses are prohibited. Full details are available on our policy page. If you have questions about this, please contact [javascript protected email address].
Operating expenses for this site are earned using the Amazon Associate program and Google Adsense.
midrange.com
