RE: Assembly programmers do it a byte at a time

Boy, strongly disagree with you.

How can you make a statement that "none of this stuff is programming"? The 
exact opposite is true. How can you build maintainable code without using these 
principals? Knowing the syntax of a language is not programming. Programming is 
knowing and applying software engineering principles. Anybody can sit down and 
just start typing. That's not programming. How can you write maintainable code 
if you cannot do functional decomposition? How can you write decent code if you 
cannot abstract? How can you create databases if you cannot normalize data 
structures?

How about applying these principles makes it easier to write maintainable code 
quicker. How can you write maintainable code if you are repeating business 
logic in program after program which is what you are going to do if you cannot 
abstract. Writing maintainable code means writing logic in one place, it means 
using encapsulation to hide logic and data so changes can be made in one place 
without effecting the rest of the system. 

So I guess what you are saying is that the millions of man years of work put in 
my thousands of people developing the concepts of software engineering were for 
nothing? If that where true, why do we even need ILE, procedures, service 
programs or Object Oriented Language? Why not just write everything with goto's 
in big massive program. All of this stuff exists to implement the software 
engineering principles that have painstakingly worked out over the years. How 
can I use these tools if  I don't understand software engineering principles? I 
can't. I am just going to a monolith programmer typing code.  

The fact that RPG III provided almost nothing to implement these principles 
doesn't mean we can just ignore them and just start typing. We now have a 
language in RPG IV and an environment in ILE that allow us to apply those 
principles. Let's use it.   

-----Original Message-----
From: Joe Pluta [mailto:joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, June 23, 2005 11:03 AM
To: 'RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries'
Subject: RE: Assembly programmers do it a byte at a time


I don't mind someone knowing all this stuff, provided they realize that
none of it is actually programming.  There is a distinct line between
programming and architecture; architecture has to do with how we
program, but in the end the business goals rule the decision.  As long
as a programmer realizes that things like encapsulation and
normalization are nice to have, but that the real answer is to write
maintainable code in a reasonable time frame, then I have no problem
with them understanding those concepts.

I just get upset when someone comes into a perfectly running shop and
starts harping about how the shop needs to change over to the
architecture du jour, or else they don't know how to program.

Ah bullshards.  In the end it's all machine code, and the idea is to get
the best working, most maintainable machine code possible in the time
available.

Joe


> From: Alan Campin
>
> Seems to me to be most important that you understand the concepts of
> software engineering. How many people working on the AS/400 know
anything
> about functional decomposition, encapsulation, information hiding,
> coupling, abstraction or normalization?
>
> In other words, how many people know how to program on the AS/400? How
can
> you program in ILE if you don't understand these concepts? Pretty hard
to
> move forward if you don't have the basics.