Re: subroutines are bug factories was: Classic Traps -- I need your input!

<snip>
COBOL is the worst language?

The most widely used running code in the world?

You don't know COBOL very well, do you?
</snip>

In my opinion only, any language that does not support encapsulation is
crap whether it is RPG III or COBOL or whatever.

In defense of Cobol, at least now it supports sub programs but how many
people use it? Probably most people are still writing Cobol 74 like most
people are still writing RPG III monolith programs no matter what kind
of nightmare they are to maintain.

I sometimes wonder if people think that IBM spent millions of dollars
and god knows how many hours developing ILE and RPG IV for the hell of
it? Nothing else to do that few years?

There was a problem and a serious problem and it needed to be fixed. My
only compliant with IBM was now long they took to step up the plate and
fix the problems but here we are 13 years later and people are still
writing the same RPG III monolith programs they were 13 years ago.

Been battling this week with one of the programmers.

We have a service program that contains a function that gets next EDI
Id. One line of code and you got it. Nope, "I don't like to use that" so
he is writing half a dozen different version of the logic using monolith
code in each program to read the data area in character, convert it to
numeric, update the data thru data structures in global memory and then
move it back and then update the field rather than use the one line of
code.

Even tried to show him how you could define the data area in "D" specs
and define the field as a zoned field right in the data structure so you
don't even have to mess with it. Nope, I prefer to define data
structures in global memory, move stuff into it, do the operation and
move it back out.

Geez, I wonder why the AS/400 is dying?