Re: Is RPG 'DEAD"

On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 2:19 PM, Lim Hock-Chai
<Lim.Hock-Chai@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

uuumm. RPG send a escape message, which provide immidiate attention to the user that the program is not function properly. If user took option c, all open files and locks are automatically closed and released. If a programmer is contacted, programmer can start a sevice job and jump into the program thru debugger to look at value of all variables or takes option D to dump the program. How do you do that in java?

I'm not understanding the example you given. If a file is open/lock by another job, there is no way for a java or RPG program to close it.


Steve, you cannot simply pick a few features that java has and say that RPG is inferior to java. If it is that easy, I can do the same and say the java is inferior to RPG because:
1) java does not support F spec. In RPG, you easily read/update/write record to a file by simply add a F spec.
2) You cannot use a simple statement like this in java to assign the value of a int variable to a decimal variable: myDecimalVariable = myIntVariable.
3) You cannot use a simple statement like this in java to concate 5 different char strings variable myNewString = string1+string2+string3+string4+string5.
4) RPG allows function parameter to pass by value/const/reference.
5) By adding Bnddir('QC2LE') in the H spec, RPG can easily call function in c standard lib.

Lim,

a feature by feature discussion is interesting to me, but the bottom
line from my POV is that C# and Java have class libraries and RPG does
not. The reason is because those two languages have the features
needed to write and use a robust set of reuseable classes. RPG is a
good language. Applications written in RPG dont sink under their own
weight like they do in COBOL.

On the other hand, a case can be made that delegates, virtual methods
and now monads make apps written in C# too complicated to read.
http://blogs.msdn.com/wesdyer/archive/2008/01/11/the-marvels-of-monads.aspx

-Steve