RE: FW: Niftiest thing(s) you have done in RPG ILE or /FREE

Very well stated....

-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of James Lampert
Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 11:55 AM
To: RPG programming on the IBM i / System i
Subject: Re: FW: Niftiest thing(s) you have done in RPG ILE or /FREE

Charles Sallee wrote:

To me, "Nifty code" by definition is hard to understand if you have not
used the technique many times your self. What is the use in saving
lines of code if you have to add lines of documentation to explain what
you are doing?

My own example (not /free) was a pair of recursive-descent parsers. And
so long as one understands the concept of procedure calls, they're both
perfectly straightforward.

/free itself is something I can only understand because I'm fluent in
several other programming languages; if I only knew RPG, it would be
gibberish.

Assignment of a logical value directly from a logical expression is also
something that makes perfect sense to me only because I'm fluent in
other programming languages, and C-style "+=" and "-=" are only
understandable because one of those languages is C.

I've seen people on this List pursue holy wars against any use
(conventional or otherwise) of The Cycle, in spite of the fact that it's
both useful and an inherent part of RPG. To me, on the other hand, if
one is unfamiliar with The Cycle, and unable to recognize places where
it can be used in unconventional ways (such as in an update program, or
as the event-loop of an interactive program), then there's little point
in using RPG at all. And if one can't recognize The Cycle when it's
being used (conventionally or otherwise), then how can one legitimately
claim to know RPG?

--
James H. H. Lampert
Touchtone Corporation

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