Re: Constants in RPG

At COMMON some years ago, an IBM'r was discussing variable names and
used a comparison to how RPG, COBOL, and C programmers name their
children.

RPG Programmer
Billy
Joe
Bob
Sally
Sue
Mary
Jo
Beth

COBOL Programmer
BillyJoeBob
SallySue
MaryJoBeth

C Programmer
(points to each)

alan0307d@xxxxxxxxx 04/01/2009 7:16:56 AM >>>

Hell, all the programmers around here are still using 6 character
names.
Drives me crazy. You have 4096 so you use 6 character names so the
maintenance programmer doesn't have a clue what they are. Won't even
use 10
characters in field names in tables.

On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 8:56 AM, Jerry Adams <Jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

<snip>
Amazing thing is that there are actually people who use named

constants.

Everyone I have ever known just puts AField = 52;. What the hell is

52 but

most places including the current the programmers would have a fit it

they

had to identify a constant. I am the only person who ever did it.
</snip>

Alan,

I agree with your comment about the ambiguity of 'AField'. But that
reminded me of when I first started learning Cobol some years ago

(OK, a few

decades ago). The instructors touted it as being "self-documenting"

because

one could have a 35-character field name. When I started using it

(gave it

up for Lent some time ago), I noticed that "veteran" Cobol

programmers

usually used 6-10 character field names. Heck, we had to hand-write
programs on coding sheets back then! I doubt that I'll personally

reach the

4096 character limit in RPG IV any time soon.


Jerry C. Adams
IBM System i Programmer/Analyst
--
B&W Wholesale
office: 615-995-7024
email: jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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