Re: Reset pointer PF file

[Rory Hewitt <roryhewitt@xxxxxxxxx>]

Rob,

I'm not asking *you* to write code in RPG/400! But if I was running a
company with lots of RPG/400 code and programmers who were comfortable with
RPG/400 (and perhaps not so comfortable with RPGLE), I probably wouldn't
update to RPGLE. I know plenty of people who are fine writing RPG/400, and
are probably as fast as you are at writing RPGLE (assuming you're using
SEU).

As for testing, it totally depends on the complexity of the applciations.
But if a company has to comply with SOX-obsessed auditors and similar
bureaucracy, it can be dauntingly large, especially compared with the
overhead of testing existing RPG/400 applications - zero. There are anumber
of areas where a straight conversion can result in failures - numeric
overload and message-handling come to mind.

I agree that their management may be idiots. But the first guy on the
chopping block just might be the manager who convinces them to undertake a
project to rewrite their existing working application and ends up (after a
potentially costly rewrite/test cycle) with either an exact copy of that
application or a broken copy of that application. He's the guy *I'd* fire,
for wasting company time and resources.

Just like I'd possibly fire the guy who replaces a working RPGIV applciation
with the exact equivalent in Java. Even if I thought that Java was a better
language (I don't), and even it might be easier to hire new Java developers,
the time and cost involved in fully rewriting an application rarely make
sense.

Rory

On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 11:01 AM, <rob@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Their management is <expletive deleted>.
>
> Testing required is minimal.
>
> If a programmer preferred to code in RPG/400 instead of RPGLE he'd be the
> first on the chopping block when it came time for layoffs.
>
> Trying to remember how to do something in RPG/400 instead of RPGLE slows
> me down so long that I wouldn't reply to a post that asked an RPG400
> solution.  It's worse than trying to remember how to do accounting using
> nothing but paper worksheets versus an automated accounting system.
>
> My muzzleloader isn't broke.  In fact it works fine.  I enjoy it. However,
> it won't be what I grab when I hear breaking glass in the middle of the
> night.
>
> Rob Berendt