Re: Free format H, F, D and P specs

On Mon, Oct 7, 2013 at 1:28 PM, Dave <dfx1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Maybe it's just the example at that page, but it sure looks ugly to me.
Free form calculation specifications made RPG a lot easier to read for
people coming from other backgrounds. I don't see the same advantage here,
especially with all those key words, which even RPG programmers will have
to learn. I'm for keeping such specifications in orderly columns.

You're not alone. To me, the change doesn't make RPG look like a more
modern language; it makes RPG look more like COBOL.

And I *am* one of those people coming from other backgrounds.

Honestly, as someone who didn't start out on the i, I have to say that
if RPG really wants to *feel* modern (to "outsiders"), it has to be
all-the-way free. It has to either completely ditch the line-oriented
nature and go with stream-oriented (as C and countless other languages
with brace or begin-end block delimiters), or it has to do something
like Python, and embrace lines and *semantic* indentation. Anything
less is lipstick on a pig. (No disrespect to pigs.)

John