On 4/17/2014 4:51 PM, Kurt Anderson wrote:
Since we've had many years of RPG/Free meaning freeform C-specs, how do you refer to the new freeform? I ask because ever since the new freeform came out, I've found that I've had to differentiate between RPG Free and what I've poorly dubbed "fully freeform RPG."
Fully free RPG. For what it's worth, I call /free 'slash free' as
unwieldy as that is. Inside the cavernous confines of my empty head, I
think of /free as 'RPG IV'.
I'm sure there will come a time when there is no need to differentiate, but at this time if an RPG programmer says they know RPG Free, until told otherwise I assume they do not know the new freeform syntax.
Concur, but don't think it matters. Here's why. The bulk of
programming is reading and modifying existing code. If modifying fully
free code, it's pretty simple for anyone to copy & paste - even a Java
programmer who's never seen any RPG in her life.
When writing new code, the same situation applies. In order to comply
with shop standards for spacing, continuation, etc, our hypothetical
programmer is going to copy some existing code or a template.
If we're talking about a job interview, a code example is worth a
thousand words. I'd definitely sit a candidate down with a very small
sample library, RDi, tn5250 and instructions to modify and compile one
of the RPG source members.
Here's the actual point of my response: The goal is not to critique the
code but to watch the mental processes as the candidate goes from
thinking to acting. If a candidate is sharp but unfamiliar with fully
free RPG, she'll pick it up while she works. Bonus if she stops and
asks the interviewer for reference material for the bits she isn't
immediately familiar with. Because that's what we do in real life: if
we don't know, we look it up.
I find it hard to dismiss a candidate if she doesn't walk into the
interview with a code sample that's reflective of TR 7. Who knows, her
shop standard might have been to code to V5R3 because that's the sort of
customer her former company supports. Stinks to be so far behind, but
not her fault.
With apologies to all RPG programmers, absolutely the hardest RPG to
read and maintain uses only opcodes COMP, MOVE, ADD, SUB and MULT. Oh,
and 3 columns of left hand indicators and 6 character variable names,
all scoped globally without the... the burden of extraneous lines of
code like BEGSR. Yeah, RPG might /seem/ more complicated today, but
it's way easier to work with than in Ye Olden Days.
--buck
midrange.com
