Well said, John.
Much better than a simple "a time and a place for everything." (and I'm not being snarky).
I just have to remember that because I'm both one of those who "grew up with the cycle" and one who has almost gone the route of thinking I can do it better by trying to maintain as much control as possible.
Duane
-----Original Message-----
From: RPG400-L [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John Yeung
Sent: Tuesday, August 09, 2016 6:45 PM
To: RPG programming on the IBM i (AS/400 and iSeries) <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Successful read not showing any data in debug
Richard,
Don't be ashamed. Looking for better ways of doing things is certainly good, but the cycle is not as horrible as some people make it out to be.
I am not saying the cycle is glorious. I am not saying you should specifically choose to use the cycle if you are comfortable doing without it. You should definitely explore ILE concepts.
But, if we can avoid religious dogma for just a second, the cycle actually is well suited for certain tasks. If your program is one that fits what the cycle was designed for, then using the cycle is going to be the cleanest way home. Converting such a program to avoid the cycle makes it more verbose and visually clunkier. (Because essentially, you have to write additional code to explicitly do what would have been handled automatically by the cycle.)
That said, the cycle is quite limited in what it's good for. So a lot of people have simply gotten out of the habit of using it, and they haven't missed it.
Just so it's clear: I'm not someone who "grew up" with the cycle, so I'm not defending it out of any sense of loyalty or nostalgia. I had been programming (both self-taught and at university) for 13 years or so before I ever even heard of the RPG language.
John Y.
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