Re: Ending Free RPG

Dieter

I think that you have to work with different programming languages
intensivly to see
RPG's little ackward syntax.

In regards to RLA or NoSQL as I prefer to call it, there is simply things
you can't do in
SQL unless you use SQL to access data the RLA way.

Here you will run into that SQL is actually very slow wich you will notice
when you start
to measure response times in nano-seconds and where you very easily is able
to make
inline NoSQL 5,000-10,000 faster than SQL and that is relevant if you build
UI's based on
metadata, templates and user-rules on the fly.




On Sun, Mar 19, 2017 at 9:36 AM, D*B <dieter.bender@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

<Jon>
at least two people on this list who spend a lot of time training
non-RPGers in the language have found that students find the dcl style
syntax way easier than the old D-spec. Period. End of story.
</Jon>
I'm one of those, using more than one language extensively, mostly RPG or
Java.
Writing new stuff in RPG:
- I don't use RLA => there's no need for F, I, O, declarations and
"calculaions" are sufficient
- I do use change management => (nearly) no need for H specs
- all "calculation" in free (why did it take so long to drop the noise
instructions /free and /end-free???)
- annoying are the funny ';' inside instructions (after 'if', 'else'...)
BTW: I don't use CL any more, all you could do in CL, could be done with
RPG!

about declarations and so called totally free
- it's a strong feature of RPG to have all declarations at the beginning
of it's block
- I'm missing block local declarations (inside a loop, for instance)
- C type languages (Java etc. included) (nearly) all blocks have curly
brackets, easy to beautify, easy to read.
- Procedure blocks, coded with P specs are easier to recognize than DCL-P
blocks (this got worse with totally free!!!)

- free form declarations introduced a new noise instruction, let me call
it 'DCL-x' and you would have to repeat it over and over again
even cobol did it better, having a section for declarations. most
languages, coding type and name are sufficient to make a declaration.
Another funny feature of free form declarations are int and float numbers
with length, other languages use int, long, bigint, float, double etc.

from my old school RPG perspective P and D specs are more convinient, than
the new free alternatives.
from my Java perspective the free alternatives for P specs and PR and PI
other declarations are far away from ease of use for non RPG programmers,
learning RPG.

Dieter Bender
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