Re: Ending Free RPG

+1
Having programmed in COBOL 73 and then RPG II
since System 3 mod 15 days, RPG and
RPGLE since 1988 when I got my first B10 as a MAP,
I have grown up with the "cycle" and matching records
with look ahead records and can truly appreciate your
insights. Having said that, with few exceptions I've
learned to lean towards SQL as the "GOTO" for
most every problem presented to me. Programs that
exists with those "old" matching records environments
are, without doubt, the most difficult to teach any newbie
entering the RPGLE world. But, I digress.





From: "James H. H. Lampert" <jamesl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "RPG programming on the IBM i (AS/400 and iSeries)"
<rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 03/20/2017 10:38 AM
Subject: Re: Ending Free RPG
Sent by: "RPG400-L" <rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx>



On 3/19/17, 5:36 AM, Henrik Rützou wrote:

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

I have worked with probably more distinct programming languages than
most of the people on this List -- BASIC (IBM VS-BASIC, Radio Shack
Level I, various M$ BASICs), FORTRAN (IBM G1, WATFIV, CDC Cyber FORTRAN,
M$ FORTRAN for TRS-80), COBOL, Pascal, PL/I (CDC Cyber PL/I, CDC ANSI
PL/I, and IBM PL/I for AS/400) LISP, Assembler (PDP-11 and 8086),
Modula-2, C, QBASIC (Mac M$ BASIC, QuickBASIC and QBX; distinct from
BASIC because they do NOT use line numbers), MI, RPG (both OPM and ILE),
CL (both OPM and ILE), Smalltalk, and Java.

I CHERISH their diversity, both in strengths and in syntax.

The VERY LAST THING I want to see is for programming languages to
jettison the characteristics that make them distinct from each other. I
do NOT like it when a language *calls itself* FORTRAN, and yet abandons
the convention of "labels in columns 1-5, continuation in 6, statements
from 7 to 72." And I do NOT like it when IBM, instead of simply MAKING
PL/I AVAILABLE AGAIN, THIS TIME AS AN ILE LANGUAGE on the Midrange
platform, reworks RPG to make it look like a poor imitation of PL/I.

And likewise (as I've said many times before), I do NOT like it when The
Cycle, one of the most essential features of RPG, one of the things that
makes it a LANGUAGE OF CHOICE instead of a LANGUAGE OF NECESSITY because
nothing else is available, gets treated as hopelessly old-fashioned
and/or a hindrance to source code readability. You don't need to use (or
even understand) secondary files or level breaks in order to make good
use of The Cycle, and even without a Primary File, it can serve as a
built-in event loop for interactive programs.

--
JHHL