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"Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances."
Sun Tzu
-----Original Message-----
From: John Yeung [mailto:gallium.arsenide@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, June 30, 2017 12:49 AM
To: RPG programming on the IBM i / System i <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: RPG easier/harder to use than other languages?
On Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 1:10 PM, <dlclark@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It doesn't make sense to hold that against JavaScript.
I don't -- but it is unreasonable to post JavaScript code that
utilizes jQuery and then say that in order to write the same code in
RPG it would take a whole lot more code.
Why is that unreasonable? First of all, it is literally true. It would absolutely require a whole lot more code to replicate the functionality in RPG, because jQuery is an established part of the JS ecosystem, and there is currently nothing like it in RPG. But read on....
The real point is that just because jQuery is available
doesn't make the language, itself, easier -- it only makes it so that
the JavaScript programmer doesn't have to know everything about how to
code DHTML.
OK. This brings up something interesting. If we remove the specifics here, we get "the real point is that just because some library is available doesn't make the language *itself* easier". So you seem to be saying that we can (and should?) compare languages "on their own", apart from their ecosystems.
That strikes me as highly academic, but that's fine. I like academic discussions.
I already presented the scenario where we pretend that jQuery doesn't already exist. Surely that would be a fair comparison, even using your rules. So, a thought experiment: If you take a skilled JavaScript programmer and have them implement jQuery from scratch, and a skilled RPG programmer and have them implement jQuery from scratch, which one will need to write more code? Which one will be done quicker? I am pretty confident the JavaScript version will require less code and less effort. Why do I feel this way? Because I think JavaScript's dynamic nature is a decisive advantage for this kind of problem.
John Y.
midrange.com
