Daniel,
I had the exact same thought. Free-form the definition and stop worrying about how many dots and in which position.
While I prefer to convert programs to **FREE, I have no issue with mixed format when maintaining old programs.
Chris
From: RPG400-L <rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf of Daniel Gross <daniel@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Monday, August 5, 2024 at 5:29 PM
To: RPG programming on IBM i <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Long subfield name definition
Hi Vern,
Am 05.08.2024 um 22:46 schrieb VERNON HAMBERG Owner via RPG400-L <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
I understand your feelings about this, Daniel.
That's not so much feelings - it's my personal opinion, and I'm convinced, that all RPG programmers have to move forward, to keep the language and the platform relevant.
I do also believe that sometimes people have no choice about using free form.
I know - but let's be very honest - the excuses that I hear all so often, are 99.999% BS.
"Coding standards" - standards are created to be changed once in a while.
"My boss doesn't allow free form" - a) try to convince him, that free form is better, or b) try to find a new boss.
"We have to support old releases" - when did /FREE enter the show? Please excuse me, but I think it was V5R1 in 2001 - about 23 ago.
That is why I answered the fixed-form way and gave an example in free-form with a statement that said this looks much better.
I respect that - I really do - I wouldn't be able to answer such a question, because I haven't written a fixed form definition in about 10 years.
You didn't include any of the earlier posts - that makes comments less meaningful to me when the context is lost.
Yeah - maybe my quoting style too heavily influenced from my times in the Usenet ... where "TOFO" was a sin, that could throw you into the killfile - faster than you could say "plonk".
But I know what you mean.
In this specific case, I didn't want to include too much of the topic, because my writing was 99% off-topic.
I wanted to make a statement. I mean, RPG is on a decline since the late 1990s - IBM i too - and the mayor contra argument that the pundits have on their banners is: RPG is an old, outdated, punch-card language that no young programmer wants to learn!
And still - we are discussing old, outdated, punch-card oriented coding techniques, where our language is offering a completely free format for coding?
To me, it sounds insane - on one side we try to advocate RPG as a modern business language, that anyone can learn - and on the other side we are keeping 1990s-style coding alive.
Einstein once said: The definition of insanity is - doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
According to that definition, we are insane, if we still hang on to old, outdated, punch-card coding and expect, that the rest of the world sees us any different.
Just my 2ct
Daniel
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