McKown, John wrote:
I don't write Easytrieve and rarely any COBOL. If
the compilers are all bundled together and I'm given free reign for my
"ad hoc" stuff, then I'll probably use REXX or C.
John:
The REXX will be there even if you buy no compilers at all; it is
interpreted -- nothing significantly like any compiled REXX. UIM
(User Interface Manager -- display panels and print formats), CL, MI
(a kind of assembler), DDS... these will all compile on a base system.
Commands such as RUNSQLSTM give basic SQL function. And basic QM
query facilities are in a base system; the user interfaces for
changing and managing QM queries and forms are not. (The user
interfaces aren't absolutely required. Those are obviously easier
than alternatives.)
Hmmm... I see I was right to wait before deciding exactly what to
write. Simon has already said pretty much everything and said it
very well.
Now, I guess the only thing that I really want to say is that (1)
you'll probably use REXX more at first, but (2) expect to migrate
more to CL over time. You'll need to know some CL just to do a lot
of REXX anyway, since you'll end up having REXX execute a lot of CL
commands. You might as well learn about compiled CL programming, and
especially ILE procedures.
With current ILE CL, there's extremely little that can't be done
(though done better in COBOL/RPG, etc.) Now that pointers and data
structures are available in CL, even many of the trickiest APIs are
enabled. These generally include even the C library functions.
It's definitely going to be interesting to watch how you progress as
the months go by.
Tom Liotta
midrange.com
