Re: the cycle that never ends

<Alan>
But then you still have the old compiler. We need a new compiler that is
clean. Doesn't have to maintain compatibility with all the old stuff.

If you are maintaining existing stuff, you have RPG IV. Writing new modern
code, use the new compiler.

Modern RPG is a great business language. the problem with the compiler
today is it trying to maintain compatibility with RPG III written in 1980.
</Alan>

Having a look to my customers, I'm seeing only two reasons to use RPG:
- having an old RPG application, adding new stuff and doing maintenance of existing programms.
- the team of programmers have knowledge in RPG, it's the language they know best.

Choosing a language without one of these two restrictions, there are enough existing languages, most of them better than RPG, starting by the name, development tools, additional libraries, community support, available hardware platforms, available programmers, education...

<Alan>
Pre-compiler is just program calls. RPG could call DLL's and optimize.

If I am working C# or Java or a host of other languages, do I have a
pre-compiler? No, SQL is native.

RPG needs the same thing. Tight integration, not clunky RPG III program
calls.
</Alan>

Talking about Java (the language I know best, besides RPG):
- using plain JDBC, you would have to code calls to Driver routines by your own. Using RPG, you could use CLI instead of embedded SQL with very similar logic.
- in real life most Java shops are using object relational mappers (component libraries, most of them Open Source!!!) and you won't see any SQL statements in the code.
- there was a Precompiler for Java too, SQLJ but it did not survive.

A Pre Compiler isn't so bad and has some advantages over the CLI way:
- it does verification of your SQL statements against the database at compiletime.
- it generates server side code (IBM calls this packages)
- it does some type checking.
As a conclusion of this you have less runtime errors (most compile errors would crash at runtime anyway) and there are performance benefits.

D*B