RE: Adoption of new RPG techniques -- RPG400-L

<snip>
It's not me.  According to the poll, my email and the responses online,
over 60% of people agree.  
<snip> 

Ok, Joe, you make the statement as if it it fact.  I don't believe it. Thats
the problem I have with some of your "facts".  You run an informal poll, get
a few responses, and then claim the over 60% of people agree!?!??  At best,
you could state that over 60% of RESPONDANTS agree.  What about the 95
million RPG programmers that just plain don't care what happens to MOVE.
All you got was the people who got stirred up enough to actually reply to
this argument.  I personally will "sit the fence".

Just for the record, I'm not trying to start beating you up, Joe, so just
consider this a dissenting voice and then I'm out of it.

Eric DeLong
Sally Beauty Company
MIS-Project Manager (BSG)
940-898-7863 or ext. 1863



-----Original Message-----
From: Joe Pluta [mailto:joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2003 10:16 PM
To: 'RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries'
Subject: RE: Adoption of new RPG techniques


> From: James Rich
>
> Now for the hairy stuff - addressing the MOVE issue.  I'm afraid that
> this will never be resolved in a way that Joe likes because so many
> (myself included) don't like the MOVE opcode.

It's not me.  According to the poll, my email and the responses online,
over 60% of people agree.  And then there's the millions of lines of
code that have to be rewritten.  The issue is not "like" or "dislike",
it's "convert" or "rewrite".  It's a very simple business issue, and
when business issues get obscured because of likes and dislikes, egos,
or "elegance", then it's the end users who end up paying, in higher cost
of business.

You don't like MOVE?  Rewrite your code!  We in the MOVE camp aren't
forcing you to use it!  But if you remove the MOVE, then you are
imposing your likes and dislikes on those of us who use the opcode, as
well as on millions upon millions of lines of legacy code.  You need an
awfully large ego to justify that sort of decision.


> The biggest uproar over
> this issue has been because some view MOVE as being removed from the
> language and others see it as simply not being moved forward into true
> free form syntax.

Semantic and pedantic.  Regardless of how you word it, the effect is the
same.  By removing the MOVE opcode from free format a minority of
programmers (and if you look at the results, it's a relatively small
minority at that) are imposing their ideas on the majority.  Whereas by
leaving the MOVE or at least providing a BIF, nobody is imposing
anything on anyone.

It's unfathomable to me that someone has so large an ego that they think
it's okay to force people to change working code just because they find
a basic, fundamental opcode too hard to understand.

Again I say, if you don't like the MOVE, then rewrite your code!  But
from what I see only about 10% of the people have done that.  And them
haven't gone back and rewritten their entire applications just to get
rid of MOVEs.

James, have you gone through every program in your shop and rewritten
all the MOVE instructions out?  How many shops do you think have?  And
why do you think that is such a small number?

Anyway, we've rehashed this many times.  And as far as I'm concerned,
the people have spoken in no uncertain terms.  Removing MOVE is a bad
move.

Joe

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