RE: RPG Free Format question -- RPG400-L

Yeah at my last place there were a couple of blokes, and the biggest pity was 
that one was a young guy with only a couple of years experience but was totally 
in the control of this older bloke, who steadfastly refused to go to RPGIV let 
alone ILE, they used a mix of RPGII/III/400 styles. No matter what me and a 
couple of contractors said they saw no reason to change their ways. They also 
thought that the STRDBG on RPGIV was the old version and did not want to lose 
the functionality of STRISDB, no matter how we tried, short of tying them to a 
chair and showing them they refused to be convinced. Trouble was they had the 
manager questioning what we did! So yes Bob with programmers like that it is 
little wonder that people are looking to what they consider an up-to-date 
solution for their IT solutions and moving away from the "dinosaur" 
AS400/iSeries.

Saying that I am still only just moving into free format programming, API's and 
BIF's but at least I am moving that way.

Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Bob Cozzi
Sent: 22 June 2005 22:09
To: 'RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries'
Subject: RE: RPG Free Format question


No wonder our programming jobs are vanishing. Oh well.

-Bob Cozzi
www.RPGxTools.com
If everything is under control, you are going too slow.
- Mario Andretti


-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Joel Fritz
Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2005 3:03 PM
To: RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: RE: RPG Free Format question


Since the file operation bifs and %error it's pretty much down to the
few places in display files.  

In the past two years we had a lot of people in and out on short term
contracts.  It was interesting to see the variety of coding styles.  A
few hadn't made it much past RPGII and a few had a very modern approach.
I think the average was RPGIII compiled with CRTBNDRPG.  Mostly no left
hand indicators, but indicators for file ops and lookup.  Very little
use of bifs and date stuff.  We had a guy on staff(left last year) who
persisted in using six character variable names.  To make it more fun he
used his own version of Hungarian notation where the last two or three
characters showed how the variable was used. He also refused to use
prefixes. 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Bob Cozzi
> Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2005 11:59 AM
> To: 'RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries'
> Subject: RE: RPG Free Format question
>
> Why would he still be using indicators in your code in the
> first place?
> I mean, this sort of bugs me... "How do I set off indicators
> in free format?" Talk about perplexing programming.
>
>
> -Bob Cozzi
> www.RPGxTools.com
> If everything is under control, you are going too slow.
> - Mario Andretti
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
> On Behalf Of Joel Fritz
> Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2005 12:17 PM
> To: RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries
> Subject: RE: RPG Free Format question
>
>
> It's just my opinion, based on personal taste (and my
> superior intelligence and moral character <g>,) but I never
> liked setting a bunch of indicators using movea.  My
> criterion is "How easy is it to read this code at 2AM?"  For
> setting a bunch of indicators if it's a task that needs to be
> done more than once, I'll write a procedure with a name that
> tries to describe what's going on.  E. g. I have a standard
> procedure for subfiles that sets the indicators that prepare
> it for loading.
>


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