Re: Todays WTF

["Steve Richter" <stephenrichter@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 8/10/07, albartell <albartell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > the goto is seen by everyone as bad practice.  but the subroutine is just
> as bad.
>
> Oh c'mon Steve, why did you go and make a comment like that?    Subroutines
> are VERY useful in modularizing code internal to a program.  Just because
> you can't have local variables doesn't put it into the same bucket as
> GOTO's.

I had to work on legacy cobol and rpg code last year and it was a time
killing process.  the cobol was impossible with all of its redefines
of the data. But the RPG was very hard to work with also.   the rpg I
got a handle on by reworking the subroutines as procedures and
eliminating all the global effects of the routines.  For me,
complexity is just an accumulation of details and indirection.  Simply
looking at a procedure and being able to tell that a variable is
passed as input from the caller is one level of indirection less than
an RPG subroutine.

-Steve