By Joe Pluta

Every computer language above the level of assembly language has the concept of an array. The original RPG, though, took the array to an extreme level, with concepts such as alternating tables, concepts that hung around the language even after their initial RPG II syntax was long out of date. One of the last vestiges of that heritage is the compile-time array, in which a line with asterisks in positions one and two is placed at the end of the source, and then every line after that one defines an entry in an array. This article shows the modern version of that programming technique, as well as a much more powerful variant of the alternating table.

How can we significantly improve the maintenance process?

By Steve Kilner

If someone could do a time, motion, and thought study of what maintenance programmers actually do, what might be learned, and how could the maintenance process be improved? That would be a two-step process, and actually, the first step has been done to a significant degree. Researchers have studied what maintainers actually do and think. But the lessons learned have not yet been fully exploited to improve the maintenance process.