Fixed Format: Is It an Addiction?

[J.Pluta]

Fixed Format: Is It an Addiction?

This is a really good point, Scott. Regardless of the language used, you should know what the code does and thus be able to comment it using simple sentences. If the grammar required to describe a piece of code is hard to understand, chances are the code is similarly convoluted. Free format gives RPG a little edge in being able to spell out functions and variables a little better, but even in bad old RPG III, saying things out loud (or at least in my head) got around that, because I could substitute the "real" names for things. Joe

[Guest.Visitor]

Fixed Format: Is It an Addiction?

... I programmed in Pascal! ;-) But seriously, you don't really mean to suggest that some lone hacker in IBM coded free calcs in the rpg compiler, rpg syntax cehcker, CODE program verifier, fixed to free conversion tool in CODE, as well as updating the reference manual, all without the knowledge or approvla of IBM management? As they say, I want to know what shit you're smoking! q

[Guest.Visitor]

Fixed Format: Is It an Addiction?

Good commenting is absolutley vital for fixed form coding. But we all know the problems associated with commenting - like comments that don't match the code. In that sense too much commenting can be just as bad as too little. The big advantage of free-form coding is that comments aren't as important as in fixed form. The "holy grail" of commenting - self-documneting code - is much easier to acccomplish in free form than fixed. q

[MCWebsite.Staff]

Fixed Format: Is It an Addiction?

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[avrahamn@coop.co.il]

Fixed Format: Is It an Addiction?

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The CL Language has a Free Format syntax. But a big program is very hard to read. It is not only because the lack of subroutines. Try to follow a nested IF statement. In Fixed Format RPG it is easier to follow. Unless IBM will provide a smart editor where You click on a IF or DO statement and it bring You to the ELSE and ENDIF automatically. Click on an EXSR statement and it bring You to the BEGSR. Click on a CALL statement and it brings You into the source of the called program. Click on a vaiable and it will find You all occurences of the variable in the program with the option to show only thos occurnces wher the variable is being modified. When al that will happen, it will not be to much a difference what is the syntax of the launguage.

[Guest.Visitor]

Fixed Format: Is It an Addiction?

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avrahamn, CODE editor will show you the current block, if you press Ctrl-M I think. the system debugger will jump into the source of another program on a call statement.

[Guest.Visitor]

Fixed Format: Is It an Addiction?

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Bob, got to say that im of the completely opposite opinion. I much prefer to work in FREE format. Initially I started out doing little bits of /FREE here and there. Switching back from one to the other got really annoying. So now I do everything in /FREE format, unless I have a good reason to use fixed format (eg MOVE). I have found that although I spend a while looking things up in the manuals, its now no more than I did with fixed. must admit i cant see this huge learning curve that other RPG programmers seem to experience. I think its a shame, but many RPG programmers have closed their minds to /FREE, as well as subprocedures, activation groups, %BIFs, and lots of other great facilties that IBM are adding to our beloved "as400"! Do you think that articles such as yours that say, "you dont really need /FREE format" will encourage this mindset cheers Colin.W

[Guest.Visitor]

Fixed Format: Is It an Addiction?

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I started programming in SPS and AutoCoder on the IBM 1401 right out of high school in 1967. I know, I know, many of you reading this were not yet born! After four years in the Navy I started programming an IBM 360 in Assembler. I loved it! Then I studied Cobol. Later on I used Basic and Business Basic II on my IBM PC XT in 1983. When I first saw RPG I was struck. I thought it was a joke. Fixed columns? Strange looking operands? Coming to use free-form RPG IV is like coming home to me. I just like using it for its readability. I do not like intermixing fixed and free-form RPG IV but I do when working on a fixed-form program that needs minor tweaking. I wish D-Specs could be free-form like DCL (and everything else) is in CL. Heck, let's make ALL of RPG IV free-form and then... let us intersperse Java (like with embedded SQL) and we are then really going somewhere! Just my humble opinion. Toronto - are you listening?

[eg.pops@cgocable.ca]

Fixed Format: Is It an Addiction?

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With the new millennium, it is more likely to happen that developers have to deal with many more languages than it used to be in the 90's. In my case, I did a full three years of Delphi and really hit the wall when I had to do RPG again. Everybody will agree that RPG was, before FREE came in, the only language in the world that didn't support indentation. Of course, there are some tools to get it at the output or a separate window in Eclipse, but this isn't like having it live in the text editor and play with it. I understand what you mean by learning a brand new way of programming with FREE. There is a learning curve that I have felt when I first show some FREE code to a legacy RPG III(still not moved to RPG IV) programmer. The step looked huge to him although it isn't that much of a step, as far as you keep looking the manual more frequently, period. However, I personally discourage mixing FREE and FIXED for one simple reason: the code looks so bad after. We currently fight for having cleaner SQL integration, so just don't put FIXED in the game. I even isolate FIXED code in procedures to hide them from the main code when there are no FREE solution. The fact is that everybody doesn't seem to like learning news things at the same level. The most common excuse is the fact everyone is programming things by emergency. I agree this is not a good idea to introduce new programming techniques when time is an issue, but we must consider them when developing new stuff.

[Guest.Visitor]

Fixed Format: Is It an Addiction?

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The best argument that I know of for fixed format RPG is for maintaining old code. Free style programming is great while you are coding the program today. I am of the opinion that without the RPG op codes being in the same place all of the time, the code becomes more time consuming to maintain in the future. Has anyone ever tried to maintain C or C++ code that is more than 2 years old? Depending upon the mood of the programmer at the time, free stype code can get extremely hard to understand the intent of the author. Especially if the code is not consistant from module to module. I have worked in RPG, PL/I, COBOL, Assembler, C, C++ and Basic. Only RPG gives us a consistant easy to use business programming language. Larry Wood MBI-Inc.

[Guest.Visitor]

Fixed Format: Is It an Addiction?

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Sorry Bob I love to program in free format. I have programmed in several languages and it seems as if free format RPGIV is at par with other modern languages out there. However I would like to see { or ( to delimit blocks of code instead of using opcodes (endif) to determine blocks of code. Similarly subprocedures, subroutines should be intergrated into free form code.

[Guest.Visitor]

Fixed Format: Is It an Addiction?

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I agree with Colin. Looking back, there were programmers and managers that resisted the enhancements to RPG at each stage and failed to see that it was evolution, not revolution. Going from fixed to /free isn't any more difficult that the II to III step. Gee, the good old days, when programmers just couldn't wait for the new manuals to be published.

[Guest.Visitor]

Fixed Format: Is It an Addiction?

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Personally, I think it would be a good idea for everyone to use free format as much as possible mainly because it's obvious that IBM is going to include more and more new functionality as 'free format only'. I switched to Free format as soon as our compiler supported it with no problems. IBM made some good decisions by giving away CODE and now, WDSC. The electronic help and conversion tools made it so easy to pick up the new syntax that I was able to switch to free format without any classes or training. When you properly indent the source it makes it so much easier to track nested conditionals that I almost hate to look at fixed format code now.

[R.Cozzi]

Fixed Format: Is It an Addiction?

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It is funny, that is exactly the way I feel. The Microsoft IDE that I've used for 10 years or more has always done this (allowed you to jump the cursor between the IF and the END statements). You'd think that a one gigabyte WDSc could do this... Perhaps a 150K editor made just of OS/400 programming is what we need.

[Mickey Mouse]

Fixed Format: Is It an Addiction?

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It depends, for me RPG Free is great, since RPG is not the only language I program in, I find it easier and quicker, and using WDSC makes it even nicer. But there is nothing wrong with using Fixed Format RPGIV. It's more of a style issue. If you can get the job done it really doesn't matter. But if you are still using RPGIII, Try to atleast move to RPGIV.