I agree that scanning programs for concepts is made harder with this. I inherit this kind of code and have been known to quote your quote. But I must repeat that the train has left the MV station at the highest level. Sure, a flavour (Ud/Uv/D3/Mvbase etc) may dictate standards but they have a legacy to support. A VAR can dictate standards to their programmers for programmer interchangability. And an end user can dictate their own programming standards as well.
I would lean in the opposite of teaching standards (hold your flames). Unless you're programming in a nicely controlled MV environment, where the standards pre-exist that you must follow, you might as well get used to being able to interpet many different methods for performing the same task. I will stand on my soapbox and shout that MV has no standards, just a lot of styles. There is no governing body to enforce standards and if the remaining providers (u2/uv/ d3 etc) were to build and force them, there would be some disagreements at that level. If they concurred, then all of the existing code underneath would have to be magically re-written or allowed to remain. How coult anyone really prove that their 'style' should be the 'standard'. Are we going to have a standards convention and hash over each MV topic from loops, gotos, opens, dict items, procs, PRINT ON blah, blah. The train has left the station on this topic for us MV programmers. We all develop our own styles and hash them about for the newbies to review. But everything compiles, one plus one does equal two and we all get paid in the end. Flame me if you wish. But offer some real counterpoints and not just conjecture. Respectfully Mark Johnson ----- Original Message ----- From: "Kevin King" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <u2-users@listserver.u2ug.org> Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2007 9:06 AM Subject: RE: [U2] Reports In Universe BASIC > From: MAJ Programming > >Like helping the newbies with MV, I can now add this > >little tidbit to my mental library of techniques > >should the need arise. > > Just because one can doesn't mean one should. In the case of PRINT ON > working properly without a corresponding PRINTER ON, imagine six > months later trying to find all of the programs that are outputting to > the printer. Not only do we have to search for procs and paragraphs > that start the program with a (P (or LPTR) option, but now in > searching through the BP code we have to search for both PRINTER ON > and PRINT ON. It's likely that someone will forget one of those > options (and possibly a few others I may have missed in this quick > post) and overlook a program that should have otherwise been found. > > As this jihad on upper/lower case has illustrated, there are many ways > to skin this U2 cat. And the more ways we as a community use, the > harder we make it on ourselves to find something months after the > fact. I dream of a day when programmers will have a response other > than "who was the idiot who wrote this crap?" when faced with > modifying someone else's program. But alas, if this latest battle is > any indication, we're no closer to that day today than we were 20 > years ago or possibly even 20 years before that. And then we wonder > why our jobs are being shipped overseas? It's pretty obvious, when > companies are faced with years and years of obfuscated and > unmaintainable code, why not get the same results from someone > overseas at a fraction of the price? > > My intent is not to discourage my friends and esteeemed collegues in > this list, but rather to vent some frustration in the knowledge that > our communal past may be contributing to a negative impact on our > individual futures. As a reasonably focused community (in contrast to > the millions of programmers in other environments) we have a real > fighting chance at turning this thing around, but if we can't find > some common ground on an issue as existentially meaningless as > upper/lower case then we shouldn't be surprised when the bottom > eventually falls out. > > -Kevin > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://www.PrecisOnline.com > > ** Check out scheduled Connect! training courses at > http://www.PrecisOnline.com/train.html. > ------- > u2-users mailing list > u2-users@listserver.u2ug.org > To unsubscribe please visit http://listserver.u2ug.org/ ------- u2-users mailing list u2-users@listserver.u2ug.org To unsubscribe please visit http://listserver.u2ug.org/
