Re: the ASSET issue again

From Al Macintyre 455 CD

My perspective as an RPG programmer at a company that has decided NOT to buy 
AS/Set to help me, but periodically does ask me to modify programs that were 
created by AS/Set is that AS/Set is a productivity multiplier.

If you have AS/Set & have learned how to use this tool, then you the 
programmer can produce good programming work in much less time than it takes 
you when writing in RPG, and in fact a mediocre programmer using AS/Set can 
be a more productive employee than a very proficient RPG programmer writing 
in RPG.

However, an RPG programmer trying to modify the program code created by 
AS/Set, will take approx 1,000 times as long to get the same job done as the 
same programmer might take if access to AS/Set was permitted.  I have tried & 
failed to communicate this nuance to my management.  But this is always the 
case.  Programmers believe that if we had good tools, we could do a much 
better job & managers do not understand the role that the tools play in our 
work & do not always supply them.

Is the final code generated by the AS/Set as good & as productive as an RPG 
programmer could create?  No, but that isn't the point that Mark & others 
might have been trying to make.  Do companies want to pay for programmers who 
need months to modify ORD500 to accomplish some simple thing, or do they want 
to pay for programmers who can get the same work done in hours.  My employer 
wants the months, but most companies, I suspect, want the hours.  

My position is that from a programmer productivity perspective, having the 
right tools & proper training in the use of those tools, has an astronomical 
multiplication effect on our productivity that is all out of proportion to 
any other difference between two programmers other than sheer incompetence.

I recognize that what AS/Set creates is often not the same quality that 
direct programming creates, but perhaps the issue should be what CASE tool 
for programming on AS/400 can create a better quality program than AS/Set 
creates, so that SSA should replace AS/Set with a tool whose end result is to 
use native AS/400 so well that BPCS becomes a competitive product in the ERP 
market place.

> From: ED_DAY@csiltd.co.uk
>  
>  Mark,
>       I think you have the 2 mixed up. There is no way ASSET produces less
>  lines of RPG than an RPG programmer would, even if you tried your hardest
>  to write as bad a program as possible it would still be shorter and most
>  certainly more efficient.
>  
>  Ed Day

Al Macintyre  ©¿©
MIS Manager Green Screen Programmer & Computer Janitor of BPCS 405 CD Rel-02 
running on AS/400 V4R3 http://www.cen-elec.com Central Industries of 
Indiana--->Quality manufacturer of wire harnesses and electrical 
sub-assemblies
+---
| This is the BPCS Users Mailing List!
| To submit a new message, send your mail to BPCS-L@midrange.com.
| To subscribe to this list send email to BPCS-L-SUB@midrange.com.
| To unsubscribe from this list send email to BPCS-L-UNSUB@midrange.com.
| Questions should be directed to the list owner: dasmussen@aol.com
+---