Thought the change of subject might be appropriate.
<snip>
I'm with Gibbsy there. CODE has been a very poor development tool since the
early days of the 400 (personally, I find that a little $25 bit of shareware
called TextPad is a superior development tool to CODE). I haven't used any of
the WDSC stuff, but because of the bloat, I can't really see the point.
<end snip>
Gee. TextPad can do the following?? :-)
What comes to mind immediately.....
- Color coding lines.
- Tab sensitive in free form.
- Full online help for RPG (don't know about help for Cobol etc.).
- Wizards for D specs and subprocedures in RPG and a couple of wizards
for Java and the ability to write any wizards I want.
- See more then 70 odd characters without damaging my eyes on a 25*132
screen (SEU comparison).
- See more the 16/18 lines of code at a time(SEU comparison).
- Edit more then one member without having to have a 5250 session per
edit(SEU comparison).
- Navigator to give me a chart of a program. Double click on the
subroutine box and you are positioned at the line of code in the source.
- Verify a program. Yes, you have to be on line, but only the first time
you verify. After that the verify can be from the cache on your PC -
average verify time for a 600 line program on my PC is under two
seconds. I do most of my coding off-line and I verify all the time.
A quick comparison between detecting a simple mis-spelling of a field
name using Code and SEU.
Code: Click on verify, double click on 7030 message no and you are at
the error.
SEU: F3, 14 Enter, Get message the job ended abnormally, 2 Enter, F15,
2 Enter, Move cursor to SEU command line on bottom half of screen, B
Enter, Page Up twice, F 7030 Enter, F16, F16, move cursor to line no on
top half of screen, Type line no in error and Enter.
<snip>
But we digress :)
Do we? I dunno man. I think that development tools are germane to this
discussion. I don't like development tools for the 400. I also don't like the
build tools for the 400-- the only one that seems to work for ILE is TMKMAKE,
and that's not even part of the OS.
-Doc
<end-snip>
I agree. I think that development tools are very germane to this
discussion. The biggest problem I have with Code is that it is Windows
based - and like most Windows based IDEs it is a hog and prone to errors
(Code or Windows - who knows). But any complaints I have about Code (and
I have quiet a few) are far outweighed by the benefits.
So, if anyone has problems with the way Code works how about offering up
some suggestions as to how it should work. I find it great but maybe
that is down to my lack of knowledge about IDEs.
Paul Tuohy
midrange.com
