Re: Impossible to even think about rewriting in RPG

Okay, you really are an edge case, Rory. If your primary work is PL/I and MI, then there aren't as many benefits, although just more lines of code might be a help. But that's neither here nor there.

Compiles, just so you know, are very easy to handle. The library list is at the connection level and can be initialized at logon time and modified any time by running a command, assuming you have a command to change your library list. If you use EDTLIBL you're out of luck, but if your work depends on green screen commands you're not going to be able to use an IDE anyway.

The hardware issue is certainly a problem, but it's not because of Java. It's just hardware. My machine uses 0-2% of CPU at rest, and I'm doing EGL and Web development in addition to RPG. Now, I have a big machine, but it's not THAT big. It' a gateway FX6850, a 3.4GHz i7 with 8GB of RAM and it cost about $1000. I consider that to be the standard price for a developer's workstation, and it's been that way for a decade or more. As the machines go up in power, $1000 is about what you spend for a higher end machine that's perfect for power development. If you can't afford one of those, you won't be able to use higher end tools.

Of course, I always find it interesting that software companies are often the ones that give their developers the hardest time to get tools. It's a bizarre case of the cobbler's children having no shoes. I had a harder time getting decent development workstations at SSA than I did anywhere else in my career.

The latency issue is another one that I can't help with. Again, it's only when you load or save a file or open a list of members, but I know how painful it can be. I only have 768KB at home and it takes 8-10 seconds to load a list of 2500 members. It can take nearly a minute to open a 15000 line program. But that same member opens very quickly on a LAN.

Interestingly enough, one way around the issue is to use remote desktop. The amount of traffic for the GUI is often significantly less than the overhead for the host-to-workstation connection, and so the remote desktop runs quicker. Of course, this requires that your local machine be fast, which might not be an option for you. :)

Anyway, sorry that you can't be helped by this. But as I noted at the beginning, yours is a somewhat unusual set of circumstances. In the world of development there is no one-size-fits-all solution and this reinforces that unfortunate fact.

Joe

Joe,

Brain-dump ensues...

I guess mainly it's #1 - my company (one of the largest software companies
in the US) won't spring for a fast PC for me - I only got my *second* GB of
RAM a couple of months ago, and as you point out, 1GB of RAM certainly won't
cut it. 2GB is better, but... Plus, because it's Java, there's a chunk of
overhead going on all the time, it seems (certainly Process Explorer shows a
lot of CPU usage). The actual opening of files/members were certainly slow,
but it was really the 2+ minute startup time.

A dealbreaker for us is the use of library lists to process compilations -
in SEU, I was able to set my *LIBL, edit a source member, compile it and
know which copybooks in which libraries would be used, and which compilation
overrides would be used. I never found the equivalent level of granularity
in the IDE's. I'm not saying it's not there, just that I never found it. We
have a lot of command-line processing which allows dynamic changes to
library lists, which is, at the very least, difficult to do, using an IDE. I
know I can create commands and command-sets, but there's a lot of hassle
(maybe one-off up-front hassle, but still hassle).

Of course, there's a certain 'old-school' bloody-mindedness to it - my
personal website is written using hand-coded HTML and I only just stopped
using a Palm Treo as my phone - maybe I'm just a Luddite, like my wife
says... Part of me just gets aggravated when someone says what john said. I
let my code (and the speed/quality with which I create it) stand for me.

I work form home a lot, so the communications/latency issues between my PC,
my firewall/router/cable modem/internet/corporate firewall/i mean that SEU
really is *much* faster.

Some of the benefits to an IDE don't really apply to me - a huge amount of
the code I write/maintain is PL/I, so there's no syntax checker. Likewise
with MI.

Finally, I'll reiterate what i said before - speed is everything. Every
second of latency or "Communicating with server" is anathema to me. And
right now, there's a bunch of it.

Rory