Sorry about the "liar" thing, I was in a REALLY bad mood.
As you know (but many of the readers of this list may not) I have not
been doing well lately. I had severe damage to my spinal cord in 2013,
leaving me a "paraplegic" (spinal cord damage that prevents proper use
of my body from the waist down.) I worked extremely hard in physical
therapy for two full years, many hours each day, and overcame a lot of
what I lost. I was able to be independent, take care of myself without a
nurse, able to walk with a cane... and was even reaching the point
where it was looking like I could eliminate the cane (I could walk for
about 20 minutes without needing it until I got tired...)
Then this autumn, things stopped improving, and started degrading. I can
no longer walk safely with a cane. I can no longer do physical therapy
exercises that were easy for me even as far back as two years ago. For
the past four months I've been having tests done with the doctors, and
they have found nothing wrong. I wrote that message immediately after a
call with my neurologist where he told me that he could do nothing for
me, and that the last test he had for me had shown nothing. Probably
was a bad idea to reply at that time. Forgive my brashness.
I do not think you are a liar. But, at the same time, I find it
unbelievable that you could possibly have improved your productivity by
20% or more.
RDi has lots of features that save me a little bit of time here and there:
-- Ctrl-Space helps give me a quick reminder of the syntax, especially
of BIFs where I can't always remember the exact sequence of the parameters.
-- The Outline makes it easier to understand large monolithic programs.
Though, I must admit, this was a much bigger help at my previous job
than it is at Profound Logic, since our code at Profound is very modern,
and I do not often need help interpreting it or finding where variables
are used.
-- When copying/pasting code to PC applications (such as sharing
examples in these mailing lists and the other forums, as well as writing
articles and presentations) RDi's features help me a LOT. This is
probably the single biggest time-saver I get from RDi, because I do this
sort of thing so frequently. (But, I don't think most RPGers do.)
-- The ability to see compile errors right in the window when compiling
a program is a help if there are a lot of compile errors. (Usually, for
me, this is when I'm writing a new program. When making modifications
to an existing program, the number of compile errors are relatively
small, and this doesn't save much.)
-- I like the fact that RDi works well with C/C++ and JavaScript
programs in addition to RPG, as I code in these languages just as a
often as RPG.
But, on the other hand --
-- I can't stand the "Remote Systems" view or it's filters. I find this
extremely clumsy and slow vs. a command-line interface. (I also don't
like PDM, though.)
-- I much prefer the FNDSTRPDM command (or 'grep' in the IFS) to the
search features in RDi.
-- When I need to make a few small changes to lots of source
files/members (For example, updating the year of the copyright statement
in 100+ members) I find SEU infinitely faster/easier.
-- I don't like RDi's debugger, and still typically use the green-screen
STRDBG one.
-- For short simple tasks like creating binder source or most CL
programs, I find it much quicker/easier to use SEU.
-- Free tools like Notepad++, vim (in PASE) or gvim (in Windows using a
mapped drive) are usually just as good (sometimes better) at JavaScript,
HTML or CSS code.
So there are pros and cons. For some things RDi does indeed save me
time, but for other things other tools work better. I use the tool that
I think will make my job easiest. Sometimes that's RDi, sometimes it
isn't. I doubt very much that RDi gives me 5% boost in productivity.
5% would equate to roughly 2 hours per week -- and I doubt that very
much. maybe 45-60 minutes per week? I could see that. If I used RDi
exclusively because some nutjob decided to "turn off" the other tools,
then it would hurt my productivity without a doubt.
When you say 20% I'm very skeptical. Does that mean you only need to
work 4 days each week instead of 5, because you have saved 20% of your
time?!
I mean, RDi saves me a few minutes here and there.. but HOURS? DAYS?
Really??!
On 4/3/2015 3:57 PM, Jon Paris wrote:
Not often I disagree with you Scott - but I’m going to on this one.
If you are really at best only 5% better with RDi than SEU then all I can say is you’re a bloody site better typist than I am.
All of the shortcut and filtering options, not to mention outline view, and only 5%? Sorry - I cannot understand that.
And I don’t take kindly to being called I liar. I made an honest statement of my personal belief based on my daily experiences.
Jon Paris
www.partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com
On Apr 3, 2015, at 3:09 PM, Scott Klement <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'm definitely NOT 5% more productive on the whole. There might be certain circumstances where it makes me 5% more productive... but there are also circumstances where I'm more productive with SEU.
I find it very, very hard to believe that anyone is 5% more productive with RDi on the whole.
And any circumstance where someone says something like 20% or higher... they are lying to you to try to sell something, because that's just totally absurd.
On 4/3/2015 10:45 AM, Jon Paris wrote:
Is there anyone on this list who would not claim that they are as a
minimum 5% more productive with RDi once past the initial hump?
midrange.com
