Re: RDi vs SEU

Scott,

I'm very sorry to hear of the set back in your recovery and hope that a
cause can be determined (and acted on).

As for SEU and RDi, anyone that has watched me work knows I'm in the SEU
camp (with some minor exceptions).

Hoping things turn around for you,
Bruce

On Sun, Apr 5, 2015 at 2:35 AM, Scott Klement <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

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?

--
This is the RPG programming on the IBM i (AS/400 and iSeries) (RPG400-L)
mailing list
To post a message email: RPG400-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options,
visit: http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/rpg400-l
or email: RPG400-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives
at http://archive.midrange.com/rpg400-l.