Re: Switching to WDSC/RDI from SEU

Terry wrote:

I think WDSC is probably a great tool if your planning to "webify" your
business or some such thing, but for those of us in the trenches trying
to support our business with limited time, money and manpower, there
just doesn't seem to be any tangible benefit in moving to a slower and
more failure-prone editing environment. Also, I think us COBOL'ers got
the short end of the stick in terms of WDSC enhancements ;-)

I'm definitely a green-screen-only developer. That is, I develop RPG,
CL and DDS. No web, no Java, no EGL. I use WDSC every day. I haven't
had WDSC 7.0.0.6 crash ever. I did crash it by monkeying around in the
XML files back when 7.0 first came out. It's been very, very stable for me.

The number one thing I get out of it is more screen real estate. I can
see more lines of the program I'm working on than I can with SEU.

The number 2 thing I get is the ability to edit multiple members
simultaneously. DDS (subfile changes) and the HLL program that uses it.
Very closely related to that for me is the ability to edit the SAME
member twice. I can open up the Definitions (top of the code) in one
pane and the Calculations (middle of the code) in another pane and
change them both at the same time. (Ctrl-2)

Colour coding is nice but it's a distant third place along with offline
verify. Other people have different things they like.

As Thorbjørn said, there isn't a 'to die for' use that WDSC gives that
SEU does not. It's incrementally better at many of the things I do when
I edit, probably the most useful example of that is the ability to
copy/paste across the edges of the screen. It's a pain to copy/paste
say, an example from email into an SEU session.
--buck