Fw: WDSC and Linux -- CODE400-L

Vern, by your comments it appears you are using CODE/400, not the RSE. And
you are using it
for C. Is this correct? Note that the RSE and iSeries Projects are the
"IDE" that most closely
competes with .NET, and really the truth is its optimized for RPG and
COBOL, for which we do have
code assist (COBOL's is coming soon) and outline view, as well as
context-sensitive.  Indeed,
to see where we ultimately want to take RPG/COBOL development, look at the
tooling for the
true "native" language for the IDE ... Java. I'd be interested to know how
you or others feel
the eclipse Java support compares with VS Studio's xxx.net support.

This is a more accurate comparison than CODE's C support. For better or
worse, C is not
that heavily used on iSeries, and most users of it are ISVs you use their
own tools anyway,
hence this is little incentive for us to invest in rich tooling for it, as
we are for RPG and COBOL
and Java.  As for CODE, we are moving away from it to an IDE and the RSE
editor precisely
in order to offer a more competive environment than point tools can offer.

The help is web-page based, which is where the industry is going, and the
search support is only
in the RSE vs CODE because we didn't want to ship the older CODE search
engine and we
wanted to focus on the new IDE usage scenario. This is something are
willing to change if there is
demand.

As for the ascertain that you need to use Java to make the environment
useful, again, that is a
statement for C development with CODE.  It is not our goal for this to be
the case for RPG/CBL
in the IDE, and indeed it isn't the case for Java in the IDE. Do you need
to write Java macros
today to make the RSE useful for RPG/COBOL development? We hope not, but if
so let us
know what it is we are missing "out of the box" and we'll fix it... we are
only at our 2nd release
and you can expect each release to move the ball foreward. The support for
Java macros is
meant to be a bonus for those who like to customize, and for ISVs, not to
be a requirement
to be productive... especially versus our true competitor, which of course
is SEU and PDM.

As for other comments about initial startup time of the IDE after booting,
we hear you, and
we are working on it, although the idea is that you start the IDE once and
leave it up for the
day. WDSC does take longer to start than raw eclipse, which is probably due
to the larger
number of plugins to be processed. Also, your startup time will include the
time to re-connect
and re-expand your RSE filters, time you'd spend anyway ... but this
re-expand behaviour
can be turned off via preferences.

Phil Coulthard, iSeries AD,  IBM Canada Ltd. coulthar@xxxxxxxxxxx

----- Forwarded by Phil Coulthard/Toronto/IBM on 07/24/2003 04:40 PM -----
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|         |           Vern Hamberg             |
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|         |           07/24/2003 11:36 AM      |
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|         |           CODE/400 Discussion &    |
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  |       Subject:  RE: WDSC and Linux                                          
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I'm a long way with you, Aaron. MS' Visual Studio IDE is so much easier to
work in than anything IBM has come up with. And I could qualify as a 400
bigot. I've mostly worked in VB (pre .NET). Code completion is a dream
there - parameters are clearly indicated. Help is normal Windows - maybe
the goal is platform independence for the help in WDSC, but it is painful
to wait for it. And when you are in a help page in WDSC, you cannot search
- it tells you to go back to the RSE - yuk!

I'm finding that I have to become a Java guru, almost, to make this thing
work even close to reasonably. But we don't do any Java, so we have no
time, nor motivation, to find out that much about it. One of us does very
well with CodeWright - gets all kinds of cross-referencing, etc., I
believe, for the C code we write. Cl does great with SEU/PDM. I often
prefer to use TextPad for C - any ASCII editor is better than waiting for
RSE.

Of course you need to set some things in MS' IDE, but you don't need to
know how to tweak the operational stuff that runs it, whereas you need to
know Java niceties to get WDSC to work better. I can't afford the time -
too much to do.

Regards

Vern

At 09:45 AM 7/24/2003 -0500, you wrote:
><snip>
>Big Blue has sacrificed platform independence (at least for now) to get
>better tools than CODE/400 in your hands before you defect to a more
popular
>platform.
></snip>
>
>I hope to defect this year yet.  I am taking up .NET using Visual Studio.
>'Help' in WDSc looks like meal worms compared to the 'Help' in Visual
>Studio.  That is just one area where M$ kicks IBM's butt.  IBM would have
>done better to create their own language rather than stick with Java.  I
am
>picking up the .NET environment way faster than Java, and that is because
>everything is so much more seamless to the Microsoft developer.  It just
>frustrates me I guess, IBM has a kick butt server and database, but less
>than adequate development environment.
>
>People like Joe Pluta would say everything is there that one could
possibly
>need, and he would say that Java is much farther along than .NET - and he
>would probably be right, but he is a Java  guru at the top of his pack.
Try
>being a RPG/Java developer and make use of all the needed tools.  They are
>just too far out there for the average person to make sense of them in a
>timely manner.  I am sure I could make them all work together if I was
given
>a certain amount of time, but time is not what I have.
>
> >...you're likely to get your wish. Bummer!
>
>Not soon enough for me. :-(
>
>Sorry for the rant, but I couldn't help it. . .
>
>Aaron Bartell