Re: Fw: WDSC and Linux -- CODE400-L

Phil, thanks for your response, you've given me a lot to think about.

Yes, I usually use CODE/400, and we use C for the most part (and some CL). So, although a bit disappointing, i understand that you, as we, must assign resources to things with the most priority. When I started out on the 400 (actually S/38) I used RPG, as most businesses do. As you say, it's a few of us ISVs that use C/C++ more of the time. And, although I've not convinced my boss yet, RPG is a lot easier to use for native files, including DSPF and PRTF.

About the help, I see that help out of RSE works better. Thanks. I think my comments here were based on version 4 more than version 5. *****Just one thing would really be nice - put the runtime library reference into the help.*****

I tried to install the C/C++ plugin but it failed for some reason - had to abandon the attempt for time reasons.

My Java comments have to do with performance - various VM parameters that were recommended to help in my memory-constrained situation. One could see this as bug or feature, I suppose. ;-) This wasn't really about C in CODE, I don't think, but maybe.

In fine, I like lots of what I see. It just doesn't always fit with what we do.

Regards

Vern

At 04:59 PM 7/24/2003 -0400, you wrote:

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

-snip-

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.

-snip-

----- Forwarded by Phil Coulthard/Toronto/IBM on 07/24/2003 04:40 PM -----
|---------+------------------------------------>
|         |           Vern Hamberg             |

-snip-

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