[IBMiOSS] Early impressions of Litmis Spaces for Python

[I hope you'll forgive the bloggish nature of this post. Given the
intended audience, I felt this was the best venue available.]

Overall, Litmis Spaces for Python has been a positive experience. In
some ways, it's almost unbelievably slick; but it's also rough around
the edges.

The slick parts: Using your account requires no software on your end
other than a modern browser. (I've personally used Firefox and Chrome
successfully; I haven't tried any others.) There is a browser-based
SSH login shell that reminds me very much of text-based Unix or Linux
shells. There is a quite beautiful browser-based GUI editor (or
"light" IDE).

Other nice things about it: So far the best thing is that Aaron
Bartell has been enthusiastic and responsive in trying to address any
issues and improve the experience and utility of the whole system.

Now for the rough edges. The shell is a little flaky when it comes to
screen-related issues. Things disappear irretrievably when the line
you're typing gets too long, instead of cleanly wrapping. (All the
more so because the default command prompt includes the full
specification of your current directory, which is already most of a
screen width if you're exploring OSS stuff, thanks to directory
conventions chosen by IBM.) The "more" command is too glitchy to be of
any use.

Somehow the JOE text editor seems to be able to handle screen-oriented
operation, but it's no vi or vim. Some would argue that's a good
thing, but it would be nice to also have vi or a suitable clone, so
that traditional Unix folk can feel right at home and not have to
learn Yet Another Text Editor.

What about the GUI editor? It's very pretty, but it has its own
glitches and weird behavior. Sometimes it goes offline for no apparent
reason (even though the shell is still active and working normally).
Sometimes some of the tabs on the left become unavailable, as do some
of the menu options. Maybe this is related to going offline?

When it comes to using Python itself, the interactive interpreter is
severely hampered by its failure to recognize the backspace key. You
can sort of work around it by using Ctrl+H, but it is not a pleasant
experience, as you can imagine.

Anyway, the bugs and glitches are mostly annoyances, and I can deal
with them. Some of them might be cured by relatively simple
configuration changes. What I'm really missing from Litmis Spaces is
an easy way to work on the native side, in QSYS.LIB. To me, that's
what makes an IBM i an IBM i. Yes, there is the itoolkit bridge, but
it's not that pleasant or easy-to-use (by Python standards), and more
importantly, it's inherently limited in bandwidth. You can't easily
whip up an RPG program to communicate with your Python program on
Litmis Spaces. (In principle, you could write some RPG code into an
IFS file and then send the appropriate CL commands through itoolkit to
compile it; but even if that worked, you would be using neither RDi
nor SEU to write this code, and the whole thing would be like building
a ship in a bottle.)

I was really looking forward to working with my pub400.com account,
precisely because it's a QSYS.LIB environment first and foremost, but
progress on the Python setup there has been stalled. So right now,
pub400.com feels like an IBM i without Python, and Litmis Spaces for
Python feels like Python without an IBM i.

John Y.