Re: SEU vs. ? -- RPG400-L

Scott, don't hang back.  Let us know how you reeally feel. 
 
 
 
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Booth Martin   http://www.MartinVT.com
Booth@xxxxxxxxxxxx
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-------Original Message-------
 
From: RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries
Date: Tuesday, June 03, 2003 12:02:49 PM
To: RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: Re: SEU vs. ?
 
 
On Tue, 3 Jun 2003, Scott Mildenberger wrote:
>
> - Having a single source member open in multiple
> windows at the same time. All windows are editable
> and changes in one are instantly available in all
> windows. This allows you to see different related
> parts of the same source member at the same time and
> make changes either place. Such as modifying a
> procedure prototype and the callp statement using it
> at the same time.
 
Wow... that's a really neat feature. I've never seen another editor
that does that... I've worked in SEU, vi/vim, pico, ee, edit, VB, MS
Visual Studio, emacs, Borland, etc... none of them do that.
 
 
>
> - Being able to double-click an error message and
> positioning me to the error in question in the source.
>
 
There was a time where I worked in Borland Turbo C++ for a year, and then
came back to the iSeries, and that was a feature that I missed having.
 
> - Being able to compile without exiting the editor and
> keeping the source open. This makes the
> compile/test/debug cycle a much quicker turnaround for
> me.
 
I can do that in SEU (F3 to save, hit Y under "return to editing", then
F21 to open a command prompt to do the compile)
 
>
> - F1 context sensitive help takes me to the Reference
> Manual.
>
 
Does it work for APIs? That would be really useful. I don't generally
need it for RPG.
 
 
My biggest problem with CODE (and apparently, also with WDSC!) is that
they only work in Windows. I don't work in Windows, I work in FreeBSD.
 
I was told, awhile back, that WDSC 5 would solve that problem because it
was written in Java. But now that I have it, and have tried it, it uses
native bits, and does not work anywhere but Windows.
 
I can run Eclipse on my FreeBSD desktop, but it doesn't know anything
about the iSeries or RPG. Apparently, even though Eclipse is open
source, everything iSeries related is proprietary IBM plugins.
 
I think I'm leaning towards replacing my iSeries with a FreeBSD server,
and replacing my RPG code with the various tools that run on FreeBSD
(there are many more development tools for FreeBSD than there are for
OS/400)
 
FreeBSD is more stable than OS/400. It is more versatile than OS/400.
It is *much* less expensive to set up and run. But the really big
problem with OS/400 is this constant requirement to use Windows as a
front-end. I'm sorry if I keep coming back to that, but that's a really
big deal.
 
We are a small company. We don't need to be able to service thousands of
simultaneous users. If we're required to have Windows as a front-end, we
may as well just make Windows our platform. But, I don't like Windows.
Hence, I don't want to use it as a front-end for OS/400, and I also don't
want to make it my platform.
 
What a joke IBM is. They talk about Linux, but force Windows on you.
They talk about Java, but then make their Java only work in Windows. What
good is a Java program that isn't cross-platform? Why have the serious
speed & memory issues that come with Java, if you don't get the only real
advantage to Java?
 
I really wish the iSeries had it's own native GUI solution, like every
other platform in the world. I wish that CODE/400 was written to use
that native GUI. Then, it would be a real choice for me.
 
But, knowing IBM, they'd make a native GUI that ran on the iSeries, and
then make sure that only Windows users could access it.
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