Re: RPG

On Tue, Jul 19, 2016 at 6:23 PM, Jon Paris <jon.paris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I can only speak from my teaching experience. We did classes back in the old columnar days and it was hard going. Not so much initial coding but the errors that occur (and frustrate) when simply adding a character to a field name - thereby shoving all the other factors out of their boxes. Columns just didn’t feel right to the students and it just inhibited progress.

I started out with prompts in SEU and stuck with them for what I guess
is an abnormally long time. (I don't really have any frame of
reference.) I would think other beginners in those days would have
used prompts too. And, when prompting, the "knocking everything else
off by one" thing doesn't come up much, does it?

Once I graduated from prompts, I still just naturally developed the
habit of maintaining columns. I tend not to use insert mode much in
SEU, and when I do, it's just a reflex to delete commensurately. I
mean, don't people see when things are out of alignment? (Hmm... lots
of people seem to be able to tolerate poorly indented code, so maybe
not.)

Can’t use proportional fonts in SEU. You can in RDi - just sayin’ <grin>

Right! I totally would NOT want proportional in SEU! But I might
consider it in RDi, for fully free format.

Thanks for sharing your experiences and observations. I still think
our tastes and habits are a two-way interaction with our tools and
environment. Sometimes we feel strongly enough that our tools are
holding us back, or simply annoying us, that we find (or build!) new
tools. Other times, I think we mold our workflow to suit the tools we
have. It's my belief that use of SEU and avoidance of free format are
related in both directions.

I haven’t met many who have experienced other platforms who find SEU acceptable. Even former mainframes are happier with RDi because SEU doesn’t allow the Rexx scripting that mainframes editors do and so feels very limited in capability.

I may sound like a defender of SEU sometimes, but I don't think of
myself as one. If IBM were to decide to scrap SEU completely, and only
ship RDi, I would welcome the change. (I don't think it would be a
good idea to completely remove the possibility of green-screen
editing, but keeping EDTF around for touch-ups and emergencies would
be enough for me. Now, if we were to then start seeing people prefer
EDTF over RDi for writing RPG, that would really be something!)

John Y.