RE: SP3... and again no progress in the WDSc product !

Hi Jon,

No hard feelings... and I must admit that I experienced the same level of
frustration when I found out about the hardware requirements of WDSc.  My
IBM Thinkpad A21m (PIII 800 MHz, with 384 MB) does handle it, but with full
source level debugging on Websphere projects it's still a tough job.  On the
projects I do for customers (and where I need to use their hardware), WDSc
is out of the scope most of the time due to these same requirements.

Does this mean we shouldn't move forward ?  I don't know, and the economic
climate slows down most companies in buying new hardware for a while, but on
the other hand we have to compete with IDEs (you can't blame them that they
didn't write it in Java) that offer excellent GUIs and functionality (and an
old OS/2 style looking Code/400 isn't helping me in my presentations I do
for management).  I often get blamed for comparing WDSc with Microsoft
Visual Studio... but take it or leave it, that's what we're judged on today.
M$ has a nice GUI for years, and we just got a basic IDE (that's numbered
with V4 !).

Am I blaming someone... maybe, but my point is that IBM should get honest on
its intentions.  Either they go for it, and squeeze whatever they can out of
WDSc (where they get the budgets, I don't care), or they forget about WDSc
(and admit that there's no money) and go for Code/400.  Even in their
packaging it is a complete mess (ever promoted WDSc to someone... and looked
at his face when he found again Code/400 after installing WDSc ?).

Kind regards,
Paul

PS. We see the same issue accross IBM; just think about how we moved
customers around with a free WAS 3.5x, a free Tomcat and now a paying WAS
Express.  Or a free HTTP server and now Apache (still free, but consultancy
for migrating the server isn't free).  It just looks like IBM has an
identity crisis...

-----Original Message-----
From: wdsci-l-admin@midrange.com [mailto:wdsci-l-admin@midrange.com]On
Behalf Of Jon Paris
Sent: vrijdag 15 november 2002 21:36
To: wdsci-l@midrange.com
Subject: RE: [WDSCI-L] SP3... and again no progress in the WDSc product
!


 >> (I can't understand that still effort is invested in Code/400 for
example).

The there are those of us who think that a little more effort on CODE would
be a good idea.  I'm delighted that you have the kind of PC required to run
WDSc Paul - but we are having to go shopping this afternoon to check out the
cost of brand new laptops because our two year old models do not have the
horsepower/capacity to run WDSc.  Does that mean that we and most of the 400
users we work with should be forced to go back to SEU ?

Sorry, but since IBM can't make the current Eclipse based WDSc components
function worth a damn on a 600Mhz PIII with 192Mb or memory (my current
machine) then I have to stick with CODE until I can afford to replace the
PC.

Trust me - the amount if resource they are "wasting" (in your opinion) is a
drop in the bucket and would have absolutely zero impact on developing the
iSeries components within Eclipse.  In fact, in my opinion, it has been the
focus on Eclipse for the past couple of years that has caused us loyal CODE
users to be scr*wed and to have to put up with a level of bugs which, were
it not for the fact that it is _still_ much better than SEU, would have
turned me off years ago!

Sorry to get on your back Paul - this is a hot button for me.  If you want
to lay blame - lay it at the door of the Software Group executives who milk
the 400 for all the revenue they can squeeze out of it, but refuse to
allocate appropriate levels of resource!

Jon Paris
Partner400