Joe Pluta wrote:
From: Buck
WDSC is not a PDM-killer.
It is for all but the simplest tasks.
It seems self-evident that WDSC is not a PDM-killer, because way more
people use PDM than WDSC.
It is a pretty good IDE, slightly better than
PDM because of more screen real estate and coloured tokens. That's it.
Not true. WDSC has far superior search capabilities. The integrated
compile errors far surpasses the WRKSPLF/PDM combination. The ease of
creating multiple compile commands is outstanding. Copying source between
systems is a breeze.
Listen to the complaints that every single newcomer to WDSC from PDM has
to say and tell THEM that their impression is all wet. The universal
opinion is that WDSC is too complicated and doesn't offer enough benefit
compared to PDM/SEU.
We veterans have spent a lot of time and energy trying to convince
newcomers of the truth in your reply and it's been a long, slow road.
It's my opinion that we (the WDSC community as a whole) have set
expectations too high -- unrealistically high.
Let's address your points. Superior search capability. True! Now take
a straw poll. I have 2 questions.
a) Who uses search from the SEU command line?
b) Who uses regular expressions in WDSC?
I suspect the answer is 'a very few' in both cases. Now given that
Ctrf-F looks quite a lot like F14, and that regular expressions are
complex enough that few people use them, where is the 'superior' part of
searching in practical RPG programmer terms? By the way, Ctrl-F doesn't
have a 'search by date,' which SEU has. Searching through a selected
block in WDSC is just plain flaky. Select a block of text, like a
procedure definition by holding down the Shift key and pressing Cursor
Down. Press Ctrl-F. Tick 'Restrict search to selection.' Type const
in the 'From' box. Good luck. Escape out of that and select your lines
with Ctrl-L instead and it works. Grrrr. Fortunately, I'm a command
line freak, so I prefer 'findText all selection replaceWith CONST const'
and that works for me without having to fight the GUI for domination of
the source. <grin>
Integrated compile/errors far surpasses PDM. Listen the the newcomers
wonder how (and why) they need to set up the message filters and remove
the messages the error reporting sticks into their source. I happen to
like the WDSC system, and after a very short while I'm used to Ctrl-F5,
but how is it substantially different from F10, *err, F16?
Ease of creating multiple compile commands is about the same as user
actions in PDM.
Copying source between systems is easy with drag & drop but newcomers
count the time spent drilling down through the source tree as
frustration. SNDNETF is fast and can be scripted in a CL program so
that you can easily do incremental development and ship the source many
times via a CL program.
Everything in your reply, everything, is accomplished in PDM with
practically no more effort than needed in WDSC. We've raised their
expectations too high with comments like this.
And if all of this even if you're just maintaining old RPG III code. If
you're using RPGLE, the Outline view and Service Entry Points are far more
productive than PDM and SEU.
This is another expectation that is unrealistic. What does 'more
productive' really mean? Can PDM programmers now type faster because
they switched? I get bang for my buck (heh!) via regular expressions
and (the once and future) scripting, things SEU can't offer at all.
Copy/paste? Every emulator has it.
WDSC offers me more real estate than SEU, so I can easily copy a hundred
lines of code and paste them multiple times (heaven forbid) in multiple
open source members if I want to. I don't ever need this in real life
of course, except when grabbing code from the web or a mailing list. In
Ye Olden Days, I would save the post to a file and CPYF it to my new
source member, but I like the ability to copy/paste directly.
For the editing tasks that commercial programmers do (i.e. not tool
writers), WDSC just doesn't make people that much more productive. SEP
is great, and makes debugging lots easier once you get used to watching
variables the new way.
Even if it was just real estate and color, it would be worth it, but the
other features above (and many others beside) make staying with PDM and SEU
very hard to justify.
I've already switched, for a decade now. My challenge to you is to
convince the newcomers that switching from PDM to WDSC is hard to
justify. Can you recall a post from a newcomer that went like this:
'Just tried WDSC. Loaded quickly and ran flawlessly. Does everything I
need and I'll never use PDM or SEU again!'? I can't. There is a large
body of people who disagree with you, and continue to justify using SEU
every day. I believe it's because WDSC has been positioned as the
be-all and end-all of Life, The Universe and Everything. At least in
their minds.
I agree with everything you've said, and I think the key to adopting
WDSC is setting reasonable expectations, or perhaps accepting the
product for what it currently is, rather than what people think it
promises to be in the future.
WDSC is better than SEU and PDM for all but the simplest jobs.
Oh, and SDA <grin>.
Yes, but just how much better is the entire point. I'm an avid, if not
rabid <grin> user of WDSC, and have been using a GUI editor for a
looooong time. Despite that, I have not been able to get a single
programmer to switch over, no matter how much I show them and work in
front of them. They are just not impressed enough to switch. Maybe all
they do is 'the simplest jobs.'
I'm going to try to 'market' WDSC to the folks here at work again, only
this time I'm going to try to set expectations a little lower. The
culture shock of moving to a GUI is apparently bad enough that the
adoption rate is just too low. I'll be positioning WDSC as a little
better than SEU, and for the obvious (i.e. anyone can see it when they
look!) screen real estate and coloured tokens (look -- no more stealth
comments!)
If I can get anybody to try it again (I'm hearing 'yeah, yeah, come talk
to me after The Big Project is done') I'll try to keep a record of what
the newcomers did and didn't like. Maybe we (the community) can make
life better with our Wiki.
I'm not giving up on WDSC, but I don't think it's going to kill PDM in
the next 5 years either. It's just not that much better for the
complexity and culture shock involved.
--buck
midrange.com
