Re: WDSC vs SEU

From: DennisRootes@xxxxxxxxxxx

Joe, without trying to start a fight, I'd like to point out that your post
and Buck's aren't exactly comparing apples to apples. You TEACH WDSc to
programmers who are paying money to learn, not only does this, (usually),
make them more receptive to learning, but they get to learn from someone
who knows all the tips and tricks needed to make learning the IDE a fairly
painless process.

Buck, from what I gathered, is talking about the general population of RPG
programmers who don't have a teacher, and frankly don't feel they have the
time to learn something new unless it can be proven beyond a shadow of a
doubt how much better the new process is.

You make a good point, Dennis, but that argument continues to lose steam if
you realize that there are no enhancements being made to SEU and PDM. Be
clear on that: IBM is putting no money into PDM and SEU, and all of the new
features are in WDSC, and it's already got a lot of things that are simply
undoable in SEU (such as unlimited undo!).

Unless you plan on retiring in the next few years, using PDM and SEU is a
bad plan. If you DO plan on retiring in the next few years, get out of the
way of the folks who aren't.

Personally, I'm not a master of WDSc, and I have had limited success in
getting my shop to move over to it. I would welcome any pointers on how
to show the general population the power of WDSc vs. SEU. Perhaps you
could divulge a couple of trade secrets? =) What do you teach in the
first ten minutes that absolutely blows the newcomers away? I have a
contractor here I'd love to impress with WDSc, so far he just yawns at
me.....

Actually, it's not trade secrets, and the biggest point is that it CAN'T be
done in ten minutes. This isn't some nifty whizbang toy, it's a development
environment, and you need to be walked through it. What I do in my session
is walk you through every single step of your day-to-day routine--logging
on, editing source, compiling and debugging--and show you how to do the same
things in WDSC. I show you where it's better and also the few places where
it's worse, and at the end the inevitable conclusion is that for 80% of what
you do, WDSC is better, for 15% it's far better, and for 5% it's not as
good.

Then I give you a glimpse of all the things in WDSC that don't even have
parallels in the green screen.

After that it's a no-brainer.

Joe