Re: WDSC vs SEU

From: Charlie Ramsdale

Have you done a follow up with those students to see how they're doing
now?

All the ones I've talked to are doing fine, Charlie.

I attended one of Joe's sessions at DevCon last year (and several other
presenters) and I too walked away professing allegiance to WDSC. Now
several months later where am I?... occasionally, if time allows, I
remind myself to use WDSC instead of SEU.

With all due respect, Charlie, a one-hour session doesn't get it for people
who have been using green screen for ten or twenty years, and it's simply
unrealistic to think so.

What you need is an all-day immersive session, like I'm giving at DevCon
this year. I give this session at user groups and onsite at companies all
around the country, and I get nothing but positive responses. I also have a
course that Rochester Initiative sells that basically does the same thing.

So yes, I am biased, but I think I've got a reputation of advocating only
those tools and technologies which I think are the right tools for the job,
and for development on the System i, WDSC is the right-est tool out there,
and getting right-er every day <grin>.

I have many, many years of using SEU and green screen and am quite
proficient and productive using them. I have many minutes of using WDSC
and still have to stop and search on how to accomplish some tasks.

Then you haven't been taught, Charlie. It's as simple as that. How long
did it take you to learn how to code a subfile? It sure wasn't one hour.
And yet, you didn't go back to coding arrays on the screen, did you?

I find myself continually amazed at the idea that you should be able to be
proficient in WDSC in one hour, and that if you aren't, that it's somehow a
waste of your time, especially from the veterans who have taken years, even
decades, to learn their craft.

By the way, there are some people for whom WDSC will never be a good tool.
Some people simply can't learn how to use a mouse, or have eyesight issues
that preclude taking advantage of large amounts of text. But for the
majority of capable individuals, if you could learn how to surf the web, you
can learn how to use WDSC.

Joe