Hey All,
I have been reading through the vast emails on this discussion and finally had to chime in. I have been programming a while on WDSCi (5 yrs) starting first with RPGIV 5250 only and now working on Rich Client/Web Applications with RPGIV stored procedures. I think Charlie's perspective comes from the job he is doing. Maybe if your only doing RPG green screen you can sell that, maybe, but I have to agree with all the others that say you dont have to sell WDSCi. This IDE sells itself in many ways which have been well stated in earlier emails. The future development of the iSeries wont be 5250. I know I will get lots of arguements on this but face reality, some sort of Gui interface will replace it sooner or later. When that day comes you will realize SEU and PDM will be useless. Be ready for that day because I can tell you some companies are already there and without WDSCi its a nightmare. For example to debug a Rich Client (Java Eclipse based application) issue without WDSCi I would have to run the test on Eclipse in debug veiw (I would be using Eclipse if WDSCi didnt exist), guess the iSeries job# many times or search iSeries navigator by user, set the breakpoint on 5250 either searching a huge list of jobs in STRISDB (RPGIII) or STRSRVJOB (RPGIV) well you get the picture. Thankfully all thats needed with WDSCi is that I right click the object, set service point and run the application and wow magic its in debug. No competition there.
Sorry for the rant but we must move forward to get younger programmers to use the greatest machine ever made and they wont take new jobs using what they call the main frame (green screen) tools.
Thanks for the ear
Don N
Sr. Pgmr/Analyst
Friedman Corp.
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From: "Charlie Ramsdale" <Charlie_Ramsdale@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2007 10:36 AM
To: "Websphere Development Studio Client for iSeries" <wdsci-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [WDSCI-L] WDSC vs SEU
Yes I do, Buck. Every time I teach my class, that's what 9 out of 10
people say. They love it. They say they'll use SEYU occasionally for
quick things, but they love WDSC. There's always one curmudgeon who
insists on ignoring the benefits and complaining about how WRKMBRPDM
starts faster, but the people who actually want productivity, they
love
it.
Have you done a follow up with those students to see how they're doing
now?
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.
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.
I don't work in a class room, I work in the real world and business
dictates "I want it yesterday". They don't understand you taking time
away from their projects so that you can learn to use something that
they see as having no direct benefit to the business. ("it doesn't
create income" - how many times have we heard that?).
Would I like to use WDSC more? Sure. Would I like the other developers
to switch use WDSC too? Yes. Will that happen any time soon.
Realistically, no. You can blast and browbeat those of us that don't
"do as you do" all you want, but when it comes right down to it, when
management comes my way and says "I want this yesterday" - I can jump
right into SEU and come very close to that deadline without losing time
relearning my trade.
Charlie
PS: by the way, I LOVE SQL. I can't remember the last time I used
query.
-----Original Message-----
From: wdsci-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:wdsci-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Joe Pluta
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2007 10:22 AM
To: 'Websphere Development Studio Client for iSeries'
Subject: Re: [WDSCI-L] WDSC vs SEU
From: Buck
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.
They'd have said the same thing about cell phones in the early 90s. Or
the
World Wide Web.
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.
I don't have a single customer who says that anymore, Buck. Not one.
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.
Interesting. I teach people how to use WDSC and in one day they're
productive. I wonder what's different about my approach and yours,
Buck.
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'm talking about the PDM search capabilities, Buck. Man, sit back and
put
down the caffeine . Seriously, the file search capabilities
simply
blow PDM out of the water.
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?
Oh gz. If you can't learn Ctrl-F5 you need a new job.
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.
And if you have a filter set up for your source, it's a breeze. Use the
tool. SNDNETF is nice if you have it set up, but not all machines are
set
up to support it between each other.
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.
You can't come close to the search capabilities (something you continue
to
miss) and you can't copy between machines without configuring SNADS.
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.
More productive means an easy way to see everywhere a field is used and
jump
from one place to another. An easy way to expand am externally
described
data structure or a file. Gz, Buck.
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.
If this is the only benefit you can see from more real estate, then you
are
missing the point.
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.
Yes I do, Buck. Every time I teach my class, that's what 9 out of 10
people
say. They love it. They say they'll use SEYU occasionally for quick
things, but they love WDSC. There's always one curmudgeon who insists
on
ignoring the benefits and complaining about how WRKMBRPDM starts faster,
but
the people who actually want productivity, they love it.
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.
WDSC continues to gain share, PDM to lose. That's the fact.
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!)
Why don't you pay someone to actually teach the product, Buck? Maybe
it's
your positioning, not the product.
Joe
midrange.com
