Re: Outline view and old code

I guess each to his own. I agree the outline isn't perfect, but I certainly found it useful. Jumping to subroutines was one thing. Examining one-by-one the usage of fields in a file was another. There are probably other ways of doing this... I rarely opened the compiler listing, though occasionally I did refer to it. Granted, I was working on a system where the code had at least all been converted to RPG IV, so maybe that made a difference. And I was probably doing more research than coding.

I think you get used to your own techniques. A coworker did not use outline either--his approach was to drag off a window of the current source he was editing to his second monitor. I never tried this because I used the second monitor for e-mail and others apps.

Be interesting to see what others think.

Sam

(And yes, I also started out on Code/400--that was a hard sell to other developers. Did you ever try Paul Conte's version of free form RPG that preceeded it, written in, I think, in Pascal. That was a long time ago...)

On 2/23/2016 4:04 PM, Buck Calabro wrote:

In a different thread,

On 2/23/2016 4:38 PM, Sam_L wrote:

There is a lot of ancient, hard-to-decipher code out there that has to
be maintained. This is where, in my experience anyway, RDi, and the
outline view, really help. If you have such code, IMHO you need RDi.

I live and breathe this exact scenario. Code written in the S/36 days,
full of left hand indicators, GOTO nests and everything is a hodgepodge
of dodgy variable names like NUM, NUM1 and TEST.

I am clearly doing something wrong, because I find the outline view
close to useless. Only rarely does it match up to the compiler cross
reference, and in the middle of editing, it comes and goes as the parser
chews away on the code-in-progress.

I'm not complaining in the least bit: I see this as a work in progress,
and I do see it getting better with each release. My point isn't to
complain, it's to try to find out how other people keep finding the
value in it that I can't seem to.

For context, I've been using RDi and ancestors since Code/400 ran on
OS/2. I'm a happy, happy RDi user who keeps a compiler listing open on
the other monitor.