Using RSE

[J.Pluta]

Bill, I'm sure you knew you'd get a reply from me . But let me ask a couple of questions first. What version of WDSC are you running, and on what machine? You say you're willing to spend money for a tool, well, the tool required for WDSC is a fast PC. For the green screen aspects of WDSC you need about 768KB of RAM, a CPU around 2GHz and at the very least a 7200RPM disk drive. The disk drive is very important; old laptops with 4200RPM drives really have problems. And it's crucial that you have the latest version. Version 6.0.1 is light years ahead of 5.1.2 in terms of stability and speed. Okay, if you've got all that, then here's my response: 1. The scroll wheel works great! In fact, it's the reason I've learned to use the scroll bar. 2. I hvae a wide screen monitor, and I can easily fit three source members side-by-side-by-side showing 45 lines of code or so per member. 3. The Outline view can save your butt when working on a large program. Being able to click on a variable and see every place in the program that it's used is awesome, and then click on that to bring up the exact line in the source is even cooler. 4. The search capabilities are incredible. I tell it to search on a field name in all the source files in a library, and I get a complete list of those matches - it actually shows the matching lines so I get some context. Then I double clikc on the match and the member comes up. Show me THAT in PDM/SEU! 5. I can have two views of the same member open for edit at the same time. This is great when I'm making changes to procedures and their prototypes. 6. The service entry point debugger is the coolest thing I have seen in the last 15 or 20 years, without a doubt. Set a breakpoint and any time that user calls that program (batch, interactive, whatever), the system suspends the job and returns control to my debugger. Simply awesome, especially for web development. I can go on and on, Bill, really I can. I live with WDSC every day and I love it. There are shortcomings. It's not as fast as SEU, which gets the benefits of 5250 display and local files. There is no SDA equivalent (one is coming); for now you have CODE/400. Not only that, but eventually you'll have to use WDSC, because PDM and SEU are getting no development dollars. WDSC is the future of System i development, and if you give it a chance, it's a good future. Joe

[Terry Winchester]

WOW...you echo my sentiments exactly. IMO, the whole WDSC/RSE toolset as an SEU replacement is still "beta"...I gave up on it months ago. When they get it stabilized (without having to download a gig of updates) AND when it starts as fast as SEU then I may look at it again. I hope your wearing flame retardent material today...lol Terry

[David Abramowitz]

Unfortunately I agree. I too, had to give up on using WDSC. Albeit my client was unable to provide a PC with enough power to make the thing work properly. You really need at least a gig of RAM. I have been told that IBM is working on efficiencies that will alleviate this situation, but so far. . . . . . . . Dave

[J.Pluta]

Terry, WDSC will NEVER start as fast as SEU. But that's a little bit of a red herring, because unlike green screen where you have to keep getting in and out of SEU, you I start it once in the morning and run it all day. Heck, I've had a single WDSC session up for a week! A lot of this is a function of your PC. On a regular PC, it takes 20-30 seconds to start. On my workstation (a behemoth, to be sure, but like Bill I'm willing to spend the money) it takes 5-6 seconds. Still not as fast as SEU (nor will it ever be), but it does sooooooo much more! Joe

[J.Pluta]

1GB of memory costs about $100. I don't know what to tell you. Joe

[bibarnes@yahoo.com]

We are at 6.01 and I have 1.25GB of ram a 7200rpm drive and the processor is 2.39 GHz and a dual wide screen display (2 AL2016W screens). That said I will respond to your responses 1. Scroll wheel works in LPEX but not Code400 2. answered above 3. What is an outline view? 4. We haven't used the search capabilities 5. Not sure what you are getting at 6. Haven't yet figured out how to do that either. I know that you have a course on how to use this new tool and I don't doubt that it is well written and informative. My problem is with IBM and the fact that someone had to write a course to explain how to use this new tool. Their on-line course is the pits it pushes WebSphere and we ain't going there by a directive from on high regardless of how hard IBM pushes. What will happen first is that they will hire a bunch of VB.NET programmers and rewrite all the RPG into .NET and let us dinasours go. To me it's not that terrible since I am almost at retirement anyway but my cohort in crime still has 12 years to go. The bottom line is that I have not been successful in convincing my boss to get your course and he is trying to muddle through the IBM course to see if he can earn how to use this and then teach us. If Linoma integrates their RPGTOOLBOX into RSE I will probably try it again. That is the biggest timesaver in coding we have. I am the first to admit that part of the problem is ignorance, but I learned SEU,SDA and RLU on my own and became proficient in a few weeks of T&E. it has been months with RSE and other than making the pharmacy happy because I need more BP medicine it has provided no benefits at all other than being PC. I have never been PC and am too old to start now :-)

[Terry Winchester]

I use PDM exclusively and editing a source member by entering "2" seems real quick & easy to me Sorry Joe, I should have included the fact that I'm a COBOL'er. I suspect these new tools are better for RPG'ers or web developers. BTW, we bought WDSC Step by Step but the new WDSC release (6.0) came out before we had the time to begin studying your book. I never made it past the first 30 pages or so because there were too many differences between WDSC versions. Someday, I'll open the book again and give it another try... Terry

[Guest.Visitor]

Bill Barnes wrote: > I am the > first to admit that part of the problem is ignorance, but I learned > SEU,SDA and RLU on my own and became proficient in a few weeks of > T&E. it has been months with RSE and other than making the pharmacy > happy because I need more BP medicine it has provided no benefits at > all other than being PC. I'm astonished. I had a day or two of growing pains with the editor and am very comfortable with it. I'll bounce between SEU and RSE depending upon how extensive the coding task is because I don't leave RSE up all day since I'm not a full-time coder. I only do coding in RSE, nothing else and feel I am quite productive in it. If someone came to me and said I had to choose one or the other, I'd choose RSE. SEU is just too slow when there's extensive coding to be done. Did you know that you can use the SEU line commands you're comfortable with inside RSE? Just shift-tab from position 1 and it'll jump to the sequence numbers and let you enter the commands that you're used to. To jump out of the seqence numbers, just hit tab. Bill

[J.Pluta]

"BTW, we bought WDSC Step by Step but the new WDSC release (6.0) came out before we had the time to begin studying your book. I never made it past the first 30 pages or so because there were too many differences between WDSC versions." Really? I didn't think that was the case. Version 5.1.2 (which the book was written for) and version 6.0 were very similar from a functional standpoint. I'm going to go back through the book in my copious free time and see just what the differences are. That could help in a second edition. Joe

[J.Pluta]

BTW, the issue about COBOL is well taken. COBOL doesn't get quite the same treatment as RPG. You think that's bad, the DDS editor is not a lot more functional than a colorized text editor. Still, check out the Outline view. It's a helpful little feature (though not nearly as nice as the RPG version). All of the multiple view and cut and paste capabilities exist, and sometimes just the colorized text can help. Joe