Re: Merlin

[Justin Taylor <jtaylor.0ab@xxxxxxxxx>]

IBM has made it clear that VS Code is the future (their RPG copilot will be
released for VS Code and they haven't even committed to RDi integration).
That being said, I'm sticking with RDi for now.  I love the idea of VS Code
code4i, and I check it out a couple of times a year.  For me, it's not
feature-complete yet (biggest gap is equivalent to RDi Outline view).

I know that some frustrated Mac users have abandoned RDi, but I've always
used a company-supplied Windows PC so that doesn't apply to me.



On Mon, Mar 24, 2025 at 1:10 PM Dan Bale <dan.bale@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

> Last I looked, there was a high cost to entry with Merlin, both in terms
> of dollars and specific technical expertise.  Given that a lot of
> developers are still refusing to give up SEU, I honestly don't see a lot of
> shops making that investment.
>
> We have RDi licenses here, but just last week a developer trying to
> upgrade to 9.8 had a devil of a time with applying the permanent license.
> RDi kept returning extremely vague error messages and it wasn't until I
> discovered that the user's install somehow managed to have a floating
> license instead of the permanent license, even though our instructions for
> users to install RDi 9.8 are crystal clear and the user in this case is not
> one for PEBKAC errors.  After several days before we finally determined the
> issue and had to get IBM to tell us how to delete the floating license, he
> was ready to jump ship to VS Code for i.
>
> I've got both RDi and VS Code for i installed on my work laptop.  I
> primarily use RDi due to my several years of experience with it, but I am
> learning to use VS Code for i on my personal laptop for when I work on
> PUB400.  Does anyone who has used both have a good reason to recommend RDi
> over VS Code for i?
>
> - Dan Bale