Hi John,
I use IBM Rational Developer for Power (RDp) 8.0 as my IDE.
There is a 60-day trial version of RDp 8.0:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/r/rdp/
So far you've probably seen WDSCi, RDi, and RDp thrown around. They are the same product with different names at each of the versions listed. The latest version, RDp, is much-improved.
In regard to what you say about any programmer able to make mincemeat of /free so it's not readable - that can be said for anything. Spaghetti code, horribly named variables, redundant code, sub-procedures using global variables instead of local variables, no comments - yes, a programmer can easily take anything meant for good and make it suck. That's what shop standards and education is for.
Note: The IDE does do auto-indentation. However you can't highlight a bunch of code and have say, "Format it," like you can in other IDEs. There is an enhancement request in for this.
The benefits to using the IDE are numerous. To be honest, it took me a few months to break from SEU and to use the IDE to code, but I can't imagine going back. A couple things I love about the IDE:
- Verifying code to get a list of errors with the ability to double-click an error and be taken straight to it.
- Seeing 75 lines of code at a time (due to the font and point size I use)
- Readability: color coding in an IDE is there for a reason - you can quickly digest what you're looking at by color association.
- Outline: allows for easy navigation as well as a means of seeing definitions w/o moving through code
- Content Assist: Another tool to quickly see how something is defined w/o even having to move your eyes over to the outline. Also a great tool for auto-completion (which comes in handy with longer field/procedure names).
Anyway, at most I hope you take some time to play with the trial version. Yes, non-trial version it costs money, but if you find that you like it, you'll likely find that you can justify it as well.
There's a WDSCi list on midrange as well. If you do decide to try the trial, I suggest signing up on that list in case you have any questions. They are a very helpful bunch (much like they are here).
http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/wdsci-l
Kurt Anderson
Sr. Programmer/Analyst
CustomCall Data Systems
-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John Yeung
Sent: Monday, June 27, 2011 12:10 PM
To: RPG programming on the IBM i / System i
Subject: Re: Impossible to even think about rewriting in RPG
Blake, thank you for your description of what RDP does. It totally sounds like it would be helpful, but getting my employer to spend hard dollars is always a struggle.
Bryce, I will have to do more research. Large portions of our codebase are still RPG III, and if I understand correctly, there isn't a way to incorporate any ILE benefits to those until they are at least converted to RPG IV. We do write almost all of our new RPG in RPG IV (making use of the better syntax and BIFs and so forth but minimal if any use of ILE), but right now I think there are still too many critical RPG III pieces that we find it very daunting to make the wholesale switch. (I fear some of those old pieces make use of dubious older features and methodologies that I don't think we can just use the automated converter to convert them all without breaking
something.)
I fully understand that most of the problem is irrational on our part, but we do our best to knock the pieces we do touch into better shape than they were before.
Dennis, I realize most assemblers for a very long time have not required things to be in *specific* columns. However, my point is that long-time users of legacy RPG get used to seeing things formatted in that *style*. If you take a piece of columnar RPG code out of SEU and paste it into a plain editor, then adjust all the opcodes to be further to the right by a space or two, that does not change the human readability practically at all, especially in RPG IV. SEU may care, and the compiler may care, but the human typically doesn't.
Also, I think some older programmers (subconsciously) are aided by the fact that only so much can happen on one line of traditional RPG.
When you can have arbitrary expressions (and this applies to EVAL, IF, DOW, etc. just as much as /free), you can start to pack a lot more into a line (and sometimes more and sometimes less), and for some brains, it makes each line harder to parse.
When it comes to /free, I also have the peculiarity that I'm now used to not having semicolons at the end of my lines. I find it especially jarring that even an if statement needs a semicolon after it, because this isn't how C works. (This is more of a writing hiccup than a reading one.)
John
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