[WEB400] Re: InfoWorld: "Developers show their independent streak , favoring Web-based apps"

[Hans Boldt <boldt@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Bartell, Aaron L. (TC) wrote:
> Here's what I don't get.  I am picking up PHP (mentioned in the article)
> right now on the side and it is an easy enough language, but it seems to
> lack fundamental pieces like step through debugging.  How are these
> languages making it if they don't have some of these basic functional
> requirements.  Or maybe they aren't functional requirements for others -
> they are in my book.
>
> Just thinking out loud.
>
> Aaron Bartell

On the subject of debugging CGI apps, one feature I like with 
writing CGI code in Python is this: When you code "import cgitb; 
cgitb.enable()" in your CGI program, a failure in the program causes 
a nice detailed report to be sent to the browser, including 
traceback and dump of variables.

But my point here is not to push Python. For those implementing CGI 
frameworks in RPG, have you considered implementing the same type of 
feature in RPG? That is, let's say you have a /COPY member 
containing a *PSSR that performs a dump, formats the contents of the 
dump spool file as an HTML file, and then writes that out to stdout. 
You then get a nice debugging capability just by including that 
/COPY member in your CGI program. Would that be useful to RPG CGI 
programmers?

Cheers! Hans