System iNetwork

September 23, 2004

Initial impressions

Welcome to our account of our journey into the wilderness. While we can’t quite say that we are going where no man has gone before, this sure isn’t the information superhighway, either. We are actually going to attempt to use this “new-fangled” product, and will let you know how it works. (As well as using this convenient soap box to let IBM know how it works!)

I have already spent many hours installing, learning, using, and cussing this new development environment. Right now, there are a few features that I like; but MANY that are very annoying. I suppose some of this is inevitable, given the many years IBM had to polish the PDM tools we all know and love; yet I have to wonder why they could not have given us a way to replicate ALL of the PDM functions, instead of just some of them. Or, maybe the functions I can’t find are just hidden too well; and as I find them I will let you know where they are so you don’t have to spend hours searching for them too.

One of the first things you will notice is that the performance (assuming your iSeries has decent response times) of the WDSC environment is MUCH SLOWER than PDM. It takes much longer to start up, and to get lists of libraries, objects, and members. Even after upgrading my laptop (an IBM A31 Thinkpad w/1.6GHz processor) to a gigabyte of memory, it is still slow.

The second thing you will notice is that the product is incomplete. Many of the tasks you could do easily from within PDM are not included in the base product, and you must purchase additional Eclipse toolsets to duplicate the functionality in the base PDM product. We have purchased a 3rd party toolset to help us view jobs, spool files, and give us SQL access to the database from within Eclipse. This product was a VERY early addition to the toolset, right after the memory upgrade!

I suspect that IBM will be adding features over time which will address some of the shortcomings of the development environment as it stands today; and that we will learn more about the Eclipse platform and LPEX editor, and be able to customize some features on our own. It’s not all that bad if your only task is writing code, but how many developers are lucky enough to say that’s all they do? We all have other responsibilities, including assisting users, monitoring performance, testing and documentation, etc. These other tasks (which could easily be handled with a quick entry on the command line at the bottom of the PDM screens) now force us to exit out of our development environment (usually by using the mouse to click into a 5250 session, complete the task, and then use the mouse again to return to the WDSC environment). This takes much longer than typing the command, and pressing F12 when finished to return right to the place you were at when you were interrupted.

As I continue writing this blog, you may hear me refer to “the rat”. “The rat” is the term I use for the mouse, when I am FORCED to use it because I must navigate to a new panel, scroll down a list, change to a new session, etc. ALL the programmers here are very familiar with a command line interface, and are very productive with it. It is VERY inefficient to remove your hands from the keyboard, move the mouse, type a few characters, move the mouse, etc. You spend a lot of time trying to EXACTLY position the cursor, and then even more time moving your hands back to the keyboard. One of the things I am most disappointed about is the lack of shortcuts (or perhaps an index to them so we know what they are) which can be used without having to touch the rat! If you are developing stuff for the web and designing the browser interface, the mouse is a great tool, and necessary. If, however, all you wish to do is open up a known source member, make a few changes to the text, and then save and compile it; it should not take ANY mouse movements to do this. (IBM, are you listening?)

So far, the experience has not been as pleasant has I had hoped it would be when we found out we were going to be using the new tools. The learning curve is VERY steep, even for someone with experience with other PC based development tools. It is not all bad news, however; and I will share some of the features that I really like about it in the next installment. Until then...

Posted by at September 23, 2004 5:54 PM