If RDi Was Free, Would You Go For A Ride?
August 16, 2017 Dan Burger
Some interesting developments have occurred with the Rational Developer for i (RDi) team. First came the extraction from IBM Software Group and relocation within the IBM i development organization. Then came the integration of RDi development efforts involving IBM and HelpSystems. What’s next? Perhaps a free lightweight version of RDi designed to entice more IBM i developers to trade in their old tools and take a closer look at what they can gain with RDi.
A new request for enhancement (RFE #108558) may gather enough momentum to bring a free RDi to market. That leads to the question of whether price is a real barrier to the tool’s adoption?
“RDi pricing makes management hesitant to allocate budget,” says the RFE originator Hassan Farooqi. “They can’t see the return on investment. To make ROI more obvious, we need a light version of RDi that is free and includes the basic functions of SEU: editing, compiling, running and debugging. The remaining hundreds of features can remain in the paid version.”
He goes on to say: “The goal is the get off green screen, which is an existential threat to IBM i in my experience.”
The progression from free RDi Lite to paid versions of RDi with expanded features and functionality, Farooqi says, should ultimately remove the legacy stamp from IBM i. (The RFE refers to paid versions of RDi by the fictional names RDi Pro and RDi Premium. They would be distinguished by expanded features and functionality.)
The idea that as more people are introduced to RDi more will learn the basic functions and make the case for the purchase of the fully equipped version of RDi. Currently there is a 60-day trial version of RDi, which serves as the “get to know me” offer, however, the reality is that most developers can’t carve out enough time in their schedules to learn a new tool within 60 days, especially one with all the features and functions of RDi.
Enticing IBM i developers to try a new tool has not been quick or easy. Let’s just say IBM’s track record for marketing and promoting its own software always has been underwhelming at best and leave it at that. The fact is that many developers are comfortable using SEU, the venerable (and free) green-screen development tool that anyone outside of the IBM i world would describe as a Stone Age artifact. It seems safe to say that many of the pro-SEU developers have spent little or no time with the RDi tool, which often surprises the unaware with its capabilities that allows users the convenience of seeing many more lines of code, more errors and the source of the errors in a single view.
Farooqi says he describes RDi to SEU advocates as “enhanced SEU.” The SEU advocates remain skeptical, but are mostly unwilling to make side by side comparisons.
The IBM i requests for enhancements (RFEs) program was set up for the IBM i community to make recommendations to IBM and allows the community to vote on the recommendations, which provides added weight for those that gather large quantities of votes. It also allows the community to comment on the RFE and make suggestions.
Aaron Bartell, a well-known IBM i development advocate, supports the RDi Lite idea. In his posted comment, he references existing low cost-no cost options and the importance of providing an enticement for developers to experiment with RDi.
Bartell poses the question: “If the primary goals are to get away from editing in SEU and have low cost, then doesn’t MiWorkplace.com fit that? It’s roughly $32 per year. There are other options also, like Liam Allan’s IBMiCmd, wich is free.
“With that said, if I was running the RDi product [for IBM], I would certainly have a lower-cost entry product to get users hooked in hopes they upgraded to premium.”
Regarding the current pricing of RDi, consultant Jack Woehr commented he downloaded the 60-day trial version of RDi and was impressed with the tool, but the “the pricing for my personal consulting practice is beyond any business case that I can make for RDi. Some sort of “lite” version at a more modest price would interest me.”
Susan Gantner and Charles Guarino are as familiar with RDi as anyone on the planet. Both are well-known speakers on the topic and use RDi in their consulting ventures.
Although people complain about the price of RDi, Gantner remains unconvinced that price is the primary stumbling block for most people.
“It was free when it was called WDSC and hardly anyone used it,” she notes. “Admittedly, WDSC was slow, clunky and quirky, in comparison to today’s RDi. When IBM started charging for it, I was convinced that would be the death knell of the tool. Was I ever wrong! The number of people who decided to give it a try grew almost immediately after it became a separately chargeable product–maybe not dramatically, but noticeably and steadily and the growth continues. So, if there were a free version (again) would it cause more people to make the switch? I’m not convinced it will help dramatically.”
Compared to those who are hung up on the pricing issue, Gantner believes there’s a much larger group of developers who haven’t been convinced RDi brings additional value over SEU.
“It does require an investment–not only of money, but more significantly of time and the energy to change the way they do their daily work. And changing their ways really is critical to making a successful transition and becoming more productive. Developers can continue to do things with RDi the same way they did them with SEU and not be any more productive at all.”
The key to being more productive with RDi, she says, is training and allotting the time to learn new skills instead of simply transferring less productive existing skills.
Guarino fully supports a lite version of RDi that allows any developer can maintain RPG code at all supported releases. If free RDi Lite becomes an IBM directive, Guarino says he would “hope to see the green-screen SEU and PDM tools usage plummet as RDi adoption soars.”
Some developers use cost as a reason to not adopt a product, Guarino observes. It’s possible a free version of RDi eliminates that perceived barrier. Yet there is still a commitment of time, education and trial and error.
“I speak with so many managers each year and their response in almost unanimous: “Give me a developer who is excited about using a development product and I will be the first person to authorize a license for it.”
He also supports a chargeable RDi Pro version, which includes all remaining features. However, both Guarino and Gantner are not in favor of a second chargeable version of RDi that includes third-party tools. “It should be left to the individual shops to determine which third-party tools work best in their environments,” Guarino says.
Visit the RFE program at www.ibm.com/developerworks/rfe. An IBM ID is required to submit RFEs and to vote. If you don’t have an IBM ID, you can get one at the developerWorks registration page.
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Fantastic idea… While I’m already “on the bus”, those that are not have no idea what they are missing.
Greg. Nice sentiment. Like you, I too am already “On the bus”, and lobbying for the poor souls who can’t convince their management of the ROI. Techies are not good in marketing, and IBM marketing downloads the burden of marketing on their poor shoulders.
“It was free when it was called WDSC and hardly anyone used it,”
I have replied to this notion on every forum where it appeared. So let me reply here as well.
WDSC failed because for these major reasons:
1. It required 4GB of RAM to run smoothly and at most shops the standard RAM was 1GB or less.
2. It was not intuitive with horrible horrible navigation and did not do well with people coming from green screen.
3. The poor marketing gave people an impression that it is something that has got to do with web development (Websphere Development Studio Client), so those who knew nothing about web development, stayed away.
RDi came with a price, but since the top two constraints were removed, and there was more awareness about RDi (thanks to its name not have “Web’s Fear”) many did not mind paying.
This gave IBM this illogical idea that people did not use WDSC because it was free, and RDi was used because it costed money.
BTW the comments attributed to Aaron Bartell were also mine.
“Developers can continue to do things with RDi the same way they did them with SEU and not be any more productive at all.”
I actually do a very small demonstration. I twist the large monitor from horizontal to vertical.
Then point out:
1. How they can see a hundred lines instead of just 16, enabling them to see long if-endif and do-enddo etc with no or minimum page flips.
2. How they can see colors enabling them to grasp the logic more quickly.
3. How they can see the original points of reference e.g. the definition of a variable without having to search for it.
etc etc etc.
No sir, they do not need formal training to start using RDi as an enhanced SEU, Susan’s and Charle’s training is invaluable when they want to take the second step, and harness the full power of RDi.
RDi is much much more than an enhanced SEU, and is the portal that will lead development out of green screens. Using RDi Lite instead of SEU would be the first step on the long long ladder.
Look at github.com/vzupka/. There you can find an application that might fulfil some of your requirements. You can edit, compile source members and IFS files in IBM i languages and observe results in spooled files. Block statements are highlighted instead of keywords or strings, etc. Because it is written in Java it runs in Windows, Mac, Linux.
Vladimír Župka, vzupka@gmail.com
“Give me a developer who is excited about using a development product and I will be the first person to authorize a license for it.”
A very cunning dodge. A developer who never saw RDi before, will not make the case. A developer who heard about it, but never tried, will be too afraid to ask for money. The rest would be nervous that the management would expect “visible” increase in productivity. That visibility would mean reduction of staff etc.
A real manager is a leader i.e. leads from front. Not a populist who follows the crowd. A manager who utter the above words himself lacks the ability and willingness to convince upper management, and pushes it all on the developer.
Two things come to mind 1) MS has a “free” version of Visual Studio. If you pay for Visual Studio you become a member of MSDN and that is powerful stuff. 2) A “free” version may get people to look closer but how would have to trim it down to keep the paying customers happy?
I found RDi far too sophisticated for day-to-day code maintenance activity. Why would I want to switch across multiple “window panes”, navigate thru a multitude of tabs, etc. just to open, modify and compile a program?
I would like to see 3 modal windows, one for a member list, one for a code editor and another for a command line. It’s the KISS theory. Start people out simple and later move them into a more complex environment. The current RDI install doesn’t even give you the opportunity to have a reduced/uncluttered environment…its full blown…or nothing.
It should also be noted that RDi provides the most advantages to an RPG developer…virtually nothing for us dying COBOL’ers (lol).
And, like *all* IBM software created for personal computers, unless your company is willing to expend far more dollars on a better “workstation class” machine…your going to see a very slow system. I suspect that the majority of people espousing the benefits of RDi do *not* work in a company that has every machine locked down tightly and is running heavy-duty software to combat viruses, etc. These folks need to get out into the real windows-oriented business world (lol).
An IDE is mandatory to stay productive. Best quick start guides I’ve found are from: https://goo.gl/p5H9ET and https://goo.gl/WBNZJt. I’ve returned to an IBMi shop after spending decade working with C#, VB where Visual Studio was IDE; happy to say I stay away from green screens.
I very much agree with Hassan that Stage One – editing and compiling in RDi – is a simple process. RDi does have many other features beside edit, compile, debug, and developers might be better able to utilise things like code coverage with formal training. The place formal training really shines is teaching newcomers WHY to set up connections and filters; what circumstances they’re useful for.
I believe that the primary factor in the slow adoption of RDi is that SEUers do not see the value proposition of RDi. That there’s simply no point to use anything other than SEU – whether Lite, free or both. We as a community need to come to grips with this – there are tens of thousands of midrange developers for whom SEU is Good Enough. And that is the real problem! That the nature of what they do can so readily be satisfied with SEU. When they get more complex work, they’ll want a better IDE to do it in – they’ll demand a better IDE. And RDi will be there for them.
I respect Hassan’s analysis, but must note that my personal experience differs. I installed WDSC on colleagues’ PCs, I configured it for them. All they had to do was click the icon, click the member, and edit. Just like I did each and every day. They all knew I used WDSC – they only ever saw WDSC on the screen when they came to my cubicle. They knew it was usable, even on our old PCs – they saw me using it.
In the end, with WDSC loaded and configured, they continued to use SEU. Because they wanted to. So all the excuses ‘too slow’, ‘too complex’, ‘too expensive’ – all of them were just that. Excuses. RDi Lite will not entice SEUers until RDi entices users. SEUers need to see the value proposition. Free RDi might help that, but I’m deeply worried that a two-tier RDi will mean that many organisations will opt for the cheap seats for those of use who finally, after so many years of waiting, finally got Code Coverage, the first delivery of RPG Refactoring, Git integration, and so, so much more. And we’d lose the functionality that we’ve waited so long for – functionality that RPG programmers can use. Not web programmers, but people like me. RPG, DDS, CL, SQL.
Actually, SEU is NOT free. The full version is part of ADTS. There is also a CL-only version of SEU that comes with AMT. Both ADTS and AMT are extra-cost options that do not come with the machine, and are not bundled with the compilers.
“It was free when it was called WDSC and hardly anyone used it,”
1) WDSc was lacking one important thing that CODE/400 had and it was designer for printouts and screens. This is why people used CODE/400 and traditional SEU/SDA/RLU. And as CODE/400 development ended and it started to corrupt, people had to go back to SEU/SDA/RLU. IBM didn’t understand nor listened it’s most important asset: Customers/users.
2) WDSc was slow and it required too much from the developers PC. People got frustrated. And because of this, it was hard to get users to use it. It was way faster to use SEU/SDA/RLU.
3) Who says something is free? What made WDSc free? As far as I understand, we are paying for WDS on the IBM i anyways. WDSc was an application, additional thing to WDS. Which is as it was supposed to be.
I may sound a bit angry and frustrated. And I am.
RDi price is way beyond understandable price.
I can’t explain the price to directors. And with our developer base, I know that our company could not afford to get RDi for everyone. And hey, we are paying huge mountain of cash to IBM already.
So yes, there needs be RDi Lite immediately, for free.
Actually, whole (full) RDi should be free.
IBM should understand that in order to keep IBM i applications and developers developing and advancing, free RDi / modern developer tools are needed. IBM should understand that without modern tools, IBM will eventually lose it’s IBM i sales as development / applications shift on to other platforms.
IBM should listen to it’s customers / users and stop being arrogant.
Also… one thing that makes our life problematic, is the decision that IBM made years ago.
IBM ditched Easycom’s toolkit from the Zend bundle and started to push it’s own Xmltoolkit.
However, with big data, this Xmltoolkit is still way slower than Easycom which is making the updates impossible. And also on this subject, IBM is being arrogant and doesn’t listen to customers / users.
Anyways… heck yes. If RDi was free or there was free RDi Lite with most functionalities, I could make my team to use is as team leader. I would say that in 6 months 30-40% of my team would use it and in 24 months 80% of my team would use it.
If you look at https://github.com/vzupka/ you will find there three Java applications aimed to IBM i. One of them is called IBMiProgTool and fulfills some of the characteristics of “RDi Lite” which is required by some. It enables among others to edit source members as well as IFS files, compile them, and find error messages in spooled files. This is possible with different languages: RPG of all shapes, COBOL, C/C++, CL.
The editor can highlight compound statements – blocks, for example if – elseif – endif, or dcl-pr – end-pr in RPG, or IF – THEN – ELSE – END-IF in COBOL, or { – } in C/C++. Other language elements are not highlighted for understandable reasons.
You can also copy directories/files between and inside PC and IBMi, create directories/files with different codesets/CSSIDs, rename and delete them.
Vladimír Župka, vzupka@gmail.com
For me the main issue is Price. Maybe a company can pay; but as a small company, an individual or a contractor, is way too much money.
A one-time fee—no annual renewal, under $300.00 may be agreeable for many. A lite version free or under $100.00 with no annual renewal, my also entice many.
A key to wider adoption, as mentioned by some colleagues, would be management/leadership push…
I used ide’s for pc programming and seu for RPG. I would like a simple idea, where I can create projects which contain files, display files, RPG sources, and service pgm sources and that I can recreate with one click like I can do in pc programming…
Otherwise I will still use seu quick compile option 15 and 14 ,CRTpgm and so on..
It seems there will be no RDi Lite. IBM closed the RFE two weeks ago. The part I find interesting is the status: Delivered
But there will be no RDi Lite … so what has been delivered?
IMHO: RDi must come with the machine, licensed with the operating system, and I can install how many I need, without messing with absurd license files. Must licensed centrally with the machine.
Having it separate, it breaks the all-integrated turn key solution the IBM i shops are accostumed.
Today, I can call a contractor, and they can start using the SEU right away without discussion or messing with license files.
The same should be for RDi .
I want to pay it when I license and buy the whole machine, not after. And don’t care about free or not free, everything as a cost. I want to pay it when I buy the whole machine in order to have full deployment flexibility.
RDi full should be guaranteed. Or deliver it from the websphere, full web client, using the power full capabilities of the new chips, and bring software development to new levels (machine learning analysis of code, assists etc.)
In 2018 using SEU is a waste of time and resources to use it, almost anachronistic nowadays and in **FREE mode is unusable. A RPG and related tools development environment in line with at least the state of the art of the year 2010 (I don’t even ask for 2018…) should be revolutionary for the platform.