Why NetRexx?

[Terry Norton]

I'm just learning NetRexx and a basic question hit me.  What do I gain
by using NetRexx instead of one of the visual development apps?



Terry Norton, VP
Claims Center Solutions
[hidden email]
Warped with OS/2

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[K.-P. Kirchdoerfer]

On Sun, 28 Dec 97 18:37:54, Terry Norton wrote:

>I'm just learning NetRexx and a basic question hit me.  What do I gain
>by using NetRexx instead of one of the visual development apps?

A good question to let me express my thanks to Mike.

IMHO the most valuable advantage has been the direct contact to the
developer, his friendly, fast and helpful responses.

Other good reasons may be the NetRexx Tutorial from P.Marchesini,
which helped me to get the OO approach more than any other book, the
FAC provided Dion Gillard, the RXFile.class from Max Marsiglietti,
which helped
me to make the transition from Rexx to NetRexx and finally all the
people on the NetRexx List.

Do you need more?

On the more technical side it is not easy to compare NetRexx with a
visual development app. Currently NetRexx doesn't have anything like
that. But it saves you a lot of typing, type declarations and is
helpful to detect errors while compiling your code.
With the exception of building GUI-components it's easier to use than
plain Java.

regards kp


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Man kann auch ganz alleine recht haben (Pöschl)


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[dIon Gillard/Multitask Consulting/AU]

Terry Norton wrote:
>
> I'm just learning NetRexx and a basic question hit me.  What do I gain
> by using NetRexx instead of one of the visual development apps?
You get a typeless, forgiving, more human coding environment.

i.e.

x = "Hi There"
y = 1
SaY x " can be said " y " times"
z = x.LEFt(3)

Note no curly braces, no case sensitivity, no need to declare variables
etc....it's a more productive language than raw Java IMHO.
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[Massimiliano Marsiglietti]

Ciao Terry,

You wrote:

> I'm just learning NetRexx and a basic question hit me.  What do I
> gain by using NetRexx instead of one of the visual development apps?

All that others said, plus some other things.

First, the vaporware: it is my understanding that one day there WILL
be a (perhaps two, or three) visual developing environment for
NetRexx. But let's not count what is not here.

Second, the ever-going dilemma: visual or non visual? For some tasks,
the currently on sale IDEs are just toys. I find myself much more
productive in NetRexx + my favourite editors than in, say, Visual Age
for Java (which has its own ways of doing everything) or Visual Cafe,
or whatever you like. Perhaps it just happens that I work in a way no
one else works (somehow I doubt it), but I like to have things set up
as _I_ want. I am, right now, writing a fairly complex expression
analyzer, compiler and optimizer for my database class, and that
requires no GUI but a lot of hand-written code; with an editor, a
couple of system utilities and (let's not forget it) NetRexx I simply
crank code faster.

Third, portability, or Write Once and Debug Everywhere. Can I fire up
that copy of Visual Age for Java under Linux? Novell NetWare? No. But
I do need to do debugging there!

In the end, I think that all depends on what you are going to
develop, and what are your target environments, but I think it's
very smart to have in your bag of tools a compiler which is

A) piece of cake to setup and use.
B) est described as incredibly well supported.
C) an be ported in whatever environment you go.
D) efined by the author but also (mainly?) by its users.
E) legant and easy to learn beyond any stretch of imagination.
F) ree. (But also:)
F) its in a 720k diskette!

Not that NR should be your own only tool, but I think that you are
going to need it one day.

Max

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[Terry Norton]

Thanks for the replies, everyone.

My background is electrical engineering - digital and analog.  I'm a
person that has always had to know how things work, as a result, I tend
to make things more difficult than they actually are.  I believe I'm
also making NetRexx more difficult than it really is.

One major hangup I'm having right now is a "class" overload (no pun
intended).  This is sorta like designing electronic systems - there are
so many IC's to choose from.  In NetRexx (Java) there are sooooo many
classes that I'm overwhelmed.  In other words, the syntax is easy, but
what classes to use when and where has got me bogged down.

Just from the present info on NetRexx programming it seems there's so
many different ways to accomplish the same thing with so many classes.
Plus everyone's style is different.  Like 10 engineers would all design
a circuit to accomplish as task, but every design would be different.
Not really good for teaching.  Then on top of this, anything I program
becomes a class.

I guess what I need to do is treat a class like an IC - certain inputs
produces certain outputs.  With IC's this is easy because every IC spec
comes with a Truth Table so I can visually see what inputs produces
which outputs.  NetRexx doesn't provide a Truth Table with each class.

I wish there was an EDM or ZDU course on NetRexx.



Terry Norton, VP
Claims Center Solutions
[hidden email]
Warped with OS/2

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[mcbrides]

>Ciao Terry,
>
>You wrote:
>
>> I'm just learning NetRexx and a basic question hit me.  What do I
>> gain by using NetRexx instead of one of the visual development apps?
>
>All that others said, plus some other things.
>

My two cents worth...