[pm-h] Programmer Editors (was 'January Meeting')

[G. Wade Johnson]

On Sun, 4 Jan 2009 18:26:56 -0600
"Todd Rinaldo" <toddr at null.net> wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 6:10 PM, Robert Boone <robo4288 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > As you can tell I don't really care for IDE's, for me they mostly
> > get in the way. I would rather build a working environment in an
> > editor that let me do that in the way I think is best for me.
> 
> I've gotta admit I'm surprised how many people feel a lack of interest
> in access to IDEs. I find IDEs help me program/debug faster, as they
> point out errors to me as I commit them, rather than 10+ minutes later
> when I go to run the code. Usually there's little difference between
> fixing the error before or after, but every once in a while, the
> mistake is subtle enough that you end up spending much more time down
> the road trying to figure out what tidbit of the code went wrong.

I've used IDEs, including the Borland environments, Programmer's
WorkBench (the IDE before Visual Studio), Forte, Visual Studio,
NetBeans, and Eclipse.

For editors, I've used M, ted, vim, TextMate, and edit. M and vim are
the only two that had good enough macro and/or scripting capabilities
to suit me.

Honestly, I've never found that the IDE helps me program or debug
faster. I suspect that it has more to do with a programmer's approach to
code and way of thinking. Most IDEs seem too heavyweight to me. Most
IDEs also don't support the programability that I find comfortable in a
programmer editor.

But I know people that really do very well with an IDE.

One of the reasons I asked this question is to get us to talk about
what makes this tool most useful to us. For instance, why does Todd
feel that an IDE helps him program better and I don't. I would be that
neither of us is wrong. Understanding different tools and how others
work should make us better programmers.

G. Wade
-- 
Virtual is when it's not but it looks like it is and transparent is
when it is but it looks like it isn't.                  -- Rick Hoselton