From: Arved Sandstrom on
Arne Vajh�j wrote:
> On 28-04-2010 20:12, Arved Sandstrom wrote:
>> Up until not so long ago I recommended making use of a text editor for
>> initial basic learning. Now that I've really thought it though, I see no
>> point in using anything but a good IDE. An IDE provides assistance in
>> entering code, and there's nothing wrong with that.
>
> There is nothing wrong with the code typing assistance.
>
> But IDE from day 1 often result in people that do not know
> anything about how to run things outside the IDE.
>
> Arne

That's entirely possible, that some people will have barely any grasp of
how to work outside the IDE. If we discount developers leaving the IDE
fro time to time to use a word processor or web browser, and also
include the ability of the IDE to call up server consoles and what not,
then these days with the latest IDEs a person can likely get away with
using the IDE for everything and not suffer.

AHS
From: cr88192 on

"Mike Schilling" <mscottschilling(a)hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:hravba$j2l$1(a)news.eternal-september.org...
> Tom Anderson wrote:
>> On Wed, 28 Apr 2010, cr88192 wrote:
>>
>>> "Lew" <lew(a)lewscanon.com> wrote in message
>>> news:7715fd2a-a507-4869-8ec4-a91faa495bc4(a)g30g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
>>>> cr88192 wrote:
>>>>> anymore, I typically just do coding (in general) via the mix of
>>>>> Notepad,
>>>>
>>>> Notepad is very bad for Java programming because most extant
>>>> versions don't handle Unicode and they don't like cross-platform
>>>> line endings.
>>>
>>> but, we all know CRLF is the proper cross-platform line ending, since
>>> after all, it is used by Windows... (and typically people develop on
>>> Windows for Windows anyways, most non-Windows development often
>>> being a misnomer...). even when it is for non-Windows deployment, it
>>> is still typically developing on Windows for whatever is their
>>> target OS / HW...
>>
>> !
>>
>> I don't know a single good developer who develops on Windows.
>
> You know me :-) I develop on Windows because it's what most of my
> customers use, and also because I develop stuff that combines Java and
> .NET.

yep.

granted, Windows is not exactly the perfect OS by any means, but for various
reasons it may be difficult to justify not using it...

otherwise, one may end up producing apps which many possible customers/users
would be unable to use (or use well, as one often gets cross-developed apps
which can be buggy or wonky when used on Windows...).

also, Wine still tends not to work very well, and QEMU+WinXP or similar is
inconvinient.
(actually, I have also recently seen Win7's XPMode, which seems to be
reasonably good for an emulator setup, since the mouse transitions easily,
it supports desktop-integration, ...).


granted, if Linux managed to become dominant among end-users (and got good
app/vendor/... support), then there would be little reason not to use it.

sadly, in some ways its strengths are its weaknesses, and I am left to doubt
that it could compete on equal terms with Windows... (in particular, with
the ways HW and SW vendors typically do things...).

solid binary ABI's and binary-compatibility would do much to help matters.
expecting people to distribute source or build their binaries for damn near
every version of every distro is unworkable...

or such...


From: Roedy Green on
On Tue, 27 Apr 2010 06:27:14 -0700 (PDT), Clarence Blumstein
<blumstein.clarence(a)gmail.com> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted
someone who said :

>Do you suggest me using IDE when I'm learning JAVA? because I'm about
>to using Eclipse when I'm learning JAVA? Did you using IDE while/when
>are a beginner?

You might use an IDE designed for beginners, see
http://mindprod.com/jgloss/ide.html just so you won't be overwhelmed.

There is something to be said for learning to drive with a manual
shift -- analogously no IDE to start so you understand better what
goes on under the hood.

On the other paw, IntelliJ's ability to let me look at any source code
with a click greatly speeds up understanding how Java works.
--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
http://mindprod.com

It�s amazing how much structure natural languages have when you consider who speaks them and how they evolved.
From: Jim Janney on
ram(a)zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:

> Arved Sandstrom <dcest61(a)hotmail.com> writes:
>>I agree with all of the above - now. Prior to 2000 I used text editors
>
> »[T]he only 3 editors we know to be used by great
> hackers are TextMate, vim and emacs. (...)
>
> We haven't met a single great hacker that relied
> on an IDE, although we hear they exist.«
>
> http://giraffesoft.ca/blog/2009/03/10/4-core-competencies-of-great-hackers.html
>
> »He declined offers of typing help, and just kept
> writing away in pencil. He rewrote parts, copied
> things over, erased and rewrote.
>
> Finally André took his neat final pencil copy to a
> terminal and typed the whole program in (...)
> the VTOC manager worked perfectly from then on.«
>
> http://www.multicians.org/andre.html
>
> I ordered my first computer in 1977, but it was delivered
> not before 1978. In the meantime, I learned »my« first
> programming language »BASIC« by reading a book and writing
> programs on paper, executing them in my mind. So, when the
> Pet 2001 finally arrived, I already was able to program it.

I started programming with punch cards, first in Fortran and then
Algol W -- you'd write everything out by hand and then stand in line
for one of the keypunches. It did make you check everything over and
over and over again. Still, I wouldn't recommend doing that now.

--
Jim Janney
From: Arved Sandstrom on
Jim Janney wrote:
> ram(a)zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>
>> Arved Sandstrom <dcest61(a)hotmail.com> writes:
>>> I agree with all of the above - now. Prior to 2000 I used text editors
>> »[T]he only 3 editors we know to be used by great
>> hackers are TextMate, vim and emacs. (...)
>>
>> We haven't met a single great hacker that relied
>> on an IDE, although we hear they exist.«
>>
>> http://giraffesoft.ca/blog/2009/03/10/4-core-competencies-of-great-hackers.html
>>
>> »He declined offers of typing help, and just kept
>> writing away in pencil. He rewrote parts, copied
>> things over, erased and rewrote.
>>
>> Finally André took his neat final pencil copy to a
>> terminal and typed the whole program in (...)
>> the VTOC manager worked perfectly from then on.«
>>
>> http://www.multicians.org/andre.html
>>
>> I ordered my first computer in 1977, but it was delivered
>> not before 1978. In the meantime, I learned »my« first
>> programming language »BASIC« by reading a book and writing
>> programs on paper, executing them in my mind. So, when the
>> Pet 2001 finally arrived, I already was able to program it.
>
> I started programming with punch cards, first in Fortran and then
> Algol W -- you'd write everything out by hand and then stand in line
> for one of the keypunches. It did make you check everything over and
> over and over again. Still, I wouldn't recommend doing that now.
>
You and me both, actually, although for me it was just the FORTRAN. What
that taught me was to be careful when using the keypunch. Yes, it also
taught me to be fairly careful of language errors, but mostly I gained
respect for meticulous typing. In effect the main lesson from using
punched cards was to avoid typos.

I progressed from cards to line editors on basic terminals, then fairly
quickly to vi and emacs on UNIX, then decent programing text editors on
various Macs and PCs, and finally to IDEs (although I'll still use
command line or text editors where they shine, e.g I'll usually do
complicated Subversion on the C.L. outside Eclipse, then refresh the
Eclipse workspace). To be brutally honest, while each step in that
progression did teach me not to be sloppy, I believe I would have
learned that lesson soon enough if starting with an IDE.

To put it another way, I don't think the tools you use teach you to be a
good programmer. Which is sort of an undercurrent I'm sensing here in
parts of this thread. I think mental discipline that you have already is
what carries the day. If you're sloppy when using an IDE you'll be
sloppy when using vim.

I read a story like the one about Andre Bensoussan
(http://www.multicians.org/andre.html) and, no disrespect meant to the
dead, but the part about him writing and erasing and rewriting, when he
actually got to writing code, when terminals and electronic editor
programs were available, is just silly.

I also happen to believe that a lot of these folks who praise text
editors to the skies, and who think that great hackers don't use IDEs,
are making a virtue out of artificial and unnecessary self-imposed
constraints. Unless I take a programming text editor and heavily
customize it, in effect making it an IDE, there are many things I can do
in an IDE that I can't do with the text editor alone. Many of those
things are very useful and time-saving. I could do them on the command
line or with shell scripts, but then I'd be re-inventing the wheel. If I
chose not to do them at all, or wasn't even aware that I could do them,
I hardly think that's praiseworthy. In any case I'd be spending more of
my time in a non-IDE situation to get the job done.

I don't doubt that a lot of very good programmers use text editors
rather than IDEs. More power to them - I'll stick with IDEs where they
suit, because they allow me to get work done faster.

A lot depends on exactly what it is that people are writing. If I was
writing a Linux device driver in C I'd be cool with vim. But these days,
where I have to deal with .NET or J2EE web apps with thousands of source
files, I'd be an imbecile to try and do that with emacs.

AHS