Surprised at how far software development IDEs have come

[yesthattom]

Ok, i’m about 15 years out of touch with modern IDEs. I can’t believe how far they’ve come. 15 years ago we were happy if an editor completed your squigglybrackets for you. I was watching this demo and I couldn’t believe how this IDE writes code for you. Almost makes me with I was a developer!

Now I’m sure I’ll get a bunch of “real developers don’t need an IDE’ comments, but could we at least not have an “emacs vs. vi” debate?

Comments

[penk.livejournal.com]

The days of real developers going "We don't need no steenkin IDE" should be long past. Any developer who says that now is deliberately ignoring advantages modern IDE's grant.

An IDE is no longer a tool for the weak-clued and soft developer. It's a tool that makes any developer more productive.

(For the record, I'm a total Eclipse convert. I did tons of Java development with traditional 'vi' and 'ant' build files, and the IDE granted totally made the coding process easier and less prone to repetitive save/compile/fail/edit cycles.

[dossy.livejournal.com]

Real developers don't work in languages that are so overburdened either architecturally or syntactically that can actually gain benefits from IDE-based tools.

Java is an abject failure in that it requires so much tool support in order to be only as productive as other languages unaided by tools.

Eventually, people take the training wheels off ...

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but GWT doesn't exist for python :-)

Tom

[awfief.livejournal.com]

nor does it work for the world's MOST POWERFUL PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE, LISP.

(I wish I could remember the book and author whose position that was. Talk about religion).

[stormsweeper.livejournal.com]

I think Sun forgot to send me my training wheels...

About the only "code generation" I ever do is getter/setter methods or the bit where it adds the "import Foo" declaration when I add a variable of that type. Then again, I don't have to work with that mess known as EJB so that eliminates the #1 need of pointless code generation.

Eclipse definitely is more useful to me than a plain old text editor, but mainly for the auto-compiling and all the integrated bits (CVS/SVN clients, ant, etc) that I can combine into a nice smooth workflow.

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Of course we can avoid the emacs/vi debate. ED. Ed is the Standard Unix Text Editor!

[gravitrue.livejournal.com]

But what is the best editor to use on a bicycle? (Elbows, ~1994)

[obra.livejournal.com]

IDEs are lovely, but code generation is sick and wrong. If it's the same every time, your language or libraries should make it unnecessary to EVER write.

[dossy.livejournal.com]

Amen.

If you're auto-generating scaffolding code (either in response to user action, or automagically in your IDE), your language and/or reusable libraries have already failed you.

[gravitrue.livejournal.com]

While I won't endorse auto-generated code, I can't see "if you need this, then things suck" as a reason to oppose it; things already suck in zillions of places, thus plenty of people need it, and I'd guess that the majority of programmers do not in fact have a language choice on things they are hired to code for.

It may be a bad idea for many other reasons, but I can't buy this one.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Which reminds me of when a friend heard someone else call prozac a "crutch".

Her response was, "I love crutches! Ever break your leg? Bet you liked having a crutch then, didn't ya?"

[dossy.livejournal.com]

I think you missed the point. The point is: if code is so generic as to be auto-generatable, then perhaps it should be in a reusable library and overridden with novel code instead.

If your language makes this hard, then your language has failed you.

You always have a language choice, unless you live and work in a Communist system where you don't choose your job. (Last I checked, this form of society didn't exist.)

[chhotii.livejournal.com]

That is SUCH a good point, I have printed it out and pinned it to my cork board. Thanks!

[kimuchi.livejournal.com]

I'm intimidated by IDEs and probably wouldn't use one if there was one available for my language (at least not without some steep learning-curve time).

But I'm not a real developer. I'm just some loser who sits and codes all day. :P

[dawgboi.livejournal.com]

I'm a real developer, I appreciate something that makes my life easier.
Those bare metal folks should feel free to keep coding in a text editor. Then again, I work with the Evil Empire's software, so I'm automatically suspect. :)

[geekosaur]

(Semi-)automatic code refactoring is useful, even if it does imply that perhaps you needed to think more about the design (who has time any more? deadlines tend to trump design IME).

That said, I've not actually worked on the programming side in years. :/

[babbage.livejournal.com]

Sure. I've been a hard-core Emacs zealot for about 15 years now. But Eclipse has been the only IDE that's made me want to use an editor other than Emacs (in that case, for Java). It was mainly the refactoring tools that made it so attractive. The ability to push methods down into a base class, rename variables etc. was really great. I really should get round to checking out the Bicycle Repair Man.