Post #173,755
9/12/04 11:16:06 AM
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I'm bouncing back and forth on this.
Same time I'm bouncing language choices.
Since I'm dealing with C# and Visual Studio, I simply hate the code editor. Years of vi and then gvim have imprinted on me. Things that take 2 keystrokes while in vi take many times that, often with control or alt combinations, often with me searching them out. So given a piss-poor editor (even if configurable, modal vs non-modal editor do not easily cross-emulate each other (and yes, I am aware of vile)), nothing, no amount of syntax help, no amount of pretty window property boxes is enough to compensate.
But: Screen drawing is a different thing. The MS and Borland screen painters are a huge savings in some compared to laying it out by hand or letting a flow control magically place it ALMOST where you want it, and then you nudge things with code.
Oh, and WxGlade is yucky.
Gvim (and I assume emacs) has very good styntax highlighting, so you know when you miss a closing quite, brace, slash, etc. It knows keywords and can jump to definitions.
On the other hand, VS .method expansion, menus, etc with arguments is nice. It allows people who don't know what they want to be productive.
WHICH IS PROBABLY BAD!
Immediate productivity in a complex environments leads to focussing on quick turnaround and deliverables, at the expense of really understanding what you need to support and how to do it. I threw some crap together in VB, and was able to release in 2 days, and immediately regretted it. I knew it would be very difficult to expands and support it, so I looked for alternatives.
Enabling semi-competent people to be productive is the goal of any of these environments, which is the worst reason for using it. Like driving VS walking. Sure, driving will get you there faster, but if you didn't learn the rules of the road, it will probably end up killing you.
AFTER you know the language and the rules, then you would be competent to make the decision on whether or not the envionment is good for you.
I'm still stuck in using it, and now it is too late. I've already demoed the VB crap, and people love it. So I redid it in C#. I still need a lot of education in C# before I'd consider myself competent, but it is the lesser of the 2 evil right now so I am sticking with it. I have no intention of EVER using this crap for back-end logic, that will be perl, so I do not have to really "commit" here. I just have to come up with enough pretty user interface to generate the control files and interact with the back-end for status updates.
Note: I found out our company has just connected with a C# consultant. I threw a bunch of questions his way and got very nice answers, detail knowledgable explainations, etc. I was looking to see what the user interface of the NEXT project would be, which is far more complex thatn the one I'm currently doing, and I was NOT going to be the person to do it. This meant we would be hiring / consulting off the street for it. It will probably end up being this person if he maintians his level of expertise in my mind (subject to dramatic dropp-off on the 1st stupid mistake).
He knew right off the bat about the casting, gave a very good explanation of why using "is" rather than casing on the .string was much better, epxlained temp object were references, not true copies, explained the performance implications of certain pieces of my code, etc.
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Post #173,759
9/12/04 11:41:07 AM
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There is no question ...
that the way to learn a language like Java is to use a text editor and the JDK. Once you have some mastery of the language the IDE helps a lot. Java and C# have so many API's that there is no way that anyone can remember them all (see my example about System.arraycopy) and therefore when you are doing real development these things are really helpful.
What I like about Intellij as opposed to other Java IDE's is that there are no wizards no dumbing down, it simply helps you write code more efficiently by doing code completion, imports, syntax checking, etc.
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Post #173,760
9/12/04 11:50:05 AM
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OK
> What I like about Intellij as opposed to other
> Java IDE's is that there are no wizards no dumbing down,
> it simply helps you write code more efficiently by
> doing code completion, imports, syntax checking, etc.
Give me that with gvim keystrokes.
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Post #173,763
9/12/04 12:02:54 PM
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Not that I am selling Intellij ...
or get anything from them, but I really like the IDE. It doesn't support gvim out of the box, but it allows you to create your own custom keymap, you could recreate the gvim one.
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Post #173,775
9/12/04 12:39:55 PM
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Doubt it
vi is a modal editor. Emacs / most of the rest of the world is not.
So keymappings can often be used in non-modals to emulate the others, but not a modal.
When people code, the majory of the typing is NOT actually entering text. It is movement, checking a words here and there, reformatting, cutting and pasting, reversing the order of 2 lines next to each other, joining 2 lines together,
bouncing parenthesis, etc.
I can do all those thing in usually 2 keystrokes, no control or alt required.
I HATE editors that assume when I type something it is supposed to place somthing on the screen. If I wanted to insert something, I'd be in insert mode!
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Post #173,793
9/12/04 4:47:28 PM
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Most of my typing is inserting text.
And I hate editors that assume when I'm typing in text that they're supposed to hopelessly mangle my file by interpreting 'System.out.println' as commands.
vi is a modal editor not because that's the best way to code, but because that's the best way to conserve a 300baud communication line on a slow terminal.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #173,795
9/12/04 4:57:21 PM
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ed is the standard text editor.
Peter
[link|http://www.debian.org|Shill For Hire]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Blog]
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Post #173,797
9/12/04 5:14:41 PM
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?
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #173,798
9/12/04 5:23:42 PM
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Modes are evil.
Or hadn't you heard? ;)
[link|http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=4790|http://www.artima.co...t.jsp?thread=4790]
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Post #173,799
9/12/04 5:24:28 PM
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?
Peter
[link|http://www.debian.org|Shill For Hire]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Blog]
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Post #173,800
9/12/04 5:25:41 PM
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? RTFA
..then the book.
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Post #173,801
9/12/04 5:29:00 PM
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?
Peter
[link|http://www.debian.org|Shill For Hire]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Blog]
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Post #173,803
9/12/04 5:36:17 PM
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Love ya man
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Post #173,805
9/12/04 5:38:50 PM
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Type faster, Barry! :D
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Post #173,807
9/12/04 5:45:30 PM
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Huh?
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Post #173,806
9/12/04 5:44:09 PM
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I did RTFA
And I'm not going to RTFB.
The example of customization for different programmers' keyboards was a good one. Taken to the stupid extreme. So the problem here is all the programmers have the most productive environment for them individually, which then is a detriment to the occasional other programmer on their keyboard.
SO WHAT?
So would you prefer to drop the productivity of ALL of them just so any of them could walk over to any of the other's desk and be able to code at full speed, where full speed is the compromise which means none of them are every fully productive?
Like I explained in my IDE VS Editor rant, it is a matter of tradeoffs. Vi was not my 1st editor, Wordstar was. So my baby chick imprint is non-modal. My 1st full time programmer environment was using vi, but I quickly moved to Brief. Brief was MUCH better. Over the years I moved between various non-modal editors. Visual Slick was also very nice. But when I moved back to vi, by way of gvim, I was much happier.
Gvim has the nice syntax highlighting, GUI touches while staying the hell out of my way.
Modal is evil for some people. Non modal is evil for me. Ctl / Alt / Meta key usage is far more evil. Who has bad wrists, Bill Joy or Richard Stallman? Comes from reaching while a finger is pressing the Ctl key.
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Post #173,808
9/12/04 5:51:15 PM
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?
I bet you have one of those evil PC keyboards that put CTRL down in the bottom left corner, where Satan wants it.
Peter
[link|http://www.debian.org|Shill For Hire]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Blog]
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Post #173,809
9/12/04 5:55:38 PM
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?
CTRL should only be on the upper keyboard, so you can just lift a knuckle to "hold it up".
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Post #173,848
9/13/04 3:07:28 AM
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Footpedal
Like a pipe organ.
--
Chris Altmann
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Post #173,810
9/12/04 6:04:15 PM
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Yup
Along with the function keys across the top. I HATE them!
But no, I have not remapped the Control and CapsLock to reverse themselves like some coders I know have done.
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Post #173,802
9/12/04 5:29:04 PM
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?
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #173,816
9/12/04 7:58:46 PM
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???
-YendorMike
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
- Benjamin Franklin, 1759 Historical Review of Pennsylvania
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Post #173,817
9/12/04 8:23:46 PM
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????
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Post #173,818
9/12/04 8:36:16 PM
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!!!
-YendorMike
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
- Benjamin Franklin, 1759 Historical Review of Pennsylvania
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Post #173,822
9/12/04 8:52:24 PM
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Modals wobble but they don't fall down.
[link|http://jeffcovey.net/linux/humor.html|Might as well face it ...]: Addicted To Vi
(with apologies to Robert Palmer)
You press the keys with no effect,
Your mode is not correct.
The screen blurs, your fingers shake;
You forgot to press escape.
Can't insert, can't delete,
Cursor keys won't repeat.
You try to quit, but can't leave,
An extra "bang" is all you need.
You think it's neat to type an "a" or an "i"--
Oh yeah?
You won't look at emacs, no you'd just rather die
You know you're gonna have to face it;
You're addicted to vi!
You edit files one at a time;
That doesn't seem too out of line?
You don't think of keys to bind--
A meta key would blow your mind.
H, J, K, L? You're not annoyed?
Expressions must be a Joy!
Just press "f", or is it "t"?
Maybe "n", or just "g"?
Oh--You think it's neat to type an "a" or an "i"--
Oh yeah?
You won't look at emacs, no you'd just rather die
You know you're gonna have to face it;
You're addicted to vi!
Might as well face it,
You're addicted to vi!
You press the keys without effect,
Your life is now a wreck.
What a waste! Such a shame!
And all you have is vi to blame.
Oh--You think it's neat to type an "a" or an "i"--
Oh yeah?
You won't look at emacs, no you'd just rather die
You know you're gonna have to face it;
You're addicted to vi!
Might as well face it,
You're addicted to vi! Cheers, Scott. (Who has had the pleasure of avoiding vi since about 1987.)
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Post #173,998
9/13/04 5:52:22 PM
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ROfsckingFL!
My first editor was the RT-11 editor, which some sadist at my first job ported to the Perkin-elmer machines I worked on. Then TECO, which the same sadist also ported (but it beat snot out of RT-11 editor).
Then vi.
Then something, anything else other than vi. vi makes TECO look good!. 'bout that time, PCs started happening, and along with them came word processors and real visual editors. vi became the anachronism it is today....
jb4
shrub\ufffdbish (Am., from shrub + rubbish, after the derisive name for America's 43 president; 2003) n. 1. a form of nonsensical political doubletalk wherein the speaker attempts to defend the indefensible by lying, obfuscation, or otherwise misstating the facts; GIBBERISH. 2. any of a collection of utterances from America's putative 43rd president. cf. BULLSHIT
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Post #174,026
9/13/04 9:33:03 PM
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Yep, teco was great.
Type 'exit', replace your entire file with 't'.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #174,028
9/13/04 9:49:46 PM
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In that case
may you be force to use only EVE/TPU.
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Post #174,078
9/14/04 12:33:58 AM
9/14/04 12:34:17 AM
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Wuss
EVE and TPU are fine editors, although real VMS people use EDT.
Peter
[link|http://www.debian.org|Shill For Hire]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Blog]
Edited by pwhysall
Sept. 14, 2004, 12:34:17 AM EDT
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Post #174,085
9/14/04 1:00:40 AM
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Oh dear -- you woke Peter up. :-D
Is it enough to love
Is it enough to breathe
Somebody rip my heart out
And leave me here to bleed
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Is it enough to die
Somebody save my life
I'd rather be Anything but Ordinary
Please
| -- "Anything but Ordinary" by Avril Lavigne. |
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Post #174,086
9/14/04 1:02:20 AM
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Stalker!
Peter
[link|http://www.debian.org|Shill For Hire]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Blog]
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Post #174,263
9/14/04 4:25:49 PM
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Used both...
...and both beat snot out of vi (and twice on Sundays).
jb4
shrub\ufffdbish (Am., from shrub + rubbish, after the derisive name for America's 43 president; 2003) n. 1. a form of nonsensical political doubletalk wherein the speaker attempts to defend the indefensible by lying, obfuscation, or otherwise misstating the facts; GIBBERISH. 2. any of a collection of utterances from America's putative 43rd president. cf. BULLSHIT
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Post #173,819
9/12/04 8:38:39 PM
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VI keys.
I intensively used vim for editing code for a few years. Like you, I found it to be so much better at putting my coding onto the screen than anything previous. I recall the old MS Visual C programming environment - they would be impossible to use if you didn't have a) a mouse and b) function keys.
When Infoworld visited this issue some months ago, Maggie Biggs got quotes from a lot of us here - surely you remember that. I recall, not without some pride and perhaps selectivity, she held up Scott as The Emacs programmer and I got quoted as The Vi(m) programmer. :-) This latest article dances around but doesn't quite say that people stick with text editors like Emacs and Vim because they are so powerful at editing text. Far too many "IDEs" are just not.
Wade.
Is it enough to love
Is it enough to breathe
Somebody rip my heart out
And leave me here to bleed
| |
Is it enough to die
Somebody save my life
I'd rather be Anything but Ordinary
Please
| -- "Anything but Ordinary" by Avril Lavigne. |
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Post #173,847
9/13/04 2:51:52 AM
9/13/04 2:53:08 AM
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I have heard this many times but never understood it
What do you do with the text that Vim is so good at? I find that while I write a lot of code the editor that I use doesn't interest me that much. I write a line of code go to the next line and write another line. I don't really use a lot of editing features. What kind of editing features do you use? What I find most useful about the IDE is the refactoring support, where I can take pieces of code from an existing method and create new methods, move things around etc. and the fact that with autocompletion I can see the parameters.
Edited by bluke
Sept. 13, 2004, 02:53:08 AM EDT
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Post #173,849
9/13/04 3:42:10 AM
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Refocus down just a little bit.
Think about *how* your IDE makes it easy to refactor: what is involved in copying a fragment of code and then modifying it slightly for it's new location?
In an IDE such as Microsoft's Visual Studio (note that the last version I used was for MSVC++ v2), this involves lots of action on the editing keys (cursor keys, delete and insert) to highlight relevant text and modify as appropriate, accompanied with a quantity of mouse-work also for selecting or moving text and for actvitating toolbar buttons.
Vi has many tools for changing text in efficient ways that be combined in hundreds of variations. The fact that they activated by the typewriter keys helps because your hands can stay there instead of moving off to hit a cursor key (this is the same for Emacs, BTW). For example, non-vi-ers think that having 5 basic ways to switch into a text-entry mode is superfluous. It's not. They all setup your insertion differently. The extra efficiency is slight in typing o to enter a new line below the current one over pressing End then Enter, but it adds up over time.
The difference in approach is one of a complete, but predominantly not-overlapping, set of basic tools for modifying text (typified in part by more keystrokes) versus a much larger toolset that has lots of overlapping functionality (typified in part by less keystrokes). It's difficult to explain.
Wade.
Is it enough to love
Is it enough to breathe
Somebody rip my heart out
And leave me here to bleed
| |
Is it enough to die
Somebody save my life
I'd rather be Anything but Ordinary
Please
| -- "Anything but Ordinary" by Avril Lavigne. |
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Post #174,200
9/14/04 12:14:46 PM
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For me?
The reasons I like VI
- I can do everything on the keyboard, without taking my hands off of it to touch a mouse.
- I can do a :set list and see every character, whether it's a tab or a space or a something else
- I can then do a :set nolist :-)
- I can indent 10 lines (by tabs, my preferred programming style) by 10>
- I can delete 10 lines by simply typing 10d
- I can see all line numbers by doing :set numbers
- I can delete lines 100, 1000 by typeing :100,1000d
- I can delete all lines that contain /foo/
- etc...
and that's just a sample, without even touching macros.
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Post #173,932
9/13/04 12:55:24 PM
8/21/07 6:29:40 AM
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IDEA for Java
Its such a cargo cult language that the automatic handling of imports and such is really nice.
Otherwise I'm likely to use vi.
That was lovely cheese.
--Wallace, The Wrong Trousers
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