Adam Wilson is now a GSoC 2012 mentor!

[Adam Wilson]

On Mon, 26 Mar 2012 11:15:54 -0700, BLS <bizprac at orange.fr> wrote:

> On Monday, 26 March 2012 at 15:27:29 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu
> wrote:
>> We're very happy and honored to had Adam Wilson on board as a GSoC 2012  
>> mentor. Adam brings solid project management experience and has a  
>> specific interest in the Mono-D project.
>>
>> Please join me in welcoming Adam to the ranks of GSoC mentors!
>>
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Andrei
>
> On 03/26/2012 08:27 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> We're very happy and honored to had Adam Wilson on board as a GSoC 2012  
>> mentor. Adam brings solid project management experience and has a  
>> specific interest in the Mono-D project.
>>  Please join me in welcoming Adam to the ranks of GSoC mentors!
>>   Thanks,
>>  Andrei
>
> Welcome Adam and congratulation Alex.
>
> I am using Mono-D and I almost enjoy it.  One thing is for sure:
> Code LookUp /
> "Intellisense" is great in Mono-D, ,Code outline simply rox, and
> MNono-D is (in this regard) light years ahead of Visual D.
>
> The pure speed  in which Alex's code analyzer is working is just
> xtreme amazing. Alex ? Benchmarks ?
>
> But it is a GTK# and  MONO based project and this means it is
> finally a C# project.
>
> I am pretty sure that we will have a complete wxWidgets 2.9.3
> binding in a few days/weeks.  (and we will have a TOOL to create
> almost automatic wxWidgets 2.4. 2.5, 3.0 bindings)  incl. say Gtk
> 3.0 and iOS support)
>
> So. wouldn't make more sense to ask Alex to port and enhance  his
> code analyzer into D2  as GSOC project  to become part of a wxD2
> driven IDE ?
> I think, Yep.
> Despite that,
> Alex, thanks for Mono-D, very well done.
> My 2 cents, Bjoern

I think that the best thing that we can do right now is to focus on  
bringing the parser to completion. It's still missing some key features of  
D, especially in terms of code-completion and syntax highlighting. It's  
also missing UFCS from 2.058, which is a pretty big deal I think. For a  
full list of tasks that Alex would like to get done please see this list:  
https://github.com/aBothe/Mono-D/blob/master/MonoDevelop.DBinding/Remaining%20features.txt

As to an IDE written in D, that's a HUGE project and well outside the  
scope of what can be accomplished in a GSoC project. It takes millions of  
lines of code to make a *DECENT* IDE. Not to mention that UI design is  
something that will always polarize the community, some basically want a  
glorified VIM/EMACS while other will settle for nothing less than a Visual  
Studio clone, still more people will want a radically different UI from  
anything previously seen (I personally am intrigued by Code-Bubbles for  
instance). Plus why bother with that when we can integrate into existing  
solutions like MonoDevelop or Visual Studio *much* quicker.

I personally think that Mono-D represents the most capable path forward  
for D IDE's right now, maybe later that might change as D grows, but for  
the moment we need an complete IDE fast, and integration can deliver that.

-- 
Adam Wilson
IRC: LightBender
Project Coordinator
The Horizon Project
http://www.thehorizonproject.org/