[OT] What kind of Editor, IDE you are using and which one do you like for D language?

[H. S. Teoh]

On Tue, Dec 24, 2019 at 10:18:49AM +0000, Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d-learn wrote:
> On Mon, 2019-12-23 at 08:09 -0800, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d-learn
> wrote:
> […]
> > No idea, I use vanilla vim (not even with syntax highlighting -- I'm
> > a hardcore retro guy).
> 
> Surely a hardcore retro guy would be using vi not vim? Indeed wouldn't
> a real hardcore retro guy be using ed?
> 
> :-)

Haha, well, a *real* hardcore retro guy would be using a magnet, a pin,
and a *really* steady hand, to flip individual bits on an exposed
harddisk platter to create the executable in the filesystem directly,
one bit at a time.

Of course, one could also just use emacs:

	https://xkcd.com/378/

:-D


> I used to be anti syntax highlighting in editors, but it was because
> the highlighting was usually crap or worse wrong. Once I started using
> syntax highlighting where the highlighting was correct with respect to
> the language definition, I found it indispensable.

It wasn't so much wrong highlighting for me, it was the fact that it was
highlighted at all.  I find the kaleidoscopic colors extremely
distracting and disruptive to my focusing on the textual content of the
code.  Not to mention that the colors usually clash horribly with my
chosen foreground/background color scheme in my terminal, which only
adds unreadable bits of text to the problem.


> Of course the real problem is that we store text of code rather than
> AST of the code,  but that war got lost in the 1980s when syntax
> oriented editors were rejected in favour of text editors.

Actually, I wouldn't mind a syntax-oriented editor, if one could be made
that wasn't artificially restrictive in terms of editing various
different languages and various different flavors of different
languages, such that it could be used as a general tool.


> Now editors and IDE spend all their CPU cycles reconstructing and
> maintaining the AST of the code from the text representation.

Yet another reason to avoid syntax highlighting altogether. ;-)


> It's a mad, mad, mad world.

This madness is nothing compared to the utter, gibbering insanity of
modern web design, in which modern 8-core CPUs with GHz speeds and GBs
of memory run dead-simple applications like word processors at the
*same* speeds (if not worse!) as WordStar would run back in 1980 on an 8
*Hz* CPU with 64KB of RAM.  With exactly the same lag between
keystrokes, and the same (lack of) reliability requiring frequent
backups and incessant restarting.

Now *that* I call a mad, mad world.  The madness of IDEs parsing and
reparsing the same AST over and over again umpteen times per second
doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of *this* madness. I just
can't wait to see some poor sod attempt to reimplement a modern IDE in
Javascript and succeed at reproducing 1980's IDE speeds and (lack of)
quality.  And of course the masses would slobber all over it and hail it
as "progress".  The browser king has no clothes, and everybody sees
invisible.


T

-- 
If you want to solve a problem, you need to address its root cause, not
just its symptoms. Otherwise it's like treating cancer with Tylenol...