Mainstream D Programming (IDEs)

[Bruce Adams]

Janice Caron Wrote:

> On 10/14/07, Nathan Reed <nathaniel.reed at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Languages differ enough that it actually does make sense to have
> > language-specific IDEs rather than totally general-purpose IDEs.  (And
> > the time/effort needed to develop a hypothetical emacs d-mode would be
> > pretty much equivalent with that needed to develop a D-specific IDE.)
> 
> Yeah I know. I do agree. (And like I said, I use Visual Studio at work).
> 
> This conversation began when someone said that using a text editor was
> "stone age". I kinda felt it was reasonable to point out that many
> people still use them, and are likely to for the forseeable future,
> because they do have some advantages. Maybe they can't do all that a
> language-specific IDE can do, but they do have some advantages. That's
> worth noting.

I'm pretty sure emacs could in theory be made to do all the things these fancy new IDEs do. The problem is the code would have to be developed in LISP. Large scale deveopment in lisp is challenging.
Did you know that LISP in fact stands for Lots of Spurious and Iterating Parentheses? Its surprising how poor the scripting interface of some of these modern IDEs can be. 

Here's a question for IDE developers and users. What scripting language would your ideal D IDE use? I suppose some will say none, just publish an API for developing plug-ins.  Maybe even a plug-in to give you the scripting interface in the language of your choice.

Bruce.