What do people here use as an IDE?

[Russel Winder]

On Wed, 2010-10-13 at 08:07 +0100, Peter Alexander wrote:
[ . . . ]

> Like it or not, in this day and age, people expect GUI libraries and 
> IDEs. In fact, most programmers have no idea how to compile code without 
> an IDE. Moreover, most people think that the IDE and the language are 
> the *same thing* (evidenced by the number of people that tag their C++ 
> theory questions as "visual studio" on stackoverflow.com).

In the JVM-based milieu, Eclipse, NetBeans, and IntelliJ IDEA are the
market leaders.  All of these have C, C++, and Python modes as well as
the Java, Scala, Groovy, Clojure modes.

In the C and C++ world I would guess Visual Studio is the market leader
followed by Eclipse, NetBeans, IntelliJ IDEA, Code::Blocks, then all the
proprietary embedded systems IDEs.

I suggest that in this polyglot world, having a high quality plugin for
these market leader IDEs is a better choice than trying to create a new
IDE even if it is written in D -- using QtD obviously :-)

Personally I am an Emacs and command line person, but the tide of "no
IDE, no ability to work" is beginning to have its effect, and I am a
more and more frequent user of Eclipse, NetBeans and IntelliJ IDEA for
all languages I work with.

(I guess we could start a Vim vs Emacs fight, but even if carried out
with fun and good humour, which I think it would be on this list, it
would be an essentially useless activity, as the IDE generation
generally view all Vim and Emacs users as quaintly old-fashioned.)

> I agree that solving the compiler bugs and language issues are top 
> priority, but after that, I'd say IDE and GUI library come next (doesn't 
> have to be a standard GUI library -- just any robust library).

Does it have to be either or?  What is needed is for the 64-bit
capability to be the highest priority, but the people tackling that are
not alone in being developers in the D milieu.  Others need to "step up
to the plate" and do stuff.  Especially people in companies who can get
some time allocated to D infrastructure development.  The crucial lesson
from the recent JVM world paradigm shift is that corporate support is
critical to success.  This doesn't mean cash, this means resource in
kind, i.e. programmer time.

Personally, I don't have the time just now to actively develop
infrastructure, but I can volunteer as an Emacs mode tester (and
possibly occasional bug fixer), Eclipse plugin tester, NetBeans plugin
tester, and IntelliJ IDEA plugin tester. 

-- 
Russel.
=============================================================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder at ekiga.net
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel at russel.org.uk
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder
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