What are we missing, in terms of tool support?

[Andrew Wiley]

On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 11:54 AM, Dmitry Olshansky <dmitry.olsh at gmail.com>wrote:

> On 13.01.2011 10:40, Jim wrote:
>
>> I don't want to make this Vim-specific, so I'm wondering what features are
>>> we missing in today's D editors/IDE's that other languages already have in
>>> their editors/IDE's?
>>>
>>
>> IDE with incremental compiler.
>>
> IDE has nothing to do with incremental linking. And besides the only
> advantage of  incremental linking is slightly faster link time (which is
> pretty fast ATM).
>
>> Non-windows IDEs.
>>
> Last time on  linux I used Code::Blocks, there are also Descent and DDT.
>
>> Ddoc integration.
>>
> Not sure what you mean here.
>
>> Refactoring utilities.
>>
>>  Yup, useful, but hardly critical.
>
>  Template- and conditional-compilation-aware editing.
>>
>>  VisualD has it. Not used code paths in static conditional statements is
> slightly lighter, etc.
>
>> Inline error and warning messages.
>>
>> ....
>>
> Do You mean exact line and _column_ of error or what?
>
>
I'm pretty sure what Jim was getting at here is that unlike the world of
C++, D seems like it could be made as IDE-friendly as so many of the VM
languages are. When you're programming C++, the IDE is generally a somewhat
advanced text editor, possibly with some autocompletion if it can parse your
code. With Java and other VM languages, the IDE is parsing your code as you
type, and rather than the code-compile-fix cycle of C++, the VM languages
get constant as-you-type compilation (actually, it's when-you-stop-typing,
but close enough).
Having the IDE able to parse your code that rapidly means you get instant
error feedback, and it means that things like type inference become much
more transparent. Unexpected compiler errors make more sense because you can
dismantle exactly why the error occurred more rapidly, and the programmer
becomes more free to think about why something happens rather than focusing
on how to fix it. It also opens the door to advanced refactoring, code
analysis, and more advanced project management features. Autocompletion can
automatically display documentation.
The bottom line is that an IDE that knows as much about your code as the
compiler can improve programmer productivity dramatically. With D, it's more
challenging because of CTFE and full templates, but when Descent could
handle those back in the day, it was hailed as a breakthrough.
Unfortunately, the way Descent did that isn't really sustainable.
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