D dropped in favour of C# for PSP emulator

Timon Gehr timon.gehr at gmx.ch
Sat May 12 02:43:51 PDT 2012


On 05/12/2012 08:04 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> "Timon Gehr"<timon.gehr at gmx.ch>  wrote in message
> news:jok96k$l7t$1 at digitalmars.com...
>>
>> Properties of a 'good IDE', as I see it:
>>
>> some essential properties:
>> - starts up instantaneously
>> - uses the screen space efficiently
>> - supports editing text efficiently
>> - accepts keyboard input as given by the user.
>> - reasonable support for auto-indentation
>> - supports searching the code for some text efficiently
>> - keeps all code _readable_, especially the one that has been written
>> recently
>> - pattern recognition based code completion
>>
>> - ... by default!
>>
>> some 'nice to have' properties:
>> - code analysis based code completion
>> - navigate-to-declaration
>> - for those languages that require it: automatic generation of
>> boilerplate.
>> - integrated debugger
>> - useful refactoring tools
>> - visualization of compilation errors (but please don't nag me)
>> - actual support for detecting semantic errors as they happen (extremely
>> difficult to do properly)
>> - any other argument that is commonly used to advertise IDEs
>>
>> - ... _responsive_ on halfway recent hardware!
>>
>> some anti-features:
>> - splash screen
>> - cannot run code if there is no 'project/solution file'
>> - sometimes messes up those files
>> - build fails - restart IDE - build works
>> - fancy GUI
>> - requires pointing device
>> - accidental hit of obscure keyboard combination ...
>>    =>  permanent, extremely annoying configuration change
>>    =>  no way to tell what happened
>>    =>  no undo operation
>> - termination of the debugged program kills the output console
>>
>>
>> As long as IDEs fail to satisfy every single point in the 'essential'
>> category and strive to have all of the stated anti-features, they don't
>> have much value for me anyway.
>>
>
> Hear hear!
>
> Although I'd swap the positions of "pattern recognition based code
> completion" and "_responsive_ on halfway recent hardware!".

The - ... points were meant to apply to all the other points in their 
group. Eg. navigate-to-declaration is extremely annoying if after the 
click, there is a pause of multiple seconds.

> In fact, I'd put "responsive" at the top of the "essential" list.
>

I have to agree. It could be argued that responsiveness was included in 
'starts up instantaneously'/'supports editing text efficiently'.



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