Had another 48hr game jam this weekend...

[John Colvin]

On Tuesday, 3 September 2013 at 01:18:16 UTC, Manu wrote:
> On 3 September 2013 02:19, John Colvin 
> <john.loughran.colvin at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> On Monday, 2 September 2013 at 03:14:38 UTC, Manu wrote:
>>
>>> On 2 September 2013 04:00, bearophile 
>>> <bearophileHUGS at lycos.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>  Manu:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>  Seriously, how do you quickly read and understand the API 
>>>> through the
>>>>
>>>>> noise?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> The noise increases if you have to repeat the class name for 
>>>> each method
>>>> :-)
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Except that you can _read the class definition_.
>>>
>>> Look, I'm just giving an account of the collective experience 
>>> from our
>>> weekend. None of us could find anything easily in each others 
>>> classes, or
>>> quickly get a reasonable overview of it's design and how it 
>>> worked.
>>> This leads to needless conversations, asking the other person 
>>> about it,
>>> and
>>> all those questions that I should be able to understand at a 
>>> glance.
>>> This WILL affect productivity in the office.
>>>
>>> The reason was that functions were polluting the class 
>>> declaration. 9
>>> times
>>> out of 10, when I look at a class declaration, I want to know 
>>> what it is,
>>> what it has, and what it can do.
>>>
>>
>> Code folding? It's a pretty standard feature of most editors 
>> since forever.
>>
>
> I think I've repeated myself 3 or 4 times here, but one more 
> time for good
> measure...
>
> Requiring IDE assistance to make code _readable_ seems 
> completely fail to
> me.
> 1) You're not always reading code in your IDE, often in commit 
> logs, diff
> windows, emails, chat clients.

for some people, all of those things are emacs.

> 2) With so much hate for IDE support, it seems like a massive 
> contradiction
> to say that an IDE should be required to make code readable.

There's a different between and IDE and an editor, but it's a 
pretty blurry line. There are lots of people here(myself 
included) who don't feel the need for a full blown IDE, but I'd 
be surprised if (almost) anyone here used an editor that didn't 
support such basic things as code folding.


anyway, in the end it's a trade-off.
Definitions inside class:
    -you know where it is (never ends up in a different file etc)
    -declarations always in sync
    -it clutters the signature

    solution: code folding or go-to-next-function or minimal 
documentation. Worst case you can scroll and you'll know if 
you've got to the end of the class then it's not there.

Definitions seperate:
    -clear class signature
    -no idea where to find implementation

    solution: go-to-definition. Worst case you have to go through 
separate files searching for a definition by eye. Even if it has 
to be in the same file, you have no hint where.

Both cases require some editor features in order to be ideal, but 
if you don't have those tools (e.g. in all the other places 
you've mentioned*) then it's just a choice between having to 
scroll a bit some of the time or having to occasionally go on a 
blind code-hunt.


*A lot of people use version-control aware editors to do a lot of 
what you're talking about e.g. view a diff.