[OT] Which IDE / Editor do you use?

[Nick Sabalausky]

On Sat, 14 Sep 2013 20:44:45 -0700
Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg at gmx.com> wrote:

> On Saturday, September 14, 2013 22:00:02 Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> > And besides, KDE and GNOME have always been about giving a more
> > Windows-like (or mac-like) feel to Linux, and in no small part for
> > the sake of new Linux users. Plus, the latest ones, KDE4 and GNOME3
> > were largely about re-designing things in hopes of making them
> > easier still. (At least that's been my understanding.)
> 
> KDE 4 was more about redesigning KDE's architecture. They went with a
> less cartoony look and feel by default than they had for KDE 3, but
> ultimately, KDE 4 is a _lot_ like KDE 3, only built in a much cleaner
> and modular manner underneat the hood. It's main problem was that the
> developers released it when it still wasn't really ready (because the
> app developers wouldn't port to it until they released, and KDE 4
> wouldn't really be ready until the app developers had ported stuff to
> it and found bugs - a bit of a catch 22), so initially, KDE 4 had a
> _lot_ of problems, which gave it a bit of a bad rep. But at this
> point, it works as well as KDE 3 did, and most of the features are
> essentially the same. Some aspects of both KDE 3 and KDE 4 are quite
> Windows- like (albeit generally more feature-full than what Windows
> provides for the same thing), though I think that it's more a case of
> simply not redesigning things that didn't need redesigning rather
> than trying to emulate Windows.
> 

Hmm, maybe KDE4 really has finally been sorted out, but when I tried it
it *wasn't* a particularly early version. I'm pretty sure it was around
4.5-ish, give or take a point release. By that point people were saying
the issues had been ironed out. But it was still kinda buggy (ex: the
desktop just plain didn't work approx ~60% or so of the times I booted
- entirely by random AFAICS), a bit slow, things were inconsistent,
lots of little "lack of polish" things, and I didn't like the whole
notification system (which didn't seem very well-made anyway. Ex: there
were sooo many times I thought a directory copy was finished and then
several second later...Oh look, a giant interruption telling me, among
several other oversized stacked up bits of info I don't care about,
that *now* the file copy is done).

But I dunno, this was part of Kubuntu, and I understand Canonical
tended to treat that as a second-class version, so maybe they'd messed
it up somehow?


> Oh well. Unfortunately, DEs tend to end up being an almost religious
> argument. I'm a big fan of KDE, so that's what I tend to promote, and
> I really don't understand some of what the Unity and Gnome guys have
> been up to (or the Windows 8 guys for that matter),

I really need to at least give Unity a try. I've avoided it because I
didn't like the goals/motivations/theories they had been giving for it,
but I don't *actually* know how it works. I should at least fire up a
new scratch VM with a Live Disc iso and find out.

Windows 8 is just plain insane. After using it, I could have easily
mistaken it for a bad prank if I hadn't already known better. It seems
to be a clear reflection of MS's famed lack of internal coherence. It's
as if they're just flailing around randomly as part of some last-ditch
pre-mortem spasms. That's the only way I can think to account for it.


> as I'm of the
> opinion that the basic UI paradigms that we've had since Win95 (if
> not before) really don't need to be redesigned. We've had plenty of
> incremental improvements over the years, which is great, but it seems
> like the UI guys just can't accept that you don't need to keep
> completely redesigning stuff. It's not like we redesign door knobs or
> pots all the time. We found basic designs for them which work, and
> we've stuck with them, and at most, new designs are variations on the
> same basic design rather than being completely new. Unfortunately, it
> seems like the UI guys just can't accept that UIs are the same.
> 

Agreed. I've seen a lot of fanboyism about "it's the future, just
accept it" and how I'm horrible for not being interested in trying to
adapt myself to it. I've already posted my feelings on it here:

https://semitwist.com/articles/article/view/don-t-be-a-trend-chump

Put simply, you're absolutely right about gratuitous redesigns: It
used to be people *understood* how "time-tested and battle-proven;
tried and true" was a reason to *use* something, not compulsively
abandon it out of some irrational fear of "passe".