OT: on IDEs and code writing on steroids

[Yigal Chripun]

I disagree on all your points.
read inside for comments.

Brad Roberts wrote:
> Yigal Chripun wrote:
>> IMO, designing the language to support this better work-flow is a good
>> decision made by MS, and D should follow it instead of trying to get
>> away without an IDE.
> 
> Support or enable.. sure.  Require, absolutely not.
> 
> I've become convinced that the over-reliance on auto-complete and other IDE
> features has lead to a generation of developers that really don't know their
> language / environment.  The number of propagated typo's due to first time
> mis-typing of name (I see lenght way too often at work) that I wanna ban the use
> of auto-complete, but I'd get lynched.

first, typos - eclipse has a built-in spell checker so all those 
"lenght" will be underlined with an orange squiggly line.
regarding the more general comment of bad developers - you see a 
connection where there is none. A friend of mine showed me a a graph 
online that clearly shows the inverse correlation between the number of 
pirates in the world and global worming. (thanks to the Somalian 
pirates, that means the global effort to reduce emissions somewhat helps)
A better analogy would be automotive: if you're Michael Schumacher than 
an automated transmission will just slow you down, but for the rest of 
the population it helps improve driving. the transmission doesn't make 
the driver good or bad, but it does help the majority of drivers to 
improve their driving skills.

there are bad programmers that use a text editor as much as the ones 
that use an IDE. there are also good programmers on both sides.
An IDE doesn't create bad programmers, rather the IDE helps bad 
programmers to write less buggy code.

> 
> If the applications library space is so vast or random that you can't keep track
> of where things are, a tool that helps you type in code is papering over a more
> serious problem.

false again, using a tool that helps writing code does not mean there's 
a design problem in the code. auto-complete prevents typos, for instance 
and that has nothing to do with anything you said.
For me, many times I remember that there's a method that does something 
I need by I can't remember if it's called fooBar(int, char) or 
barFoo(char, int) or any other permutation. you'd need to go check the 
documentation, I save time by using the auto-complete.
Another use case is when I need to use some API I can get the list of 
methods with the documentation by using the auto-complete feature.
> 
> My other problem with IDE's, such as eclipse, is that it's such an all or
> nothing investment.  You can't really just use part of it.  You must buy in to
> it's editor, it's interface with your SCM, it's scriptures of indentation style,
> etc.  Trying to deviate from any of it is such a large pain that it's just not
> worth it -- more so as the team working on a project gets larger.

completely wrong. You forget - Eclipse is just a plug-in engine with 
default plug-ins that implement a Java IDE.
editor: prefer vim/emacs? there are eclipse plugins that implement both.
SCM: there are _tons_ of SCM plug-ins! just use what ever you prefer. I 
use git and there's a neat UI for that. *But*, sometimes I prefer git's 
command line. what to do? no problem, I can open a terminal window 
inside eclipse and run any command I want!
I work on unix and my local eclipse (on windows) can open remote files 
on the unix machine. eclipse does everything for me including giving me 
a shell to run remote commands.
indentation style: there's nothing easier. go to eclipse properties. for 
each language you have installed you can configure "styles" and eclipse 
will ident, color, format your code in what ever way you want.

you don't have to like or use eclipse, or any other IDE but if you are 
not familiar with the tool, don't provide mis-information.

> 
> Sorry, I'll stop ranting.
> 
> Sigh,
> Brad