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0 pointsgizmo68613y ago0 comments

My understanding of dasil003's point is that it is not a complaint about IDEs, but rather about languages that are designed in such a way as to require IDEs. For example, in Java, if you want to sort a List by a given field (using the Native Collections.sort method), you would need to do something like:

Collections.sort(myList, new new Comparator<E>() { public int compare(E o1, E o2) { return 01.val-02.val } }

(You could also make your class implement Comparable, but then you need to own the class, have only one ordering used in the entire program, not mind making the ordering a property of the class).

If you are in an IDE, then writing all that out is not to bad because of auto complete. If you are stuck in a plain-text editor, you would much prefer something like: Collections.sort(myList, lambda<E->int> x->x.val);

Java 8 does incluse lambda's, so maybe this particlar case has been solved. But languages with a strong CLI pressense in the community tend to need alot less IDE than languages with a strong IDE pressense in the community.

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gchpaco13y ago

Another way of looking at this is how much code you have to read. This is one of the reasons I hate wizard generated code in a way that I don't hate InterfaceBuilder or similar serialized object trees. If I'm gonna have to read the code eventually, the fact that your IDE makes it easy to draw a button is cold comfort to me when it takes 100 lines of cryptic C to do it (actually pretty common in early Windows programs or Xaw hacks, but mercifully diminished in frequency in these more enlightened days).

Code generation can cause people to neglect library design; the reason why the MFC wizards spat out volumes of code instead of calling a library method is because you might need to rewrite some or all of that. You are not expected to modify InterfaceBuilder output, nor should you have to any more than you would have to regularly rewrite bits of Xlib to customize them appropriately.

dasil00313y ago

This is correct, I just don't like Java. IDEs are really beside the point; but the fact is there is no IDE that supports the breadth of languages that vim or emacs support. And there's certainly no IDE that I would want to run over SSH to machines spanning oceans, whereas vim copes incredibly well.

eru13y ago

I used to be in the same camp about not using languages that require an IDE. But I have recently started using something akin to a Haskell IDE, and I have to say, things like displaying the inferred types of expressions in a tooltip and jump-to-definition are nice to have.

mattmanser13y ago

I don't use Java but the equivalent in C# is literally `thing.OrderBy(p => p.Whatever);`. So even simpler than your example.

The boiler plate code has been disappearing in C# a lot faster than Java, but I believe Java is catching up.

So needing an IDE to actually edit code to relieve the tedium of boilerplate is is not the case these days, although you still need it to manage things like references, I'd not want to manage that myself.

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