From: Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@...>
Date: 2002-08-17T12:10:12+09:00
Subject: Re: IDE vs. editor


----- Original Message -----
From: "Holden Glova" <dsafari@paradise.net.nz>


> Hello all,
>
> I have always watched people comare using IDE's over straight text editing
and
> they end up only ever comparing the editing ability of IDEs. I guess that is
> because that is about as much as the two have in common. What I think people
> avoid discussing is how much benefit a decent IDE can provide. I'm talking
> about things like:
> - - built in debugger
> - - built in unit testing which lets you jump to the failed line when a test
> fails
> - - built in source control
> - - built in refactorings - even simple things like rename method and having
> that propagated throughout your code base is a _huge_ help IMHO.

Similar to Jim, I was a Vim freak who streamlined the editor to do heaps of
stuff to help me with Java coding.  Someone put IDEA under my nose and I hardly
looked back.  Refactorings, CVS & Ant * JUnit integration, *super* intelligent
coding support, instant context-sensitive JavaDoc, code reformatting etc. were
all just too good to be true.  And when I needed raw coding power, <M-V> opens
Vim at the current line in the current file.  But due to the super-power of
IDEA, I rarely needed that.

Now, with Ruby, Vim is all I need.  This is largely due to the design of the
language.  Java is so obtuse and verbose that IDEA is a necessary crutch.  Ruby
is so terse and well-designed that such a level of support is unnecessary.  I'd
like a class browser, but wouldn't mind running that separately.  Vim handles
errors and all that well.

My needs may change, however.  At the moment I am not engaged in any Ruby
projects of significant size, so most of the necessary information fits in my
head.  An IDE for Ruby that I would *love* to see would actually be a Ruby
program running in Vim.  This was you don't need to implement an editor.  If
the ruby interpreter can expose a low-level parse of the program, surely some
intelligent IDE help can be provided.


> I find through using some sort of class browser it also helps me keep a
better
> view of the overall object model because navigating within hierarchies is
> just easier (assuming you do one class per file).
>
> Sure I love the editing power of ViM, but I find that the productivity I can
> get out of using a decent IDE like eclipse or IDEA outweighs the power of the
> editor. Now if someone could just write ViM bindings for eclipse I'd be
> pretty happy :)
>
> What do you guys think? I don't want this to be an editors suck, or IDEs suck
> debate - rather, I'm curious how people that have used both IDEs and straight
> text editors decided on one or the other. What where the show stoppers?
>
> I've listed what I think the showstoppers are for me above. I like it all in
> one tool so I can spend more time solving the problem and keeping my flow
> well ummm..flowing :)
>
> Holden Glova


Gavin