What's worse is that people are confusing IDEs with code generation. Good IDEs aren't about code generation, they're about code organization and navigation. The IDE isn't there to save me typing, it's there to help me understand the code better than a text editor can.
One can have both an awesome terse dynamic language, and a kick ass IDE with colored code, intellisense, awesome code navigation, and more, all at the same time. It's called Smalltalk.
It could be one of those cultural divides where good things happen on either side, but it could just be like the cultural divide between Rubyists and Java programmers, i.e., a rift based on good sense.
The thread on ruby-lang touched on Smalltalk, and also this:
Are you a hacker who likes to make music? You know how you feel precise control when you write code you understand, but you have to filter your understanding of your music through oversimplified GUIs which sometimes have terrible UX? I made a series of videos which teaches you how to write music sequencing software in Node.js and CoffeeScript. When I do it, I experience a clarity which makes it easy for me to make more exciting sounds. You may have the same experience. Upcoming episodes will also teach you how to use simple probabilistic artificial intelligence to write code which writes its own music (which I've already done in Ruby).
This is so stupid. I can't imagine why people are wasting time writing about this stuff.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, my take: IDEs can make you a more productive programmer, but they can't make you a better programmer.
What's worse is that people are confusing IDEs with code generation. Good IDEs aren't about code generation, they're about code organization and navigation. The IDE isn't there to save me typing, it's there to help me understand the code better than a text editor can.
ReplyDeleteOne can have both an awesome terse dynamic language, and a kick ass IDE with colored code, intellisense, awesome code navigation, and more, all at the same time. It's called Smalltalk.
It could be one of those cultural divides where good things happen on either side, but it could just be like the cultural divide between Rubyists and Java programmers, i.e., a rift based on good sense.
ReplyDeleteThe thread on ruby-lang touched on Smalltalk, and also this:
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2007/02/its_lunchtime_a.html
god, speaking of stupid, Blogger just ate my link. expect a migration (probably to Mephisto) at some point.
ReplyDelete