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Ask HN: Productivity at work

5 points by KeepTalking 17y ago

The lack of a good IDE at work - that is supported and maintained by IT/release engineering is seriously affecting my productivity. We work in a linux / embedded systems environment and I am a young engineer. I do not have the prowess of the pointy haired linux geek and I need the help of a good ide to spot those missing curly braces / syntax etc ( trivial mistakes). I am really pissed such support is not offered and chasing such minor trivial errors REALLY eats into my time. What options do I have ? I use VIM currently. I have previously used Visual studio ( in a different setting ).Most of my work involves ( C/C++ , some perl / bash scripts etc). I have tried getting eclipse to work but there are some java ( jre / jvm issues and its messed my system up ! ) I do not mind passing the bill to the overlords. even if it means $$$ .!!!! Your opinions and help shall go a long way and thanks !

cpr 17y ago
You likely have Emacs on your system. Learn to use it. In the most trivial sense, as soon as you start editing C or C++ code (or any language), the syntax-aware highlighting/bracket matching is turned on, and you're off and running! All at no cost, other than some learning. Emacs has a good built-in help/info system. Learn to use that first, and then use it at every step. Emacs is really an operating system that happens to edit text. ;-)
- hga 17y ago
  Seconded: if you haven't tried EMACS yet, you need to. You can also catch things by hitting TAB, which tells the syntax aware language mode to properly indent what follows the cursor. If that isn't correct, you should be able to tell where the missed punctuation is. The auto newline feature is also great, it automatically indents after you hit newline (Enter); if that location is off you've missed something. Colors also help you see if you've missed closing a string, comment, etc. You can also compile inside a subshell and then have EMACS run you through each compilation error and the associated source code with next-error.
there 17y ago
I do not have the prowess of the pointy haired linux geek and I need the help of a good ide to spot those missing curly braces / syntax etc ( trivial mistakes). why can't you just enable syntax highlighting in vim? it has syntax files for most languages and will highlight/color words differently if they are recognized as valid commands in the particular language, and can do things like highlight the closing parenthesis or brace when you have the cursor over the opening one (or use % to jump to it).
aheilbut 17y ago
I've been impressed with Codelite (http://codelite.org/ http://codelite.org/) - it's the closest thing I've seen to Visual Studio for linux, and does very nice syntax highlighting and auto-completion.
macros 17y ago
Also look at kdevelop. Should be a bit closer to what you have in mind and available for most any linux distro you are using.
KeepTalking 17y ago
Thanks to all of you for your replies ! Real neat !

5 points by KeepTalking 17y ago

cpr 17y ago

You likely have Emacs on your system. Learn to use it. In the most trivial sense, as soon as you start editing C or C++ code (or any language), the syntax-aware highlighting/bracket matching is turned on, and you're off and running! All at no cost, other than some learning. Emacs has a good built-in help/info system. Learn to use that first, and then use it at every step. Emacs is really an operating system that happens to edit text. ;-)

hga 17y ago
Seconded: if you haven't tried EMACS yet, you need to. You can also catch things by hitting TAB, which tells the syntax aware language mode to properly indent what follows the cursor. If that isn't correct, you should be able to tell where the missed punctuation is. The auto newline feature is also great, it automatically indents after you hit newline (Enter); if that location is off you've missed something. Colors also help you see if you've missed closing a string, comment, etc. You can also compile inside a subshell and then have EMACS run you through each compilation error and the associated source code with next-error.

there 17y ago

I do not have the prowess of the pointy haired linux geek and I need the help of a good ide to spot those missing curly braces / syntax etc ( trivial mistakes). why can't you just enable syntax highlighting in vim? it has syntax files for most languages and will highlight/color words differently if they are recognized as valid commands in the particular language, and can do things like highlight the closing parenthesis or brace when you have the cursor over the opening one (or use % to jump to it).

aheilbut 17y ago

I've been impressed with Codelite (http://codelite.org/ http://codelite.org/) - it's the closest thing I've seen to Visual Studio for linux, and does very nice syntax highlighting and auto-completion.

macros 17y ago

Also look at kdevelop. Should be a bit closer to what you have in mind and available for most any linux distro you are using.

KeepTalking 17y ago

Thanks to all of you for your replies ! Real neat !