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Although C++ has lots of warts, I still really like the language mainly thanks to the tooling around it. It has had very good IDEs for years and when I see some

by yoz-y 9y ago

Although C++ has lots of warts, I still really like the language mainly thanks to the tooling around it. It has had very good IDEs for years and when I see some of the advancements in debuggers and profilers for more modern languages I feel that they are still quite behind. Note that this server is based on libclang. This is good because having a good language support means that you have to practically write a compiler for it, using an actual compiler is the best way. However, it is true that I have always used a full fledged IDE – mostly Qt Creator. I never had courage to configure Vim for it and now I will not invest in that. But if a good and fast language server for it existed a few years back I would definitely jump on it.

pjmlp 9y ago
It existed, but sadly both were too early for the market. The first one was from Lucid, after pivoting away from Lisp Machines. https://www.dreamsongs.com/Cadillac.html https://www.dreamsongs.com/Cadillac.html Here is a demo on YouTube. https://youtu.be/pQQTScuApWk https://youtu.be/pQQTScuApWk IBM also tried to create a Smalltalk style repository in Visual Age for C++ v4.0, which has quite resource hungry for mid-90's PCs. So we had to wait until the idea of compiler as library to catch on, to get those ideas back.
- lispm 9y ago
  I think I mentioned that before, Lucid as a company has never done anything with Lisp Machines. Their target market was Unix and various UNIX platforms. What they were famous for was Lucid CL as a very high quality implementation/compiler/runtime of Common Lisp for UNIX. They sold licenses to various companies (like IBM, DEC, SUN, ...), which sold it under their brand with their enhancements. Lucid CL was used for application delivery by commercial customers, because the compiler and runtime were fairly good. The Lucid CL IDE wasn't THAT advanced. Fairly standard CL stuff. Example: SUN sold Lucid CL as Sun Common Lisp and the IDE was called Symbolic Programming Environment: http://3e8.org/pub/scheme/doc/lisp-pointers/v2i2/p5-endelman.pdf http://3e8.org/pub/scheme/doc/lisp-pointers/v2i2/p5-endelman... That's nice, but not too advanced and with a basic look&feel. Lucid as a company failed, because the C++/Energize product failed in the market and it consumed all the money they had earned from milking their Lisp business, which itself was in a shrinking market.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Thanks for clarifying it. Still if such products had been successful earlier, most likely our C++ IDEs would be much joyful to use even without plugging into clang. It always feels so many products have been a market failure just because people weren't yet ready for them. Only to have others 10, 20 years later to conquer exactly the same market.
    - lispm 9y ago
      Prices of Energize IDE in 1992: Single user: $5425 Five users: $2975 each Ten users: $3250 each A single Energize C++ compiler was slightly more than $1000. On top of that Energize was a relatively complex piece of software. Probably it would also have been a good idea to have a capable UNIX desktop machine, which even in 1992 wasn't that cheap. The whole thing was aimed at professional C++ programmers in a relatively limited market of 'mission critical applications'.

by yoz-y 9y ago

pjmlp 9y ago

It existed, but sadly both were too early for the market. The first one was from Lucid, after pivoting away from Lisp Machines. https://www.dreamsongs.com/Cadillac.html https://www.dreamsongs.com/Cadillac.html Here is a demo on YouTube. https://youtu.be/pQQTScuApWk https://youtu.be/pQQTScuApWk IBM also tried to create a Smalltalk style repository in Visual Age for C++ v4.0, which has quite resource hungry for mid-90's PCs. So we had to wait until the idea of compiler as library to catch on, to get those ideas back.

lispm 9y ago
I think I mentioned that before, Lucid as a company has never done anything with Lisp Machines. Their target market was Unix and various UNIX platforms. What they were famous for was Lucid CL as a very high quality implementation/compiler/runtime of Common Lisp for UNIX. They sold licenses to various companies (like IBM, DEC, SUN, ...), which sold it under their brand with their enhancements. Lucid CL was used for application delivery by commercial customers, because the compiler and runtime were fairly good. The Lucid CL IDE wasn't THAT advanced. Fairly standard CL stuff. Example: SUN sold Lucid CL as Sun Common Lisp and the IDE was called Symbolic Programming Environment: http://3e8.org/pub/scheme/doc/lisp-pointers/v2i2/p5-endelman.pdf http://3e8.org/pub/scheme/doc/lisp-pointers/v2i2/p5-endelman... That's nice, but not too advanced and with a basic look&feel. Lucid as a company failed, because the C++/Energize product failed in the market and it consumed all the money they had earned from milking their Lisp business, which itself was in a shrinking market.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Thanks for clarifying it. Still if such products had been successful earlier, most likely our C++ IDEs would be much joyful to use even without plugging into clang. It always feels so many products have been a market failure just because people weren't yet ready for them. Only to have others 10, 20 years later to conquer exactly the same market.
  - lispm 9y ago
    Prices of Energize IDE in 1992: Single user: $5425 Five users: $2975 each Ten users: $3250 each A single Energize C++ compiler was slightly more than $1000. On top of that Energize was a relatively complex piece of software. Probably it would also have been a good idea to have a capable UNIX desktop machine, which even in 1992 wasn't that cheap. The whole thing was aimed at professional C++ programmers in a relatively limited market of 'mission critical applications'.