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If you need Eclipse-level tools to be productive, you probably shouldn't be trying new programming languages. It takes hundreds or thousands of man-years of eff

by thurn 16y ago

If you need Eclipse-level tools to be productive, you probably shouldn't be trying new programming languages. It takes hundreds or thousands of man-years of effort to replicate those features for a new language. Python and Ruby only really got there recently.

foljs 16y ago
> It takes hundreds or thousands of man-years of effort to replicate those features for a new language. Exaggerate much? C# had a great IDE when it appeared, and it sure didn't take Microsoft "hundreds of thousands of man-years of effort" to add C# support to Visual Studio. Heck, it didn't even take the Eclipse team "hundreds of thousands of man-years of effort" to build Eclipse's Java IDE support. Since Eclipse took around 5 years to mature enough from its inception circa 2000, "100,000 man years of effort" would suggest it was build by a team of 100,000/5 = 20,000 programmers. That's a couple of orders of magnitude removed from the actual number. > Python and Ruby only really got there recently. Actually, IMHO, Python and Ruby never got there. There is no Python/Ruby IDE with as much support for the languages and their features as Eclipse JAVA IDE has for Java. And there might never be one, due to their dynamic nature, unless a team puts real effort in and reuses the actual AST of the language for syntax support and other such tricks...
pnathan 16y ago
I've really had to play with enough languages in the last few years that IDEs are just more trouble than they are worth to me. The editing isn't great, the tools are sketch, and the design of visual space tends to be poor. And always being on the tool learning-curve gets old... So I stick with emacs and my primary IDE-esque tools are syntax highlighting and hippie-expand. The only time I break out of my emacs world is to run debuggers.
- zeugma 16y ago
  you should give GUD a try (M-x gdb).

by thurn 16y ago

foljs 16y ago

> It takes hundreds or thousands of man-years of effort to replicate those features for a new language. Exaggerate much? C# had a great IDE when it appeared, and it sure didn't take Microsoft "hundreds of thousands of man-years of effort" to add C# support to Visual Studio. Heck, it didn't even take the Eclipse team "hundreds of thousands of man-years of effort" to build Eclipse's Java IDE support. Since Eclipse took around 5 years to mature enough from its inception circa 2000, "100,000 man years of effort" would suggest it was build by a team of 100,000/5 = 20,000 programmers. That's a couple of orders of magnitude removed from the actual number. > Python and Ruby only really got there recently. Actually, IMHO, Python and Ruby never got there. There is no Python/Ruby IDE with as much support for the languages and their features as Eclipse JAVA IDE has for Java. And there might never be one, due to their dynamic nature, unless a team puts real effort in and reuses the actual AST of the language for syntax support and other such tricks...

pnathan 16y ago

I've really had to play with enough languages in the last few years that IDEs are just more trouble than they are worth to me. The editing isn't great, the tools are sketch, and the design of visual space tends to be poor. And always being on the tool learning-curve gets old... So I stick with emacs and my primary IDE-esque tools are syntax highlighting and hippie-expand. The only time I break out of my emacs world is to run debuggers.

zeugma 16y ago
you should give GUD a try (M-x gdb).