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Any language is non-IDE-friendly compared to what you have out of the box for languages such as Java, C# and even Python in IntelliJ's IDEs. Most languages at

Any language is non-IDE-friendly compared to what you have out of the box for languages such as Java, C# and even Python in IntelliJ's IDEs. Most languages at most have autocomplete and definitions look up (and even those are often very brittle). That is a far cry from what an IDE should be able to provide. Granted, recently I only tried OCaml via Reason, but I remember that some of the errors the compiler produces are not IDE-friendly either (something like "Type A provided but elsewhere wanted B" with no indication where :) ). But that's mostly due to the age of the language (most "old" languages are very user-hostile and have very terse/cryptic error messages).

gmfawcett 6y ago
I agree that IntelliJ is excellent for Java, and assume it is for C# (though I haven't used it for that). It's my go-to tool for Java development. In my experience, it's good for Python that doesn't have type annotations -- it's remarkably smart really, considering the challenges of autocomplete for dynamic languages -- but not truly great. Better than nothing, certainly! I can't speak to Ocaml in IDEs other than Emacs, but in my experience, error messages are quite location-precise, down to the specific word(s) on the line causing the error; and the messages are readable with a little practice. They are not as good as, say, Rust's error messages, but you get used to them fairly quickly! But that's more a condemnation of the compiler, not of the IDE. There are a few esoteric error types in Ocaml ("Expected a value of type 'a, but you gave a value of type 'a" -- OK, that's a head-scratcher) but those are very infrequent in typical code.
- octachron 6y ago
  Do you have a recent example of an error of the form "Expected a value of type 'a, but you gave a value of type 'a"? I have hoped to have eliminated all of them in 4.08.
  - gmfawcett 6y ago
    That is great news, and I am probably remembering errors from the olden times. :) Thanks for your work!

gmfawcett 6y ago

I agree that IntelliJ is excellent for Java, and assume it is for C# (though I haven't used it for that). It's my go-to tool for Java development. In my experience, it's good for Python that doesn't have type annotations -- it's remarkably smart really, considering the challenges of autocomplete for dynamic languages -- but not truly great. Better than nothing, certainly! I can't speak to Ocaml in IDEs other than Emacs, but in my experience, error messages are quite location-precise, down to the specific word(s) on the line causing the error; and the messages are readable with a little practice. They are not as good as, say, Rust's error messages, but you get used to them fairly quickly! But that's more a condemnation of the compiler, not of the IDE. There are a few esoteric error types in Ocaml ("Expected a value of type 'a, but you gave a value of type 'a" -- OK, that's a head-scratcher) but those are very infrequent in typical code.

octachron 6y ago
Do you have a recent example of an error of the form "Expected a value of type 'a, but you gave a value of type 'a"? I have hoped to have eliminated all of them in 4.08.
- gmfawcett 6y ago
  That is great news, and I am probably remembering errors from the olden times. :) Thanks for your work!