5 ms·

I disagree with pretty much all his points, especially the requirement for an IDE.

npsimons 15y ago
I disagree with pretty much all his points, especially the requirement for an IDE. Whew. Glad I'm not the only one. I was starting to think maybe I'd turned into a set-in-his-ways fuddy-duddy. It's all well and good to propose new, even radical ideas, but like everything else, they have to pass (at least) one simple test: will it work? FTFA: Why, for the love of all things pure and functional, are we still storing our source code as ASCII text files on disk? Why? Why? Because it works, and it works very well, thank you very much. Maybe some of us are looking beyond next week because we want to be able to open our code in something 10, 20, even 30 years from now. I'll bet this guy hasn't even heard of EBCDIC. ASCII is a blessing. I'll give him that he's talking up XML and JSON, which are (thankfully) still just plain text at their cores, but the whole "IDEs can store metadata in the repo!" thing just seems stupid. If a human can't see and edit it, sooner or later it will become a roadblock. Note that I'm not saying a human should have to see and edit it, just that they can if need be. See the Windows Registry for the ultimate example of metadata in a non-ascii format. I was tempted to stop reading at point #1, even more so at #2, but some other points are generally good. #6, #7, and #8 are particularly good ideas for new language designers. Extensibility (#6) is what makes languages powerful. Anyone who needs performance (#7 and #8) is already using an established language (such as assembler or C) that doesn't have a GC, so there's no point in writing a language nobody will use.
gavanwoolery 15y ago
But...like he says, pretty much everything is an IDE in reality, even a text editor. I can see arguments for both sides, and I understand why many programmers hate IDEs, but I think that is partially due to the fact that most IDEs suck. The biggest revelation to me (as far as IDEs go) was when Sublime Text put all its config in a text file. This means it is easy to find/search/replace, rather than drilling through 10 menus looking for what to modify. It is little things like this that could make IDEs better...

I disagree with pretty much all his points, especially the requirement for an IDE. Whew. Glad I'm not the only one. I was starting to think maybe I'd turned into a set-in-his-ways fuddy-duddy. It's all well and good to propose new, even radical ideas, but like everything else, they have to pass (at least) one simple test: will it work? FTFA: Why, for the love of all things pure and functional, are we still storing our source code as ASCII text files on disk? Why? Why? Because it works, and it works very well, thank you very much. Maybe some of us are looking beyond next week because we want to be able to open our code in something 10, 20, even 30 years from now. I'll bet this guy hasn't even heard of EBCDIC. ASCII is a blessing. I'll give him that he's talking up XML and JSON, which are (thankfully) still just plain text at their cores, but the whole "IDEs can store metadata in the repo!" thing just seems stupid. If a human can't see and edit it, sooner or later it will become a roadblock. Note that I'm not saying a human should have to see and edit it, just that they can if need be. See the Windows Registry for the ultimate example of metadata in a non-ascii format. I was tempted to stop reading at point #1, even more so at #2, but some other points are generally good. #6, #7, and #8 are particularly good ideas for new language designers. Extensibility (#6) is what makes languages powerful. Anyone who needs performance (#7 and #8) is already using an established language (such as assembler or C) that doesn't have a GC, so there's no point in writing a language nobody will use.

gavanwoolery 15y ago

But...like he says, pretty much everything is an IDE in reality, even a text editor. I can see arguments for both sides, and I understand why many programmers hate IDEs, but I think that is partially due to the fact that most IDEs suck. The biggest revelation to me (as far as IDEs go) was when Sublime Text put all its config in a text file. This means it is easy to find/search/replace, rather than drilling through 10 menus looking for what to modify. It is little things like this that could make IDEs better...