4 ms·

Is there even a decent IDE for Go?

grey-area 13y ago
Is there even a decent IDE for Go? If you want a language which requires an IDE, I doubt very much you'd like Go - it is intentionally pared down to a minimum of what the creators consider essential features. Having an IDE is almost required in a language where you have things like header files, namespacing, verbose function names, type hierarchies, a vast and complex standard library, etc. I've used a few IDEs, and prefer to go without where I can, though with some languages they're almost necessary - that's a personal judgement though, not a criticism of those who like IDEs or languages which require them. In Go, I can't imagine what I'd even use one for, save to organise the files in a project and do global searches, and perhaps trigger compiles/runs (I use a text editor for that), it's far closer to a scripting language in that sense. As to refactoring, it's really very simple and tools like gofix are there if you want to do something complex - to be honest that's really unnecessary for 99% of the refactoring I do, a search, check and replace does it very quickly. So you might not like the language for the same reasons it doesn't require an IDE, but not having a decent IDE is not a valid criticism on its own.
- kvb 13y ago
  I don't see how you make the jump from "Is there even a decent IDE for Go?" to "If you want a language which requires an IDE ...". For many people IDEs make the experience of programming more pleasant, even if the language is perfectly usable without an IDE. It hardly requires "a vast and complex standard library" for documentation tooltips or auto-completion to be useful, for instance.
- trailfox 13y ago
  > If you want a language which requires an IDE I didn't ask for a language which "requires" an IDE. I simply want to find a decent IDE for use when coding Go.
  - mahmoudhossam 13y ago
    There's Golangide[0] and Goclipse[1]. [0]: https://code.google.com/p/golangide/ https://code.google.com/p/golangide/ [1]: https://code.google.com/p/goclipse/ https://code.google.com/p/goclipse/
    - trailfox 13y ago
      Thanks
      - mahmoudhossam 13y ago
        You're welcome.
  - grey-area 13y ago
    The thread started with refactoring, and then moved on to IDEs - what I was trying to say was that if you expect to require an IDE to help you with tasks like that, you might not enjoy using Go very much, because usually IDEs tailored for an ecosystem with built in autocomplete, docs, refactoring etc are useful for languages where refactoring means changing header files, the inheritance hierarchy is complex, the std lib or API is really large, etc. (like Java, ObjC, C# perhaps). None of that applies to Go so I don't really see what an IDE would add above a text editor (I use TextMate for example), combined with a browser open at the excellent package docs here - http://golang.org/pkg/ http://golang.org/pkg/.
  - elithrar 13y ago
    > I didn't ask for a language which "requires" an IDE. I simply want to find a decent IDE for use when coding Go. Depends what you mean by "IDE". There's LiteIDE[1], which fits the more "traditional" idea of an IDE. I use Sublime Text 2 + GoSublime[2] myself; auto-completes from packages—inc. third party ones installed via `go get`—as well as error detection and integrated `go fmt`. [1]: https://code.google.com/p/liteide/ https://code.google.com/p/liteide/ [2]: https://github.com/DisposaBoy/GoSublime https://github.com/DisposaBoy/GoSublime
dualogy 13y ago
GoSublime is 100% perfect for my needs.

Is there even a decent IDE for Go? If you want a language which requires an IDE, I doubt very much you'd like Go - it is intentionally pared down to a minimum of what the creators consider essential features. Having an IDE is almost required in a language where you have things like header files, namespacing, verbose function names, type hierarchies, a vast and complex standard library, etc. I've used a few IDEs, and prefer to go without where I can, though with some languages they're almost necessary - that's a personal judgement though, not a criticism of those who like IDEs or languages which require them. In Go, I can't imagine what I'd even use one for, save to organise the files in a project and do global searches, and perhaps trigger compiles/runs (I use a text editor for that), it's far closer to a scripting language in that sense. As to refactoring, it's really very simple and tools like gofix are there if you want to do something complex - to be honest that's really unnecessary for 99% of the refactoring I do, a search, check and replace does it very quickly. So you might not like the language for the same reasons it doesn't require an IDE, but not having a decent IDE is not a valid criticism on its own.

kvb 13y ago
I don't see how you make the jump from "Is there even a decent IDE for Go?" to "If you want a language which requires an IDE ...". For many people IDEs make the experience of programming more pleasant, even if the language is perfectly usable without an IDE. It hardly requires "a vast and complex standard library" for documentation tooltips or auto-completion to be useful, for instance.
trailfox 13y ago
> If you want a language which requires an IDE I didn't ask for a language which "requires" an IDE. I simply want to find a decent IDE for use when coding Go.
- mahmoudhossam 13y ago
  There's Golangide[0] and Goclipse[1]. [0]: https://code.google.com/p/golangide/ https://code.google.com/p/golangide/ [1]: https://code.google.com/p/goclipse/ https://code.google.com/p/goclipse/
  - trailfox 13y ago
    Thanks
    - mahmoudhossam 13y ago
      You're welcome.
- grey-area 13y ago
  The thread started with refactoring, and then moved on to IDEs - what I was trying to say was that if you expect to require an IDE to help you with tasks like that, you might not enjoy using Go very much, because usually IDEs tailored for an ecosystem with built in autocomplete, docs, refactoring etc are useful for languages where refactoring means changing header files, the inheritance hierarchy is complex, the std lib or API is really large, etc. (like Java, ObjC, C# perhaps). None of that applies to Go so I don't really see what an IDE would add above a text editor (I use TextMate for example), combined with a browser open at the excellent package docs here - http://golang.org/pkg/ http://golang.org/pkg/.
- elithrar 13y ago
  > I didn't ask for a language which "requires" an IDE. I simply want to find a decent IDE for use when coding Go. Depends what you mean by "IDE". There's LiteIDE[1], which fits the more "traditional" idea of an IDE. I use Sublime Text 2 + GoSublime[2] myself; auto-completes from packages—inc. third party ones installed via `go get`—as well as error detection and integrated `go fmt`. [1]: https://code.google.com/p/liteide/ https://code.google.com/p/liteide/ [2]: https://github.com/DisposaBoy/GoSublime https://github.com/DisposaBoy/GoSublime

dualogy 13y ago

GoSublime is 100% perfect for my needs.