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When I last looked at Play, it seemed the tooling wasn't there and not much IDE support. They tout that a simple text editor is plenty, but who wants to go with

When I last looked at Play, it seemed the tooling wasn't there and not much IDE support. They tout that a simple text editor is plenty, but who wants to go without features like code completion? As I recall, the dynamic code generation made this unworkable in current IDEs.

playing_colours 13y ago
I use Intellij IDEA on Scala / Play project and mostly happy with code completion for Scala code, refactorings, navigation, routes, view, jump to the views from controllers. It's not always perfect, but perfect enough for everyday use.
- unclebucknasty 13y ago
  Yeah, I'm partial to NetBeans, but I tried IntelliJ, just for Play. Spent a few hours trying to get the integration working, but it just never did fully. For instance, it never picked up the Play libs and the dynamically generated code wasn't dynamically loaded by the debugger, etc. Maybe it was just something I was doing. But, after a while, when you're already unsure if you're going to like the framework, it's like, "nevermind. Back to work".
hispanic 13y ago
It's funny. To Java devs, code completion is fundamental (me included, to a certain degree). The idea of having to know all of the methods available on an instance and fully type everything out seems draconian. And yet, for the JavaScript and Ruby devs of the world hacking away in TextMate, auto-completion just isn't there (correct me if I'm wrong). But, they still manage to be productive. :)
- unclebucknasty 13y ago
  Yeah, that's true. It seems a must when you are accustomed to having it. But code completion is just one example. There's refactoring, debugging, and other support that a text editor can't give you which has real impact on your productivity. Even organizing your various config files and providing a UI for modifying them is a convenience. I remember some years ago doing a contract for a large company. I insisted that I was cool with just a text editor. But the client's dev lead insisted that I get with the IDE program because they were paying me hourly and wanted max productivity. In the end, after making the switch, I had to agree.

playing_colours 13y ago

I use Intellij IDEA on Scala / Play project and mostly happy with code completion for Scala code, refactorings, navigation, routes, view, jump to the views from controllers. It's not always perfect, but perfect enough for everyday use.

unclebucknasty 13y ago
Yeah, I'm partial to NetBeans, but I tried IntelliJ, just for Play. Spent a few hours trying to get the integration working, but it just never did fully. For instance, it never picked up the Play libs and the dynamically generated code wasn't dynamically loaded by the debugger, etc. Maybe it was just something I was doing. But, after a while, when you're already unsure if you're going to like the framework, it's like, "nevermind. Back to work".

hispanic 13y ago

It's funny. To Java devs, code completion is fundamental (me included, to a certain degree). The idea of having to know all of the methods available on an instance and fully type everything out seems draconian. And yet, for the JavaScript and Ruby devs of the world hacking away in TextMate, auto-completion just isn't there (correct me if I'm wrong). But, they still manage to be productive. :)

unclebucknasty 13y ago
Yeah, that's true. It seems a must when you are accustomed to having it. But code completion is just one example. There's refactoring, debugging, and other support that a text editor can't give you which has real impact on your productivity. Even organizing your various config files and providing a UI for modifying them is a convenience. I remember some years ago doing a contract for a large company. I insisted that I was cool with just a text editor. But the client's dev lead insisted that I get with the IDE program because they were paying me hourly and wanted max productivity. In the end, after making the switch, I had to agree.