[BangPypers] But IDEs rock! (was Google Go)

[Darkseid]

Yes, yes, I know, I know. While I'm no vi or emacs guru, I've paired 
(for a fair amount of time) with experienced VI and Emacs users. 
Snippets, Ctags etc. help a great deal - but have you ever worked with 
an AST aware development environment where you can safely make 
structural changes across your entire codebase?

Try extracting an Interface from a Class and replace all references to 
the class with references to the interface across a 5000 class codebase 
by hand in a few seconds, without a single error afterward. How about 
add a parameter to a constructor, and have all references to said 
constructor changed? You can do all that and more with IntelliJ.

The thing is, code should be like clay in the hands of a hacker; the 
fact that we have to deal with the AST via a text 'view' *really* slows 
us down.  We often hesitate to make necessary changes because the manual 
effort involved in getting the refactoring done, and then testing it 
afterward for bugs is non-trivial. Even a simple 'Rename Class' 
refactoring can become a chore in a large codebase.

The guys at Intentional and JetBrains are taking a serious shot at 
letting us mould the AST directly - but until their efforts reach 
maturity, IntelliJ is the closest we're going to get to it (and its 
going to be open source soon). I'm happy to demo it sometime, too. Don't 
diss it until you've tried it, preferably on a non toy project.

Best,
Sidu.

Anand Balachandran Pillai wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 8:06 PM, Darkseid <lorddaemon at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>   
>>> 2. It's easy to hire an IDE-aware monkey to do programming in "proven
>>> technology"
>>>
>>>       
>> I do most of my work in Ruby (and have done for a few years now). Every day
>> I bemoan the lack of a powerful refactoring IDE like Java has in IntelliJ. A
>> good IDE is a massive productivity booster; you can only get so far with a
>> text editor*, no matter how many macros you have set up. Honestly.
>>
>>     
>
>  On E M A C S  since 1998 and not doing very bad either...
>
>
>   
>> Best,
>> Sidu.
>> http://blog.sidu.in
>> http://twitter.com/ponnappa
>>
>> * This is especially true of USD1800 text editors like Visual Studio.
>>
>> Pradeep Gowda wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> That's what the big boys of the world wants you to believe. I had met a
>>>       
>>>> very
>>>> senior official in the government a techy himself and spent 3 hours
>>>> showing
>>>> him virtues of Python and Django, hoping that they will change the RFP
>>>> terms.
>>>>
>>>> I found out yesterday that the application has to be developed  on a
>>>> proven
>>>> technology like Java,C++ or C#. When I spoke to the gentleman he said his
>>>> consultant said that dynamically typed languages are not safe for mission
>>>> critical work. The work is far from being mission-critical is another
>>>> point
>>>> altogether.....
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>         
>>> That's because "big boys" define the market suitable to themselves.
>>>
>>> 1. it's easier to code more, take more time when using "proven technology"
>>> 2. It's easy to hire an IDE-aware monkey to do programming in "proven
>>> technology".
>>>
>>> Anyway, one answer to "proven technology" bugaboo is Jython and
>>> IronPython. It's still Java(platform) and .NET
>>> with bi-directional compatibility.
>>> +PG
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>>>
>>>       
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>
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