[CLUE-Talk] Intriguing project

[David Anselmi]

Jeffery Cann wrote:

> As a vi (actually vim now) lover, I agree totally.  I would much rather keep
> my hands on the keyboard and use vi commands than the mouse.  Of course, you
> could argue that your email editor should have a vi emulator, right?

You're kidding, right?  My email editor should emulate vi - absolutely!  If
you're writing an email program, why do you have to write an editor for it - just
plug in vi or emacs (user's choice).  Elm did that, can't gui programs do it
too?  Maybe I'm too idealistic.


> I do think folks benefit a lot more from an IDE (especially NetBeans) because
> it has so many cool features (especially for Java development) that make it
> worthwhile to forget about vi movement commands.
>
> For example:
> + JUnit integration - one click to generate unit classes
> + CVS integration - full CVS commands within the IDE
> + XML support - one click to validate your XML against a DTD or XSD
> + UML support - via Poseidon UML (open source) + commercial plugins
>
> Sure, I can use command line utils or other GUI apps to accomplish those
> tasks, but what makes an IDE powerful for software development is the
> integration.  I don't have to leave the IDE.  This makes training of new
> developers much easier when they can stay in a single application, rather
> than opening 5 other applications.

I don't exactly disagree.  But the nice thing about command line utils is that
they can be used with (or within) any editor.  And they can be scripted and
plugged together.  I really prefer a command that I can alias to a "click here,
here, fill this dialog, click ok" one.

Staying in a single app?  Wouldn't that be bash?  I don't know much about IDEs,
and netbeans sounds nice.  But I bet if I were to use it I would still miss
features of bash.

One thing puzzles me.  The IDEs I've seen can do many things for you but they
aren't very programmable.  So if they don't do what you need (or they don't do it
the way you'd like) you're stuck.  Don't programmers prefer programmable tools?

Dave