Re: Whay IDE am I supposed to use/is the best?
On 04/07/12 03:55, Patricia Shanahan wrote:
On 7/3/2012 5:48 PM, Patrick May wrote:
...
I do think there is value in simplicity (and yes, I do see the
humor in calling Emacs simple). I also think there is value in
understanding what your tools are doing, and many IDEs make that
difficult or impossible. It is possible to deliver large enterprise
projects using a programmer's editor like Emacs and a shell window or
three, with occasional reference to documents in a web browser.
Why is understanding what your tools are doing such a good thing? And is
it feasible, even if desirable?
Because if you don't, how are you going to clean up the mess that the
tools generate when they go wrong?
Computing advances by making details irrelevant, and letting people
focus on bigger issues. Even the simplest of program editors, let alone
a tool like emacs, hides many layers from its users.
The more all-encompassing the tool becomes, the greater the potential
for disaster when they go wrong. The more they hide from the user the
less able the user is to fix the mess that the "tool" creates when it
does go wrong.
Just recently I decided to try the latest Netbeans (7.1), having used
Netbeans 6.x for some years. When I attempted to open one of my
applications (which I have been developing for over a year in Netbenas
6) and perform a clean-and-build it failed, throwing up errors in
build-impl.xml. This file is internal to Netbeans, created and
maintained entirely by the Netbeans. There is no user involvement in its
operation at all, so the "tool" provides no mechanism or assistance in
fixing the problem that the "tool" has generated.
I now had an application which would not build in Netbeans 7.1 because
Netbeans had screwed up its own internal files. There was no mechanism
provided by Netbeans to help clean up the mess. Furthermore, in
attempting to convert its own files from 6.9 to 7.1 it had rendered the
files no longer usable by Netbeans 6.9. So, the upshot was that I could
no longer build my application.
What is this "bigger issue" which I should have been focusing on?
--
Nigel Wade