RE: IDE & vim

[Paul Bemowski <bemowski@yahoo.com>]

A quick comment.  

First, I've been watching the Vim/IDEA/Eclipse carnage.  No
mention of Emacs+Ant -- all the IDE I need.

Your point about using an IDE across all platforms, open source,
etc., for the life of the project as a good thing.  You miss one
major drawback of this approach.  Even though your IDE will work
on all platforms until the end of time, you force all developers
to use it.  In a large organization this can be a real problem. 
In a distributed project, this is impossible.  

I was using Emacs when I wrote C on HPUX, Java on any platform,
and god willing I'll be using it until they pry it from my cold
dead hands.  Confining any project to any single IDE will be a
real problem over the life of the project.  Especially if the
IDE get's its clutches into all of your code.  I don't mind any
IDE that plays well with others, but few do.

No flame please, just my $0.02.


--- "Meads, Justin J" <Justin.Meads@ace-ina.com> wrote:
> One man's bug is another man's feature.
> 
> I want to disagree with a couple of Corey's points.
> 
> First he states that code generated in an IDE (specifically
> GUI) "becomes
> unmaintainable unless you have access to the IDE that was used
> to produce
> the code, which rules out development across multiple
> platforms".  How about
> if the IDE is cross-platform like Eclipse?  It runs on Linux,
> Windows, and
> MacOS X.  What is the harm then?  Especially when the IDE is
> open sourced
> and you don't have to worry about the vendor going out of
> business.
> 
> The second sentiment I disagree with is "the more 'features'
> of an IDE that
> you use, the more disconnected you become from the sources and
> or
> processes".  I see this as a good thing.  Using the templates
> and other
> features of Eclipse allows me for the first time to
> concentrate on the
> business problem at hand and not about the intricate details
> of Java.  While
> Java is a good language, I believe it is far more important to
> be good at
> OOP regardless of the language.  A good IDE brings this utopia
> closer to
> reality.
> 
> Please note, I do not intend this as an attack on Corey simply
> a debate on
> some of his points.
> 
> On a separate note (and one that ties into the subject line),
> the only
> problem I have with Eclipse is that it does not have a VIM
> plug-in.  I love
> VIM and use it whenever I am not in Eclipse.  I get the
> feeling that many of
> my fellow AJUG'ers are VIM fans as well.  Maybe we at AJUG
> should take on
> the challenge of adding a VIM plug-in to Eclipse.
> 
> 
> -Justin
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Corey [mailto:corey@spectrumsoftware.net] 
> Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2003 10:23 AM
> To: Chris Fowler; Christopher R. Gardner; Lee Chalupa
> Cc: george wang; ajug-members@ajug.org
> Subject: Re: IDE & vim
> 
> 
>     
>     This is exactly why I gave up on IDEs a few years ago and
> went back to
>     gvim and the command line. There are two things that keep
> me from going
>     back to an IDE for Java development. The number one thing
> is that
> generated
>     GUI code is generally not structured in a nice fashion and
> becomes
> unmaintainable
>     unless you have access to the IDE that was used to produce
> the code,
> which rules 
>     out development across multiple platforms. For instance, I
> use Windows
> XP at 
>     work and RedHat at home. The second thing that keeps me
> from going back
> to 
>     an IDE is the fact that the more "features" of an IDE that
> you use, the
> more disconnected 
>     you become from the sources and or processes. This is
> again especially
> true when it 
>     comes to GUI code or the deployment of packages in an app
> server
> environment. If I 
>     depend on my IDE to layout the widgets for me and to apply
> all of the
> callbacks, how
>     will I, as a developer, ever improve my own understanding
> of how this
> code
>     actually works? I know plenty of Java Swing developers who
> have no idea
>     how to use a GridBagLayout because they depend on their
> IDE to do the
>     work for them. Faced with having to physically write the
> code
> themselves, or
>     to maintain the code generated by a tool, they couldn't do
> it. Which
> leads to
>     my last gripe (I know I said I only had two). If you
> develop with an
> IDE, you
>     are married to that IDE for the complete life-cycle of the
> product. And
> that
>     not only means development, but the entire maintenance
> life-cycle of the
> product 
>     too! How many times have IDE vendors broken backward
> compatibility by
> introducing
>     the latest version of their products?
> 
>     Now, given everything that i've said, I have to admit that
> the velocity
> of development
>     can be greatly improved by using an IDE. In my last gig I
> used Visual
> Age for Java
>     (and let my vi skills deteriorate in doing so) and can say
> without
> reservation that
>     that particular IDE was unmatched when it came time to
> "refactor" some
> of the 
>     code. The reorganization capabilities of an IDE, or at
> least VAJ, are
> really strong.
>     The only area where VAJ really fell down was in the area
> of CM. Yes VAJ
> has a 
>     really strong versioning tool, but configuration
> management is not just
> about being
>     able to version methods, classes and projects. It's also
> about packaging
> your product
>     for distribution, versioning related documents,
> associating changes with
> a trackable
>     issue, binary resources and a whole world of other
> "things" that are
> necessary to 
>     properly "build" your product. Anyway, I digress.
>     
>     Just my $.02
> 
>     --Corey
> 


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