From: David Cantrell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2007 12:55:35 +0100
On Fri, Aug 17, 2007 at 01:52:07AM -0400, Jeremy Muhlich wrote:
> I agree with David -- I think the entire Perl ecosystem has been
> structured in such a way that the shell + editor + cpan approach just
> fits perfectly. I've never felt anything really "painful" in Perl
> development, certainly nothing an IDE would fix.
Actually there is one feature of non-perl IDEs that I would love to
have, but which doesn't exist for perl - some help with refactoring.
Because no matter how good you are, you *will* make mistakes, and even
worse the spec you're working to will change, or you have to maintain or
fix someone elses code. Refactoring is a pain in the arse right now.
Hmm. The refactoring I commonly do comes in two flavors:
1. Splitting/merging classes, which is straightforward; and
2. Recoding internal logic, which is not.
In both cases, having an automated test suite is key, so you can do
"make test" and know immediately (within a few minutes, anyway) what
you've broken. When I start a refactoring project, my first question is
always: How good is the test coverage?
But in the first case, I don't see how using an IDE would improve
things. And in the second case, I don't see how it *could* help, except
to the extent that it makes general debugging easier.
Piers Cawley was working on some perly refactoring thingy in emacs
several years ago, but I don't think he got very far at the time. Now
that PPI exists maybe someone else could give it a go. No, I'm not
volunteering, cos I don't know emacslisp and I don't particularly like
emacs. But I'd jolly well *learn* to like it if this existed.
--
David Cantrell | Reality Engineer, Ministry of Information
References?
-- Bob
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