I disagree, fairly strongly....
> 
> type 1 people will -1 or -10 any high level or visual feature request,

Not true, we'll -1 (btw, the -/+ 10 is very silly, people don't get 10
votes) things that do NOT contribute towards the task at hand, which is
writing java code. I like visual features, and I'll all for features that
make coding a more pleasant enjoyable experience.

> 1- they are afraid IDEA developpers could postpone the next hundred editor
>   tweekings they have in mind, and think they could not be productive
>   without them.

It's like that saying 'god is in the details'. There are tens of java
editors out there, all of which allow you to compile, edit, have
autocompletion of some sort, etc etc. But the attention to detail and
wonderful usability is what makes me choose IDEA.

> 2- they are afraid IDEA will become slow
> 3- they are afraid IDEA will become big
> 
> You don't mix up requirements collections with time, cost, architecture and
> technology. You just tell what you need.
> 
Again, I disagree. Many many projects fail because the goal is too ambitious
and nebulous. You DO take time, cost, and effort into consideration. If you
didn't, the whole science of cost benefit analysis would seem rather
pointless.

> point 2 : have some faith, in Intellij, your VM vendor and Intel (or..).
>          Don't tell me me you fear they would have to rewrite in in C.
>          Look at Together : it's big, it's fast, and it does code auditing.

More disagreement. I hate together because it's SO painfully slow. The
editor is practically unusable. The interface is ugly, and it screams 'ugly
java app' at me. I only use it for modelling, which it does fairly well.

> point 3 : Who cares if the next EAP is 20M big. If you download the eap build
>          at 56K, poor you.
>          This is 2001, year of cable speed, cheap hard disk and cheap memory.
> 
Nobody cares about hard drive space, but 20M implies a bigger memory
footprint too, and a bunch of useless crap that almost nobody will care
about. The more code you have, the more bugs you have. It's a scientific
fact that isn't open for debate.
> 
> I say type 2 people are right.
> IDEA is a tool, and I use it to solve problems, using java technology.
> Java technology is becoming more complex by the day.

No it isn't. The language complexity has not changed at all. There are more
APIs, and as the language matures more design patterns emerge, but it's not
more complex. I guess it depends on your definition of complexity.

> Why does IDEA force me to edit all those xml configuration files as ascii
> text?

Sure, I'm all for an xml editor, a DTD aware xml editor would speed up my
development, once the java editing aspects are close to perfect. Note that I
do NOT want an editor that shows xml as a tree view, and forces me to click
around like a retard to get anything done. We're professional java
developers here (hopefully) and not taking Java 101 hoping for our IDE to
hold our hands through the darkness that is java APIs.

> 
> We have to think ROI here, guys.
> I'm sure you could tweek the editor till 2010, but it wouldn't help us write
> better software. The editor is no longer n�1 when you think ROI. It's almost
> good enough.

Nonono! Your BRAIN will help you write better software. If it were an
automated art, it would have been done long ago. It's not like software
development started last year or something.

> I love the keyboard, but I want higher level features. And some visuals too
> (the class hierarchy browser is not a gadget. This is the way to go)
> 
Well, this is where I'll put my faith in the IDEA team. My personal
preference would be actually for more focus on performance tuning. I'm
slowed down by IDEA sometimes, and I still do find myself missing the speed
of emacs now and then. I can see myself switching back if IDEA started
automatically drawing UML diagrams for me whenever I clicked on a package,
or spent so much cpu time worrying about what I'm going to want to do next
and what I've done in the past that it forgets to prioritise what I'm doing
RIGHT NOW.

Besides, if you want an editor that does everything, switch to
forte/netbeans. A great example of the idiocy of having an API so open that
it's impossible to get any kind of performance out of it.

Believe it or not there is NO ideal end result. There are conflicting goals
here and it's up to the IDEA team to prioritise appropriately. You CANNOT
have an IDE which does everything and is also blindingly fast for those of
us who have no interest in the quick hit appeal of a shiny object dangled in
front of us. Whatever happens, it'll be somewhat of a mix between the two,
my personal hope, of course, is that it's in my favour!

Hani


_______________________________________________
Eap-features mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.intellij.com/mailman/listinfo/eap-features

Reply via email to