Reinier, I agree with most of what you wrote, but still think you kind of missed the point I was trying to make. The IDEs are indeed awesome compared to previous tools. They have lots of great tools and techniques that I use frequently. The great thing about the plugin architecture of the IDE is that you don't have to give up what works to add a new tool to your work flow. It is trivially easy to hop from one tool to the next and from one mode to the next. If a mouse gesture is easier, I use the mouse, but if I can do what I want with just a few key strokes, then, so much the better. To me coding speed/ ease does matter when trying to capture key thoughts.
It is interesting to see a reaction that is so stereotypical. Because I suggest using an "old school" tool, you only made it a few sentences before you imply that I "suck" at using tools correctly, I refactor by hand, and am a "dumb text terminal genius". The simple point: Fanboy yes. It works well for me (although I only use the 1% of VI that fits my style). I would not have spent time writing if it wasn't so useful. Rant: No. Just a friendly suggestion aimed at some programmers that may not have ever tried anything outside of the out-of-the-box IDE experience. I'm not offended by people that don't like it. But, I would never have found it if somebody else didn't point me that direction so many years ago. For the time I invested to learn it, I have received far more benefit than it cost me. As far as debuggers go, I think that they are a great tool, but I try to keep lots of great tools/approaches handy. I'm also glad that I also learned how to use a more Linus approach (He's not such a big fan of debuggers.) To me, they are just two different approaches. Arguing about which is better is not really productive. Just use what works best for the situation. Example 1: I have a project that is useing a mix of Groovy (for flexible, succinct product description) , Java (for glue), Scala (for heavy lifting), JavaFx (for Gui). Using a debugger is not a simple matter, as are some of the other IDE features that I used for just Java. In this case I'm glad that am also experienced with other techniques. Example 2: There are a lot of times when working with multiple threads that I think that debuggers cause more confusion than help. You can't stop one peice without changing the dynamic of the other pieces. A well designed implicit tracing mechanism is much more useful in many of the cases I have encountered. Side note: Thanks, Dick for your "fanboy rants" on Scala. If you hadn't shown such enthusiasm, I wouldn't have bought the book, or had the guts to take one of my pet projects and retire a vast amount of previous Java work to start fresh in Scala. My project is so much the better for it. I knew I was hooked when I realized that I would much rather code Scala with primitive IDE support and a slew of other impediments, than use Java and get all of the wiz bang IDE support. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
