On Jul 1, 12:05 pm, Lyle <[email protected]> wrote: > Tangentially, I think the whole "IDE vs vim/emacs" debate should be > moot. It shouldn't be either/or, we should have both; use the IDEs for > all of the integration features they excel at, while using a more > sophisticated editor for the actual job of writing text.
Yes - but while vi and emacs have more powerful text manipulation features, a lot of code editing can be helped by IDE features. For example: (1) When I'm calling a function and I want to store the result, I don't type out the type and variable name of the result object (and the assignment operator); I just type the call, and then use a quickfix to have it assign this to a variable. This means -it- picks up the return type, whatever it is, and imports it if necessary, and it often suggests a useful name too. This is particularly useful with generics signatures. (2) When I'm creating a new method or class, I just type the call or class reference. A quickfix offers to create the class or function for me, inserting all the right stuff (such as types for the parameters I supplied etc). (3) When I'm making a method call, it helps me figure out the parameter types. (4) When handling exceptions, the IDE knows the catch clauses and types it must insert for the surround-with operation Etc. I used to be a hardcode emacs user (and I still dabble in vi for quick edits here and there), but what finally made me switch to an IDE was automatic import management - not needing to go and insert the import myself, but just doing Alt-Shift-i in NetBeans at the time and getting the import suggestions to choose (if ambiguous) and then have it inserted without leaving my current place. Things have moved on and I'm sure the emacs java support can do this now, but as I listed above there are just a lot of abstract syntax tree refactorings and editing operations. Not to mention navigation stuff. I just don't find myself writing much -text- these days. But when I need to perform some really hairy macro to massage some source code tables etc, then I do run emacs. It's quite possible I could achieve it with the IDE macro support too, I've just never had the incentive to try. Switching between IDEs and editors is easy! -- Tor -- 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.
