That's a logical fallacy, look up "Argumentum ad Populum" (a.k.a.
"Appear to the People").
I'm trying saying that IDEs *are* unneccessary (That'd be the logical
fallacy known as "fallacy fallacy" if I did :P), just that the
"100,000 people can't be wrong!" argument is obviously logically
worthless.
Here's a list of features that I use a lot in eclipse, would be very
upset about if they stopped working and which, AFAIK, isn't available
in vi or emacs. If I'm wrong, please correct me!
- I can cmd+click on any identifier or type and be taken to the place
it was defined, even if this is in another source file, and even if
this is in a library I'm using so long as I associated a source zip
with the dependency (which I always do!)
- On any method or type ref I can hit cmd+T to see a hierarchy of it;
i.e. I see other versions of that method in the type hierarchy, or if
its a type, super and subclasses/interfaces/etc.
- With a key combo I can search for callers / writers / readers to a
method / field.
- Many basic errors are caught by my IDE immediately, as I type. No
need to even run a checkstyle or any such thing. I can fix it
immediately. In fact, often such trivial errors can be fixed
instantaneously because the IDE knows how. Example 1: I Write "List x
= whatever;", and then immediately hit a key combo to import
java.util.List. Example 2: I want to iterate over something but I
forgot or am too lazy to type the element type. I just type "for
(String foo : someIterable)", then CMD+1 to fix the type of 'foo'. I
guess lombok makes this obsolete.
- auto-complete.
- AST-based rendering (render identifiers differently depending on
whether they are static or not, a field or a method or a local or a
param, final, etc).
- Hit a key combo to get a search box to find any type visible to my
current project, even via camelcase if I want, i.e. "ArLi" will find
me ArrayList ('opening' a type means opening an editor, possibly a
read-only one if its a class in some library that I have the sources
of).
Being able to copy code around a bit more effectively seems like it
can't hold a candle to those features. A few of the more advanced vi
features are actually in IDEs if you know where to look. For example,
eclipse has marker-based selecting which really is a pretty big deal
(instead of holding shift to select stuff, you traverse to a point,
hit 'set mark', traverse to some other point, and then perform copy or
cut. This means you can navigate in a way that doesn't require holding
shift. There's also as-you-type search, yank, clipboard buffers, block
select, hop to matching brace, and if you're serious I believe there's
a vi plugin that brings modal editing to the standard eclipse editor,
though you'd have to check it out to be sure.
On Nov 25, 6:32 am, Miroslav Pokorny <[email protected]>
wrote:
> So if ides are so unnecessary why then did they evolve from yesterdays text
> editor and why does the overwhelming majority of the planet use them ? They
> can't all be wrong or
> Misguided ?
>
> On 25/11/2010, at 4:20 PM, Josh Berry <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > 2010/11/24 Cédric Beust ♔ <[email protected]>:
> >> It's not that simple: IDE's perform some basic cleanup that limits the
> >> amount of noise that bad developers generate, such as cleaning up imports,
> >> flagging unused variables, checking the style and formatting the code
> >> correctly, etc...
>
> > What?? Even in environments where everyone is using an IDE, I have
> > encountered people that do not constantly clean up imports and such.
> > They leave used variables. They don't format at all, or have a very
> > unorthodox style. This has nothing to do with the tool, as you can
> > easily get all of those "warnings" in vim, as well (again, a simple
> > ":cope" (yes, yes, you could just keep ":cn"ing to the next message.)
> > after running checkstyle will show all of the ones you just
> > mentioned). This is completely 100% the developer. To claim
> > otherwise is just a conceit.
>
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