Hi,
Yes, they are a useless addition to a language provided there's already an > advanced debugger, scrapbook tool, etc, available. > Doesn't that pretty much apply to Scala, too? Seems like pretty much everyone having experience with a REPL and a debugger disagree with you... :-) > Note that advanced debuggers are _more_ useful than REPLs, which is why I > said REPLs are useless. They are worse than the alternative and the > alternative can do everything REPLs can do (except, more or less, to serve > as a learning environment, an important omission). > Comparing debuggers with a REPL is like 99% missing the point. > I use a spoon, always, to eat soup. Even camping. It's just a better tool >> for the job. I don't think I missed a point. You said REPLs were useless >> for anything except beginners. I said they were not. You seem to back up my >> position with scrapbooks. >> > > Scrapbooks are the proverbial spoon here vs. repl's spork, if you want to > stress this analogy to its breaking point. advanced debuggers do all REPLs > do and more (they inherit project classpath by default, work with full > colourization, auto-complete, etc, the same way my IDE does things so I > don't have to learn two environments, and as I can just add a breakpoint in > the middle of a live, running app and then jump into evaluating whatever I > want to evaluate, it's just easier to try and figure out what my code is > doing compared to trying to fire up a REPL, then loading my app and trying > to manually reconstruct breakpoint features). > Pretty much not having to start a whole IDE isn't a minor thing, imho. If I want to communicate with a webservice I want to fire up my REPL and just do it. In seconds. Not waiting until Eclipse has started, creating a new project in Eclipse, configuring Maven, creating a new file or starting the scrapbook, setting breakpoints and running the debugger (which seems to be the essential tool for you) ... > Making scala's REPL a full breakpoint-capable debugger is a dozen man > years. > Thanks, but no. I like my less-than-1-second start-up time. If I need a "full breakpoint-capable debugger" I just use ... a full breakpoint-capable debugger. I don't want a REPL. I want an advanced debugger. > Great, just use a debugger then. It is not like REPL and a debugger are even remotely used for the same thing. I'm still not sure if this is advanced trolling or meant serious ... whatever, good job! Nice holidays, Simon -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/javaposse/-/CFyutDvqPtEJ. 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.
