On Friday, 14 June 2013 at 07:40:42 UTC, Don wrote:
> On Friday, 14 June 2013 at 06:49:08 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
>> I agree. But he said at the end of the talk that he didn't want codecompletion refactoring or anything like that. Now he said he just wants something better than Notepad that is stable.
>
> I don't know what's going on here, somehow people are consistently misunderstanding me.
>
> The question in the talk was along the lines of "what's wrong with D's IDEs". And people expected the problem was that they don't have good refactoring support or something. But the problem is much more severe:
>  Mono-D is not as good as Notepad.
>  EclipseD is not as good as Notepad.
> Because they are unstable.

What we're not understanding is that, if you don't want refactoring, or intellisense, or any of that stuff then why not just use notepad, emacs, vim etc.? Surely those are stable?

That's why people were asking what you wanted from the IDE, so that they could suggest stable editors that had those features. If you don't want lots of features then Mono-D and EclipseD are not good choices.

On Friday, June 14, 2013 10:05:27 Peter Alexander wrote:
> On Friday, 14 June 2013 at 07:40:42 UTC, Don wrote:
> > On Friday, 14 June 2013 at 06:49:08 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> >> I agree. But he said at the end of the talk that he didn't want codecompletion refactoring or anything like that. Now he said he just wants something better than Notepad that is stable.
> > 
> > I don't know what's going on here, somehow people are consistently misunderstanding me.
> > 
> > The question in the talk was along the lines of "what's wrong with D's IDEs". And people expected the problem was that they don't have good refactoring support or something. But the
> > 
> > problem is much more severe:
> >  Mono-D is not as good as Notepad.
> >  EclipseD is not as good as Notepad.
> > 
> > Because they are unstable.
> 
> What we're not understanding is that, if you don't want refactoring, or intellisense, or any of that stuff then why not just use notepad, emacs, vim etc.? Surely those are stable?
> 
> That's why people were asking what you wanted from the IDE, so that they could suggest stable editors that had those features. If you don't want lots of features then Mono-D and EclipseD are not good choices.

I don't think that it's that he doesn't want them. It's that they don't matter until the IDE is stable enough that it doesn't crash. If it crashes, it doesn't matter what else it can do. But once it's stable enough that it doesn't crash and you can actually use it, _then_ you can discuss what other cool features it should have. Until then, it's worse than notepad.

- Jonathan M Davis

On 6/13/13 10:48 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
[snip]

This group is for disseminating news about D. Please do not use it for general and off-topic discussions, not even with the [OT] tag.


Thanks,

Andrei

On Thu, 13 Jun 2013 19:49:09 +0100, Walter Bright <newshound2@digitalmars.com> wrote:

> On 6/13/2013 3:48 AM, Regan Heath wrote:
>> What are the basic features you would require of a development environment,
>
> People tell me that intellisense is the #1 feature.

I could go either way with intellisense.  Sometimes I need a hand remembering what I'm doing, but mostly I'm just fine.  What bugs me more is using an editor with no F1 -> go to documentation for this function or no F12 -> take me to the definition of this symbol.  Those are invaluable - providing the help system doesn't take 10 years to load I'm looking at you (all versions of MSVC post 6).

R

-- 
Using Opera's revolutionary email client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

On Thu, 13 Jun 2013 20:39:17 +0100, Peter Alexander <peter.alexander.au@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thursday, 13 June 2013 at 18:49:14 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> On 6/13/2013 3:48 AM, Regan Heath wrote:
>>> What are the basic features you would require of a development environment,
>>
>> People tell me that intellisense is the #1 feature.
>
> The debugger is the #1 feature I'd miss from my day job if I didn't use Visual Studio. Feature wise, I'm sure gdb has most if not all VS has, but in VS everything is just there in front of you, easily usable (you don't need to consult the manual, or remember archaic commands). Using gdb vs. Visual Studio feels like trying to do web browsing via the command line.

Agreed 100% - totally forgot about integrated debugging it's probably my #1 feature.

> Intellisense is a definite must, and proper intellisense, i.e. actually shows me what members a variable has, and not just some crappy lookup in the current file for potential members. Needs to work with templates, macros etc. as well.

Meh, I could go either way on this, provided I have..

> "Go to definition" and "Find all references" are must haves as well. Again, they need to work properly, not just some half-assed grep script that throws up lots of false positives. Again, needs to work with templates, macros, etc.

These are essential, my #2/3 features.

R

-- 
Using Opera's revolutionary email client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

On Thu, 13 Jun 2013 21:12:31 +0100, Don <turnyourkidsintocash@nospam.com> wrote:

> On Thursday, 13 June 2013 at 16:35:08 UTC, Regan Heath wrote:
>> On Thu, 13 Jun 2013 15:32:03 +0100, Colin Grogan <grogan.colin@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thursday, 13 June 2013 at 10:48:52 UTC, Regan Heath wrote:
>>>> On Thu, 13 Jun 2013 08:31:03 +0100, Don <turnyourkidsintocash@nospam.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Thursday, 13 June 2013 at 06:58:22 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
>>>>>> On 2013-06-11 14:33, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>>>>>> Reddit:
>>>>>>> http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1g47df/dconf_2013_metaprogramming_in_the_real_world_by/
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hackernews: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5861237
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Twitter: https://twitter.com/D_Programming/status/344431490257526785
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dlang.org/posts/655271701153181
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Youtube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=pmwKRYrfEyY
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Please drive discussions on the social channels, they help D a lot.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I really don't understand the problem with IDE. He mentions that he's not interested in any autocompletion, refactoring or anything like that.
>>>>>
>>>>> Actually not. I'm just opposed to any work on them right now. The point is that all of those things are COMPLETELY WORTHLESS if the IDE crashes. It's not just "a bug". It's an absolute showstopper, and I'm begging the community to do something about it.
>>>>> Fix the crashes, and then we can talk.
>>>>
>>>> I use Notepad++ now and have used TextPad in the past.  But, those are just text editors with syntax highlighting (fairly flexibly and simply customisable highlighting BTW).
>>>>
>>>> What are the basic features you would require of a development environment, I am thinking of features which go beyond the basic concept of a text editor, such as:
>>>>
>>>> - The concept of a 'project' or some other collection of source files which can be loaded/displayed in some fashion to make it easier to find/select/edit individual files
>>>>
>>>> - The ability to hook in 'tools' to key presses like "compile" executing "dmd ..." or similar.
>>>>
>>>> ...
>>>>
>>>> R
>>>
>>> How about a GUI front end to vibe-d's dub?
>>>
>>> I use that extensively on command line and find it very good, I imagine it would be easy enough write a GUI for it...
>>
>> Or, a plugin for an existing editor.
>> Or, a 'tool' configured in an existing editor to run dub in a certain way.
>>
>> All good ideas.
>>
>> What I'm driving at here is trying to find Don's minimal requirements beyond stability,
>
> Must not be worse than Notepad. <g>
> I don't have any requirements. I *only* care about stability at this point.

Ok.. but that doesn't give ppl anything to aim for as a starting point..

> I'm not personally looking for an IDE. I'm more a command line guy.

So you write all your code using "copy con"?  :p  So, you use vi?

> D has fifty people contributing to the compiler, but only two or three working on IDEs. We need a couple more.
> And that's really all I'm saying.

Valid point, but to get more people interested I think we need a concrete goal and/or a list of faults with the existing competition.

R

-- 
Using Opera's revolutionary email client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

On Fri, 14 Jun 2013 08:40:40 +0100, Don <turnyourkidsintocash@nospam.com> wrote:

> On Friday, 14 June 2013 at 06:49:08 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
>> On 2013-06-13 16:44, Leandro Lucarella wrote:
>>
>>> I've always use VIM without any problems. Is not what you typically call
>>> an IDE though. I think now some of "our guys" are using Geany moderately
>>> successfully, for sure much better than Ecplise and Mono plugins. IIRC,
>>> the main problem with those huge IDEs were memory usage and death-files
>>> (files that made the IDE crash consistently).
>>>
>>> I think there a lot of working advanced editors for D, but IDEs are
>>> quite behind (at least in Linux).
>>
>> I agree. But he said at the end of the talk that he didn't want codecompletion refactoring or anything like that. Now he said he just wants something better than Notepad that is stable.
>
> I don't know what's going on here, somehow people are consistently misunderstanding me.
>
> The question in the talk was along the lines of "what's wrong with D's IDEs". And people expected the problem was that they don't have good refactoring support or something. But the problem is much more severe:
>   Mono-D is not as good as Notepad.
>   EclipseD is not as good as Notepad.
> Because they are unstable.

Notepad++ is better than notepad:
http://notepad-plus-plus.org/download/v6.3.3.html

Windows only tho I'm afraid.

R

-- 
Using Opera's revolutionary email client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

On Fri, 14 Jun 2013 09:51:57 +0100, Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg@gmx.com> wrote:

> On Friday, June 14, 2013 10:05:27 Peter Alexander wrote:
>> On Friday, 14 June 2013 at 07:40:42 UTC, Don wrote:
>> > On Friday, 14 June 2013 at 06:49:08 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
>> >> I agree. But he said at the end of the talk that he didn't
>> >> want codecompletion refactoring or anything like that. Now he
>> >> said he just wants something better than Notepad that is
>> >> stable.
>> >
>> > I don't know what's going on here, somehow people are
>> > consistently misunderstanding me.
>> >
>> > The question in the talk was along the lines of "what's wrong
>> > with D's IDEs". And people expected the problem was that they
>> > don't have good refactoring support or something. But the
>> >
>> > problem is much more severe:
>> >  Mono-D is not as good as Notepad.
>> >  EclipseD is not as good as Notepad.
>> >
>> > Because they are unstable.
>>
>> What we're not understanding is that, if you don't want
>> refactoring, or intellisense, or any of that stuff then why not
>> just use notepad, emacs, vim etc.? Surely those are stable?
>>
>> That's why people were asking what you wanted from the IDE, so
>> that they could suggest stable editors that had those features.
>> If you don't want lots of features then Mono-D and EclipseD are
>> not good choices.
>
> I don't think that it's that he doesn't want them. It's that they don't matter
> until the IDE is stable enough that it doesn't crash. If it crashes, it
> doesn't matter what else it can do. But once it's stable enough that it
> doesn't crash and you can actually use it, _then_ you can discuss what other
> cool features it should have. Until then, it's worse than notepad.

I understood (t)his point the first time he made it.

Lets assume we're in the development team for Notepad and we're trying to make it into the best D IDE in town.  Lets assume stability is a solved problem.  What's the next feature we work on?

That's the Q we/I want answered so someone out there on the ether can either suggest an editor that meets the criteria or someone will be inspired to write one.

R

-- 
Using Opera's revolutionary email client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

On 13/06/2013 10:05, Don wrote:
> On Thursday, 13 June 2013 at 08:25:19 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
>> On Thursday, 13 June 2013 at 08:16:56 UTC, Peter Alexander wrote:
>>> Visual Studio constantly crashes for me at work, and I can imagine
>>> MonoDevelop and Eclipse being similar, but simpler editors like
>>> Sublime Text, TextMate, vim, emacs etc. shouldn't crash. I've been
>>> using Sublime Text for years now and I don't think it has ever crashed.
>>
>> I am quite surprised to hear this is an issue at all btw. Neither
>> Mono-D nor Eclipse DDT have never crashed for me on my smallish
>> sources. And I just can't imagine D syntax highlighting crashing vim
>> or emacs :)
>>
>> Mono-D has had update issues thanks to MonoDevelop upstream but that
>> is somewhat different story.
>
> Mono-D and Eclipse DDT both have major problems with long pauses while
> typing (eg 15 seconds unresponsive) and crashes. Both of them even have
> "modules of death" where just viewing the file will cause a crash. If
> you're unlucky enough to get one of those open in your default workspace
> file, the IDE will crash at startup...
>

Regarding DDT, do you mean a crash were actually the Eclipse application terminates? I find that highly unlikely, the whole codebase of Eclipse DDT is Java based so there should not be a crash like that (baring some old JVM bug, but even so...).

A freeze is possible, if there's some infinite loop bug, or some massive slowdown due to a crappy algorithm (quadratic growth or worse)

As a DDT maintaner I've never had a bug report, or even heard of such crashes. I can't guess people's minds..., and I skip most newsgroups threads if the title doesn't seem relevant. It was actually only by chance that I found this subthread discussing IDEs.

I have heard about long pauses and delays, that I have. It's something that needs to be looked at, it's a massive issue. Even so I've never had any concrete bug report on such performance issues. Or even someone mentioned a concrete file I could take a look at and see if using autocomplete there was slow and unresponsive.

My work on a new parser for DDT is nearly complete, a new version should be out soonish. And from now onwards it should be possible to tackle these issues.
I do agree frequent crashes and long pauses should take precedence over nearly all other issues.

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - Software Engineer

On 13/06/2013 17:53, Walter Bright wrote:
> Back in the bad old DOS days, there were many code editors that worked
> instantly. No perceptible delays at all. I find it ironic that today,
> with machines 1000 times faster, some vendors consider it acceptable to
> have 15 second delays.

We're talking about IDEs here, not mere code editors. There is a lot more going on in the application, much more potential functionality and more things for the IDE to analyze whilst the user works with the source.

That said, 15 second delays, are not acceptable, not at all!
But we are not "vendors": we're not selling a commercial product, nor a service, nor even are we getting paid to develop FOSS projects. This is something we work on our free time, and that greatly restricts the resources we have for that. And like Don said, in the D community there's still very few people working on IDEs, whereas the people and contributions for the compilers, Phobos and other librarys has increased significantly.

It may simply be that more people/contributions are necessary for a good level of quality be achieved/maintained.


-- 
Bruno Medeiros - Software Engineer