As a followup to [0], I want to take a look at packaging DlangIDE with a DMD compiler and tools, so we have an out-of-the box IDE for people giving D a try. This would be independent of the rest of the system, so moving on (either to Visual Studio, ldc, gdc, or whatever the programmer's preferred IDE/tooling might be) would require re-installing the compiler.

Most of this post will be Windows-centric, but if this is popular/useful/ successful I'd also manage macOS and Linux kits.


Basically, in the two years or so I've been here, newcomers have consistently had IDE problems. visual-d is perfect if you've got Visual Studio (especially with recent improvements), but otherwise you have to spend a bunch of time getting something set up just to try a language you're not yet sure about.

Some sort of learner's or starter's IDE makes sense to me.

My hypothetical programmer follows the path:

1) Discovers website. Runs some examples.
2) Plays with the online compiler in the tour.
3) Wants to download a compiler to work with. Wants an IDE, but does not
   have Visual Studio installed (or maybe doesn't want to install an
   extension yet).
4) Downloads the starter pack and starts learning.
5) Falls in love and takes the time to set up D with his/her preferred
   toolset.


This somewhat mimics my own entry into D; we didn't have runnable examples, but my IDE is Vim, so it did work out of the box (I think I'm still just using the C syntax stuff). If I had to spend an hour and a half just to get things ready, I don't know that I'd have stayed -- it wouldn't have been a good sign for future productivity.

PROS:
- A simple, pre-configured IDE that doesn't require a major time
  investment to set up and learn.
- An IDE written in D helps showcase what D can do.
- DlangUI works with Dub out of the box, making it easy to get started
  adding dependencies.

CONS:
- Working outside the IDE requires installing D again, from the official
  installer. If this pack isn't immediately abandoned, multiple D versions
  are in use that could cause headaches or confusion if the programmer
  doesn't pay attention.
- DlangUI isn't as polished or stable as Visual Studio.
- It's yet one more decision someone has to make just to get started.
- Tooling to automate the testing of DlangUI's compatibility with the
  integrated tools needs to be developed; we don't want to provide
  buggy/unstable tooling to newcomers.
- There are some bugs that I'll need to fix in DlangUI first (mostly
  stability I think). We don't want to provide buggy/unstable tooling to
  newcomers.


Do you have any thoughts, ideas, foresee any problems, have a better way to do this? I especially don't want to do something that is actively harmful - if the self-contained package makes things confusing to someone trying to work with globally-installed tools too, that could potentially be worse than what we have now.

I'm not asking for specific problems that may crop up (the need for VSC++ compiler tools, etc.) unless they have non-obvious solutions. I'm looking for a higher-level "is this a good idea?" discussion.

Thank you for your time, and your thoughts
--Ryan


[0]: https://forum.dlang.org/post/p4sba9$1bga$1@digitalmars.com

On 2018-02-01 13:21, rjframe wrote:

> CONS:
> - Working outside the IDE requires installing D again, from the official
>    installer. If this pack isn't immediately abandoned, multiple D versions
>    are in use that could cause headaches or confusion if the programmer
>    doesn't pay attention.

With Xcode the compiler is included. It also possible to install the command line tools using Xcode to get access to the compiler on the command line.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On Thu, 01 Feb 2018 22:38:51 +0100, Jacob Carlborg wrote:

> On 2018-02-01 13:21, rjframe wrote:
> 
>> CONS:
>> - Working outside the IDE requires installing D again, from the
>> official
>>    installer. If this pack isn't immediately abandoned, multiple D
>>    versions are in use that could cause headaches or confusion if the
>>    programmer doesn't pay attention.
> 
> With Xcode the compiler is included. It also possible to install the command line tools using Xcode to get access to the compiler on the command line.

Yeah, packaging for macOS and Linux is likely to be incredibly easy (the install.sh script means a global install doesn't get in the way of anything).

The problem with a global installation on Windows would be conflicts with the official installer -- unless that installer just packages DlangIDE, which then comes with assumptions of official support. Scratch that -- embedding the official installer and silently running it solves all these problems -- basically this whole idea is solved by an installer for DlangIDE that includes the DMD installer in case it's needed.

On Thursday, 1 February 2018 at 12:21:24 UTC, rjframe wrote:
> As a followup to [0], I want to take a look at packaging DlangIDE with a DMD compiler and tools, so we have an out-of-the box IDE for people giving D a try. This would be independent of the rest of the system, so moving on (either to Visual Studio, ldc, gdc, or whatever the programmer's preferred IDE/tooling might be) would require re-installing the compiler.
>
> [...]

I wouldn't worry about the compiler being duplicated as (1) it's pretty small (~30 MB with docs and all) and (2) I have seen so many NodeJS projects doing simple things with multiple gigabytes of dependencies.
And if that really turns out to be bothering people which I highly doubt, you can worry about this then.
In my experience, people using Windows are all about convenience / laziness and don't care about the underlying details.

Also you might want to monitor the installer repo: https://github.com/dlang/installer/pulls

Rainer is currently working on a light DMD installer which bundles LLD instead of the DigitalMars linker or requiring VS.

On Fri, 02 Feb 2018 01:23:46 +0000, Seb wrote:

> I wouldn't worry about the compiler being duplicated as (1) it's pretty small (~30 MB with docs and all) and (2) I have seen so many NodeJS projects doing simple things with multiple gigabytes of dependencies. And if that really turns out to be bothering people which I highly doubt, you can worry about this then.

I was thinking of potential path problems; especially if one version of DMD is updated but another isn't. I should have been more clear about my concern. It shouldn't be an issue, but if it were, it would be annoying.


> In my experience, people using Windows are all about convenience / laziness and don't care about the underlying details.

This seems to be a common theme. Honestly, I'm beginning to wonder how many Windows people leave before learning the language (or just stay off the NG) because of these kinds of comments. Windows people do often come with different expectations due to different experiences. Microsoft pampers developers, so yes, expectations from newcomers are probably too high, but there's surely a nicer way to let them down.

Some people may (not unreasonably) expect a mature language to also have a mature ecosystem; on Linux things work pretty well out of the box, but on Windows it can take some work to get your setup to a useful state. If you've only worked with C# (and maybe Java), you've probably never worked without an IDE, so you're not likely to feel comfortable without one (the thought of writing C# without Intellisense makes me shudder; autocompletion for D would just get in my way).


> Also you might want to monitor the installer repo: https://github.com/dlang/installer/pulls
>
> Rainer is currently working on a light DMD installer which bundles LLD instead of the DigitalMars linker or requiring VS.

Niceness! Thanks; that's good to know.

On Thursday, 1 February 2018 at 12:21:24 UTC, rjframe wrote:
> As a followup to [0], I want to take a look at packaging DlangIDE with a DMD compiler and tools, so we have an out-of-the box IDE for people giving D a try. This would be independent of the rest of the system, so moving on (either to Visual Studio, ldc, gdc, or whatever the programmer's preferred IDE/tooling might be) would require re-installing the compiler.
>
> Most of this post will be Windows-centric, but if this is popular/useful/ successful I'd also manage macOS and Linux kits.
>
>
> Basically, in the two years or so I've been here, newcomers have consistently had IDE problems. visual-d is perfect if you've got Visual Studio (especially with recent improvements), but otherwise you have to spend a bunch of time getting something set up just to try a language you're not yet sure about.
>
> Some sort of learner's or starter's IDE makes sense to me.
>
> My hypothetical programmer follows the path:
>
> 1) Discovers website. Runs some examples.
> 2) Plays with the online compiler in the tour.
> 3) Wants to download a compiler to work with. Wants an IDE, but does not
>    have Visual Studio installed (or maybe doesn't want to install an
>    extension yet).
> 4) Downloads the starter pack and starts learning.
> 5) Falls in love and takes the time to set up D with his/her preferred
>    toolset.
>

Actually nowadays if DMD is already setup, Coedit doesn't require more configuration. Completion, all DCD features, and D-Scanner warnings just work out of the box since the tools are distributed with the IDE. In a way Coedit is already a "starter pack" and since a while.

I don't know why but in this kind of topics it's never mentioned, however since version 2 i can find testimonials showing that it works out of the box:
https://forum.dlang.org/post/tiyuogdlwwoqpckvkdpn@forum.dlang.org

On 2018-02-01 23:42, rjframe wrote:

> basically this whole idea is solved by an installer for
> DlangIDE that includes the DMD installer in case it's needed.

Exactly.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On Friday, 2 February 2018 at 06:14:03 UTC, b4s1L3 b. wrote:
> On Thursday, 1 February 2018 at 12:21:24 UTC, rjframe wrote:
>> As a followup to [0], I want to take a look at packaging DlangIDE with a DMD compiler and tools, so we have an out-of-the box IDE for people giving D a try. This would be independent of the rest of the system, so moving on (either to Visual Studio, ldc, gdc, or whatever the programmer's preferred IDE/tooling might be) would require re-installing the compiler.
>>
>> Most of this post will be Windows-centric, but if this is popular/useful/ successful I'd also manage macOS and Linux kits.
>>
>>
>> Basically, in the two years or so I've been here, newcomers have consistently had IDE problems. visual-d is perfect if you've got Visual Studio (especially with recent improvements), but otherwise you have to spend a bunch of time getting something set up just to try a language you're not yet sure about.
>>
>> Some sort of learner's or starter's IDE makes sense to me.
>>
>> My hypothetical programmer follows the path:
>>
>> 1) Discovers website. Runs some examples.
>> 2) Plays with the online compiler in the tour.
>> 3) Wants to download a compiler to work with. Wants an IDE, but does not
>>    have Visual Studio installed (or maybe doesn't want to install an
>>    extension yet).
>> 4) Downloads the starter pack and starts learning.
>> 5) Falls in love and takes the time to set up D with his/her preferred
>>    toolset.
>>
>
> Actually nowadays if DMD is already setup, Coedit doesn't require more configuration. Completion, all DCD features, and D-Scanner warnings just work out of the box since the tools are distributed with the IDE. In a way Coedit is already a "starter pack" and since a while.
>
> I don't know why but in this kind of topics it's never mentioned, however since version 2 i can find testimonials showing that it works out of the box:
> https://forum.dlang.org/post/tiyuogdlwwoqpckvkdpn@forum.dlang.org


Coedit is also a great alternative of zero configuration IDE for D beginners. I have a 2018 goal to finish my mini book I started last year for complete beginners to computer programming like I was when I started computer programming from scratch through self-directed learning. I recommend Sublime text editor in the introduction but I think one of these IDEs with a click to compile and run button will help me further simplify the instructions for setting up a development environment.


The book is about beginning computer programming using D where I try to make the explanations less technical as possible and not overwhelming reader with too much details. Its gets more technical as student learn more stuff.


I still have some typos and corrections to do though... You can find it at https://github.com/aberba/learn-coding

On Fri, 02 Feb 2018 06:14:03 +0000, b4s1L3 b. wrote:

> Actually nowadays if DMD is already setup, Coedit doesn't require more configuration. Completion, all DCD features, and D-Scanner warnings just work out of the box since the tools are distributed with the IDE. In a way Coedit is already a "starter pack" and since a while.
> 
> I don't know why but in this kind of topics it's never mentioned, however since version 2 i can find testimonials showing that it works out of the box: https://forum.dlang.org/post/tiyuogdlwwoqpckvkdpn@forum.dlang.org

I know that I tend to forget about it. Unless releases are announced on announce, or I use it, I generally don't pay attention.

I just checked the IDE page on the wiki, and we have much more than I'd expected.

On Thursday, 1 February 2018 at 12:21:24 UTC, rjframe wrote:

> Basically, in the two years or so I've been here, newcomers have consistently had IDE problems. visual-d is perfect if you've got Visual Studio (especially with recent improvements), but otherwise you have to spend a bunch of time getting something set up just to try a language you're not yet sure about.
[snip]
> Thank you for your time, and your thoughts
> --Ryan
>
>
> [0]: https://forum.dlang.org/post/p4sba9$1bga$1@digitalmars.com

As a typical very lazy & convenient Windows user, even I don't want to discourage you, let me tell you that every developer from the Windows world will have a copy of Visual Studio installed. New Project -> Console Application -> Hit F5. It just works. Set a breakpoint -> Hit F5. It just works.

Every other IDE is not worth the experience. Why in the world a lazy and convenient user should be so masochistic to install debuggers, symbol converters or syntax highlighting and intellisense plugins if he can have all of these plus many more out of the box?

I you want my opinion regarding what's bad in the *first* Windows experience, here it is:
- poor dub support. Ignoring inherent Windows dub problems, convenient Windows users are too lazy to open the ugly cmd window and run some commands; it will be nice to integrate dub in Visual Studio. Right click, resolve dependencies, you know the rest.
- default install directory. In corporate environments, creating folders in the root drive is a no-go.
- Intel OMF. My BitDefender installation keeps complaining for every 32 bit executable I make despite of zillion samples I sent to them. If you cannot compile even Hello World, why bother?
- there is no official GUI library (remember, we are talking about GUI-centric lazy convenient guys here);
- not enough samples in VS. At least an updated GUI app and and a Web server app must be available. Just as a proof of concept.