From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,db9a11afb3da4240 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 102b75,501ec19d1d81daee X-Google-Attributes: gid102b75,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-03-28 08:48:05 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!canoe.uoregon.edu!arclight.uoregon.edu!news.tufts.edu!uunet!dca.uu.net!news.chips.ibm.com!newsfeed.btv.ibm.com!news.btv.ibm.com!hack From: hack@watson.ibm.com (hack) Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Language support for flexible handling of system-detected errors. Date: 28 Mar 2002 16:19:20 GMT Organization: IBM_Research Message-ID: References: <3CA0A166.501E1D68@despammed.com> <5ly9gcd9ao.fsf@rum.cs.yale.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: starcraft.watson.ibm.com X-Trace: news.btv.ibm.com 1017332360 26266 9.2.8.37 (28 Mar 2002 16:19:20 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@btv.ibm.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 28 Mar 2002 16:19:20 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.arch:26022 comp.lang.ada:21772 Date: 2002-03-28T16:19:20+00:00 List-Id: In article <5ly9gcd9ao.fsf@rum.cs.yale.edu>, Stefan Monnier wrote: >>>>>> "Maynard" == Maynard Handley writes: >> Languages that don't provide what current programmers want and expect are >> dead. You can whine all you like about how much I suck because I expect an >> IDE, but I am simply telling you the way it is. > >That's a curious definition of "dead" which seems strangely close to the >definition of "non-mainstream". > > > Stefan "being an Emacs hacker, I'm obviously biased" I sure hope you are (biased)! To me, something like emacs is an Integrated Development Environment -- if only the compilers and linkers etc. would all cooperate. Traditional IDEs are the exact opposite -- they are a world unto themselves. I use an IDE in the emacs sense -- I integrate multiple envs into one global environment where I can use *all* my tools, in the editor that I'm familiar with, exploiting its features across all those environments (programmability via powerful macros, generalised multiple-level UNDO, having many files in simultaneous play, etc.) The files may come from mainframes, from Unix boxes, or from NT boxes -- it's all integrated. I can click on a function invocation and find myself looking at its definition -- such things are possible if one has decent macro support: I'm not bound by what somebody else thinks is good for me -- I can shape the world the way I like it. The cooperation of compilers and linkers is needed when I want to fully exploit this paradigm. For example, I can compile right out of the editor (without having to save the source file to disk, e.g. because I don't yet trust the changes I want to check). My environment supports a universal macro interface, which any command-line-oriented application can exploit. This means that I can write edit macros, linker macros, compiler preprocessor macros etc. in the language of my choice, not the language imposed by the editor or preprocessor. (I tend to use modern Exec 2 for some things, Rexx for others, and even have a couple of Lysp macros -- Lysp is a dialect of Lisp as might be guessed.) Btw, command-line interfaces lend themselves to programmability and hence controllability and extendability better than GUIs. One can always put a GUI on top of the CLI to present a view that's more friendly to a new user (by making a limited number of easy choices directly accessible) -- but in a way that doesn't cramp the style of an experienced user. By GUI I mean the ability to click and point, pop up menus, etc. -- not necessarily fancy graphics. In a programming environment the latter are just decoration; when images or graphics are the object of interest we have a different situation. What *is* useful btw is multiple highlighting capabilities, e.g. to make different syntactic entities stand out -- and there again the cooperation of the compiler is desirable. Michel.