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Developer Soup (Software Carpentry, Python, Eiffel, KDevelop)

Mike Steed MSteed at altiris.com
Wed Feb 2 13:46:43 EST 2000 
> From: Warren Postma [mailto:embed at geocities.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2000 11:03 AM
> To: python-list at python.org
> Subject: Developer Soup (Software Carpentry, Python, Eiffel, KDevelop)
> 
> What the World Needs Now:
> 
> While I agree with Mr. Wilson's "Software Carpentry" ideal, 
> and avoiding
> 'accidental complexity', it seems to me that the $850K being spent on
> resuscitating these crusty old Unix command line tools (chiefly make,
> autoconf, and automake) to make new command line tools is a 
> perfect example of the things he criticizes in programmers like me.
> 
> I think it would be far better to invest in building tools to 
> plug into an already started new development environment. After all,
> "It's not the 70s anymore Dorothy".
> 
> KDevelop is clearly in the lead as a portable cross-platform 
> IDE, and I think $850K could do a lot to help it along. Once people
> are writing their software in a world-class IDE, instead of sitting
> in Bash, vi and EMACS all day, I think we would safely be able to
> say that Unix had caught up to the Windows platforms of the late
> 1990s.  Let's at least be realistic, folks.

Not intending to stray too far off-topic...

You might be surprised at the number of people who have tried the
"world-class IDEs" on Windows and other platforms and found that they are
just as productive (or more so) with "crusty old Unix" tools such as those
you mention.

I do most of my development on Windows, using Vim, zsh, gcc, make, etc.
There is no functionality in MSVC++ that I miss with my tools.  In fact,
several developers I work with who have been long-time MSVC++ fans have
switched to these crusty tools because they have tried them and found them
to be more productive.

:)
--
M.
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