Home Original page

i am going to get crazy!!!

Carlos Ribeiro carribeiro at gmail.com
Wed Sep 15 08:33:35 EDT 2004 
On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 15:06:04 +0900, Ian J Cottee <ian at cottee.org> wrote:
> Carlos Ribeiro wrote:
> 
> > -- There are two classes of developers: those who like IDEs and those
> > who doesn't. (...)
> 
> Must resist religious wars. Must resist religious wars BUT :-) ... Emacs
> *is* an IDE. More integrated than many others. And to be fair VIM is an
> IDE.

Ian, I sincerely don't want to spawn a religious war. That's why I
made my point clear: there are two types (classes?) of developers, and
there's nothing wrong with it -- it's just a matter of choice,
dictated to a great extent by their particular needs.

Now, while *great* for what it's proposed to do, Emacs is not an IDE,
in the sense that people that actually use IDEs mean. It's an editor
(and a powerful one at this), but it's not an IDE. What  *I* (and
other IDE-lovers) mean when mentioning IDE is a different type of
software.

A true IDE is a one-stop-shop. There you do everything a programmer
need: write code, debug, manage source code files, read help, and even
write the documentation. Of course, you can do several tasks such as
the ones mentioned above from within Emacs, so what's the difference?
In an IDE, each and every tool are an integrated part of the design,
and they do work seamlessly together. It's not the same thing as to
use an editor to fire up an external compiler or debugger. Believe me:
for those who are used to it, *its not the same thing*. Another trait
of good IDEs is the visual component. Most of the things mentioned
above are easily accessible, making management of big projects
somewhat easier.

However, I *have* to point out something that I just realized after
debating the whole IDE issue over the past few days. One of the things
that many IDE-type programmers miss is not the IDE itself... but a
common framework to develop new applications. Good IDEs go a step
beyond code editing, and are very well integrated with a framework for
application development. They will automatically generate much of the
code that is needed to start the design of a new application. Many
business programmers love this stuff, as it frees them from thinking
about event loops, message handling, etc -- and allows them to focus
on the form design and business logic (that's whats business
programming is really about).

For Python, the only such examples that I've seen so far are Boa and
PythonCard. Both offer a good framework to start with. Boa writes most
of the code that is needed to start a new wxPython for you, so you
don't have to bother writing it -- you can concentrate on the problem
at hand. But both Boa and PythonCard are still work in progress. Boa
is almost there, though; and I sincerely hope the best for Riaan [1],
because he's doing fine.
 
-- 
[1] For those who don't know him, Boa's author.

--
Carlos Ribeiro
Consultoria em Projetos
blog: http://rascunhosrotos.blogspot.com
blog: http://pythonnotes.blogspot.com
mail: carribeiro at gmail.com
mail: carribeiro at yahoo.com
More information about the Python-list mailing list