Seriously Impressive: Sun Java Studio Creator - Ubuntu's killer app?

Pete Ryland wrote:

> On 13/12/06, Chanchao <customfreenet.de> wrote:
>> What acts (finally) in Java's favour is the free
tools available. Rapid
>> Development tools.  You can drag and drop a bunch
of fields, right-click
>> to bind them to your database table, right click
again to specify some
>> user entry validation snippets and click 'run' and
it'll pop up in
>> Firefox exactly the way you dragged and dropped the
stuff.
> 
> There are so many fallacies in thinking that these RAD
tools actually
> help.  Fine, they make a simple thing look simple, but
try to do
> anything complicated or maintain the code over any
significant period
> of time and you're forced to jump through hoops or end
up hacking
> machine-generated code with a text editor anyway.

Baloney.  I'd say that there are so many fallacies in
thinking that you can
save any time by hand-hacking code in primitive editors.

> But then the text 
> editors that come with most of these tools barely
support
> cut/copy/paste, and pale into comparison with the
facilities available
> in emacs or vim.  

No, they don't.  I'll grant that emacs can usually do the
same things with
less overhead.

> Why would I want to use a crappy text editor as a 
> trade off for typing myconnection =
db.connect("dbname").  And of
> course they don't just do a simple connect to your
database; 

Of course, they _do_ if that's what you want.

> they'll 
> automatically analyse your database and create EJBs for
each of your
> tables for you to access your data through by a
scalable (aka
> serialized) method call. 

And they'll do that if _that's_ what you want.

> Just say no. 

Dinosaur.
 
> My suggestion is to buy a book or print a manual to
learn *thoroughly*
> either vim or emacs.

I learned emacs once.  I've progressed thank you.

> BTW, you may also be interested in a very simple-to-use
python gui
> library I'm working on which turns methods into
buttons.  Having not
> done anything with GTK+ for a few years, I wanted to
write some simple
> frontends with PyGTK, and found little improvement in
the learning
> curve since GTK1.0.  So I've actually set out to
simplify the creating
> of simple GUIs whilst still trying to allow the
flexibility that
> people have come to expect.  

So, what you're condemning in all these other IDEs, you're
promoting in the
Python gui you've written?  Makes sense, I guess.

> Sorry for the divergence of the topic, and for the
pimping, but I
> thought it might be of interest.

It is.  The problem with one-stop IDEs is that they're
"one-stop" - they try
to do everything for everybody, thus piling on the overhead.
 My search for
the perfect IDE has always been a search for something that
can do
everything _I_ want to do while providing as little extra
overhead as
possible.  Eclipse seems best to me because reducing
overhead is a matter
of not loading extra plugins, but I use multiple IDEs
because some of them
do specific things better.

-- 
derek


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On 14/12/06, Derek Broughton <newspointerstop.ca> wrote:
> Baloney.  I'd say that there are so many fallacies in
thinking that you can
> save any time by hand-hacking code in primitive
editors.

Can you provide some examples of said fallacies please?

> > But then the text
> > editors that come with most of these tools barely
support
> > cut/copy/paste, and pale into comparison with the
facilities available
> > in emacs or vim.
>
> No, they don't.  I'll grant that emacs can usually do
the same things with
> less overhead.

Here's a quite common example.  How do you transpose two
lines?  In vi
you simply type ddp, and in Emacs you can do Ctrl-x Ctrl-t. 
 How do
you do this in a typical IDE?  Reach for mouse, select the
line, press
Ctrl-x, press backspace, reach for mouse again, click at the
end of
next line, press Enter, press Ctrl-V.  I really don't know
how people
can put up with that.

Or how about auto-indenting a block of code?  How many IDEs
offer
anything like that?  In vim it's as easy as preceeding a
movement key
with '='.

I could go on.

> > Why would I want to use a crappy text editor as a
> > trade off for typing myconnection =
db.connect("dbname").  And of
> > course they don't just do a simple connect to your
database;
>
> Of course, they _do_ if that's what you want.
>
> > they'll
> > automatically analyse your database and create
EJBs for each of your
> > tables for you to access your data through by a
scalable (aka
> > serialized) method call.
>
> And they'll do that if _that's_ what you want.

So how does it know what I want?  And how does this offset
having such
an archaic text editing interface?

> > Just say no.
>
> Dinosaur.

To be fair, vim and emacs are still being actively developed
and have
huge user bases, and IMO are still superior to anything else
that's
come along, so why change?

> > BTW, you may also be interested in a very
simple-to-use python gui
> > library I'm working on which turns methods into
buttons.  Having not
> > done anything with GTK+ for a few years, I wanted
to write some simple
> > frontends with PyGTK, and found little improvement
in the learning
> > curve since GTK1.0.  So I've actually set out to
simplify the creating
> > of simple GUIs whilst still trying to allow the
flexibility that
> > people have come to expect.
>
> So, what you're condemning in all these other IDEs,
you're promoting in the
> Python gui you've written?  Makes sense, I guess.

It's a gui *library*, and still just a PoC, but yes, the
intention is
to provide a higher level API to pygtk but still have the
full pygtk
available for those cases where it's required.  This is a
better
approach to making GUI programming easier IMO than to have
some RAD
environment spit out pages full of unmaintainable code.

> > Sorry for the divergence of the topic, and for the
pimping, but I
> > thought it might be of interest.
>
> It is.  The problem with one-stop IDEs is that they're
"one-stop" - they try
> to do everything for everybody, thus piling on the
overhead.  My search for
> the perfect IDE has always been a search for something
that can do
> everything _I_ want to do while providing as little
extra overhead as
> possible.  Eclipse seems best to me because reducing
overhead is a matter
> of not loading extra plugins, but I use multiple IDEs
because some of them
> do specific things better.

I've actually not tried Eclipse for a few years now, so
perhaps it's
time I had another look.  Maybe things have improved enough
now to
make the switch worth it.

Pete

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On 15/12/06, Pete Ryland <pdrpdr.cx> wrote:
> On 14/12/06, Derek Broughton <newspointerstop.ca> wrote:
> > Baloney.  I'd say that there are so many fallacies
in thinking that you can
> > save any time by hand-hacking code in primitive
editors.
>
> Can you provide some examples of said fallacies please?
>
Let's see... for starters in the java eclipse environment
there is the
auto-import of used classes, the auto completion of valid
methods and
quick javadoc lookup for the method at hand.
Combine that with pre-compilation error checking and you've
got
something that saves a lot more time than an ordinary
text-editor.

> > > But then the text
> > > editors that come with most of these tools
barely support
> > > cut/copy/paste, and pale into comparison with
the facilities available
> > > in emacs or vim.
> >
> > No, they don't.  I'll grant that emacs can usually
do the same things with
> > less overhead.
>
> Here's a quite common example.  How do you transpose
two lines?  In vi
> you simply type ddp, and in Emacs you can do Ctrl-x
Ctrl-t.   How do
> you do this in a typical IDE?  Reach for mouse, select
the line, press
> Ctrl-x, press backspace, reach for mouse again, click
at the end of
> next line, press Enter, press Ctrl-V.  I really don't
know how people
> can put up with that.
>
Or Home, shift+down, ctrl-x, down, crtl+v.
No need for the mouse if you don't want to use it.

> Or how about auto-indenting a block of code?  How many
IDEs offer
> anything like that?  In vim it's as easy as preceeding
a movement key
> with '='.
>
Most of them. Actually many of them have a bit more advanced
formatting abilities than auto-indent...

> I could go on.
>
I'm sure you could, but I could probably point out errors
with most of
your reasons. Oh there are a few things the good-old text
editor
excels at, but writing large-scale programs is best left to
the IDE.

> > > Why would I want to use a crappy text editor
as a
> > > trade off for typing myconnection =
db.connect("dbname").  And of
> > > course they don't just do a simple connect to
your database;
> >
> > Of course, they _do_ if that's what you want.
> >
> > > they'll
> > > automatically analyse your database and
create EJBs for each of your
> > > tables for you to access your data through by
a scalable (aka
> > > serialized) method call.
> >
> > And they'll do that if _that's_ what you want.
>
> So how does it know what I want?  And how does this
offset having such
> an archaic text editing interface?
>
It isn't as archaic as you seem to think. And even if it
was, the time
saving the few examples I gave provide is enough to offset
the
'archaicness' of it.

> > > Just say no.
> >
> > Dinosaur.
>
> To be fair, vim and emacs are still being actively
developed and have
> huge user bases, and IMO are still superior to anything
else that's
> come along, so why change?
>
They are good editors, why should they not have large user
bases? But
when it comes to large scale application development, they
lose out.

Arwyn

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On 14/12/06, Arwyn Hainsworth <arwynh+ubuntugmail.com> wrote:
> On 15/12/06, Pete Ryland <pdrpdr.cx> wrote:
> > On 14/12/06, Derek Broughton <newspointerstop.ca> wrote:
> > > Baloney.  I'd say that there are so many
fallacies in thinking that you can
> > > save any time by hand-hacking code in
primitive editors.
> >
> > Can you provide some examples of said fallacies
please?
> >
> Let's see... for starters in the java eclipse
environment there is the
> auto-import of used classes, the auto completion of
valid methods and
> quick javadoc lookup for the method at hand.

Of course you can do auto-complete with vim, it's Ctrl-N. 
This is
configurable too with a search order, and can lookup
dictionary words
if all else fails.  See:
h
ttp://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/options.html#'compl
ete'

K will lookup man pages on the word under the cursor by
default, but
it's configurable enough to do javadoc too.  See:

http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/various.html#K

Of course it can all be configured to be different depending
on the
file type you're editing.  See:
h
ttp://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/options.html#'filet
ype'

> Combine that with pre-compilation error checking and
you've got
> something that saves a lot more time than an ordinary
text-editor.

Syntax highlighting is enough for me to ensure it will
compile, and
compiling is easy with :make which I usually bind to a
function key.
This will place the cursor at the first error, and let you
jump
quickly to any other errors with :cn and :cp.

You can also arrange for vim to be launched by the compiler
on error,
and it will recompile as soon as you write out the file. 
This makes
the compile cycle very quick.  See:
h
ttp://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/quickfix.html

> Or Home, shift+down, ctrl-x, down, crtl+v.
> No need for the mouse if you don't want to use it.

That's still pretty slow and complicated compared to ddp,
and still
requires re-positioning of the hands.  And that was just a
*simple*
editing example.

> > Or how about auto-indenting a block of code?  How
many IDEs offer
> > anything like that?  In vim it's as easy as
preceeding a movement key
> > with '='.
> >
> Most of them. Actually many of them have a bit more
advanced
> formatting abilities than auto-indent...

Well that's good to know.  I'm glad they're finally catching
up.  Have
they implemented regex search/replace yet?  Or easy-to-use
macro
recording?  Or easily filtering a block of text with an
external
program?  Or even saving undo information between edits?  Or
even
something as simple as changing the case of a word?

> > So how does it know what I want?  And how does
this offset having such
> > an archaic text editing interface?
> >
> It isn't as archaic as you seem to think. And even if
it was, the time
> saving the few examples I gave provide is enough to
offset the
> 'archaicness' of it.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.  IMO,
the need
for that sort of thing is really just a symptom of
overly-complicated
APIs, or possibly the lack of a pre-compiler.  Last time I
wrote
entity beans (which was before IDEs knew about them) I just
wrote a
script that spat them out straight from the database schema.
 And I've
since worked with a number of people who did exactly the
same thing!
Thankfully I haven't had to write anything big in Java for
about six
years now, since turning to sysadmin until the hype is over.
Ironically, syadminning java programs is probably even less
fun,
although now I'm not really a sysadmin any more either.  But
I
digress.

> > > > Just say no.
> > >
> > > Dinosaur.
> >
> > To be fair, vim and emacs are still being actively
developed and have
> > huge user bases, and IMO are still superior to
anything else that's
> > come along, so why change?
> >
> They are good editors, why should they not have large
user bases? But
> when it comes to large scale application development,
they lose out.

Well I've never seen vim slow down on a large application,
but I've
seen IDEs slow down and even corrupt files or crash when
multiple
large files are loaded.  Scalability is one of the key
strengths that
vim (and emacs) have over IDEs IMO.

Pete

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Op donderdag 14-12-2006 om 15:38 uur [tijdzone +0000],
schreef Pete
Ryland:
> Here's a quite common example.  How do you transpose
two lines?  In vi
> you simply type ddp, and in Emacs you can do Ctrl-x
Ctrl-t. 

In SciTE[*] it's only Ctrl+T, so GUI editors are now proven
to be better
than terminal-based editors?   

[*] Demo application for the Scintilla text editing
component, which is
used in several Linux IDEs.

-- 
Jan Claeys


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