[Ocaml-biz] IDEs

[Olivier Grisel]

Brandon J. Van Every a écrit :
> Olivier Grisel wrote:
>>To my mind, people using advanced editors like vim or emacs can take
>>care of customization by them-selves.
> 
> One could use the word 'advanced', or one could use the word
> 'difficult'.  I think there are 2 issues here.  (1) Installed base,
> meaning programmers who are already using Emacs or Vim.  (2) People to
> be converted from some other C++, Java, or C# environment.
> 
> I must say, getting Visual Studio users to move to any of Emacs, XEmacs,
> or Vim is an awfully hard sell.  I've downloaded all of 'em, dinked with
> all of 'em, and am *still* dragging my feet about it.  I've spent years
> building up my VS skills.  Now I am asked to switch, just so I can use
> OCaml?

That's why I call vim and emacs advanced text editors not IDEs. Eclipse 
and VS are IDEs.

> The problem is, all 3 of these editors have a "UNIX mastery" culture
> attached to them.  You want to do anything, you're going to have to dig
> down into the docs and learn a lot of keystrokes.  The Vim documentation
> is rather explicit about the philosophy.  "Vim is not here to hold your
> hand, it is a tool to be mastered" or some such.  Well, for all this
> 'mastery' crap, I say no thanks!

Vim (and emacs) is about never using your mouse to be faster. So you 
need to learn the keystrokes by heart (the first two days are hard but 
them it sooo good).

I guess you need to WANT to make the effort in the first place. If you 
don't want it, you'll never appreciate vim or emacs and you'd better 
stick to traditional IDEs.

> And, I *have* an ancient Linux background.  I've *used* plain old vi on
> VMS mainframes.  I used to use XEmacs back in Linux days.  So I gave up
> on Vim and said, ok, at least my fingers have got some muscle memory for
> C-x C-f, if not my brain anymore.  I found CUA mode and that made GNU
> Emacs much nicer, I've now got Windows-style cut-copy-paste keystrokes
> working seamlessly.  *With* C-x C-f at the same time, it's clever.  I'm
> quite happy with GNU Emacs as a Notepad replacement, it's much better.

SciTE is another nice crossplatform text editor (with windows style 
keystrokes like ctrl-C - copy and ctrl-V - paste) with code completion. 
But I am not aware of any ocaml mode for it.

> I hope the Eclipse stuff is good.  I am sooo ready to bolt from the UNIX
> editor realm.
> 
> Call me a Windows crybaby if you like.  It's exactly like if you'd been
> using Emacs and Makefiles for years and years and years, and you were
> forced to switch to Visual Studio.  Most programmers *hate* the tools
> they don't know already.  It's a bunch of tedious unproductive headache
> just to get to square one again, when you were already productive
> before.

I think IDEs are fine too. But as I'm happy with my vim, I have never 
seriously tried to learn to use one such as KDevelop or Eclispe. 
Furthermore, eclipse is java based and I don't want to install the poor 
linux/ppc JVM on my ibook nor try compile it with gcj ... (curiously the 
debian package is broken at the moment).

>>We'd better concentrate on true and mature IDE integration
>>like eclipse
> 
> What is your definition of "true and mature?"  Do you think even GNU
> Emacs isn't good enough to do commercial OCaml work in?

I'm sure emacs is good enough but you will never be able to convert VS 
or eclipse users to the ugly looking emacs with its weird keystrokes 
(even if I used to love emacs before meeting vim and I know it's much 
better than it looks to be :).

> If it's any good for OCaml, I sure hope so.  Also it would be a good way
> to expose the Java crowd to OCaml.

However, I haven't tried the ocaml plugin for eclipse. It is still alpha 
but if people contribute some work it might get production/usable on a 
short term, do'nt you think.

regards,

-- Olivier
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