[Ocaml-biz] IDEs

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Brian Hurt wrote:
> Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>
> > I must say, getting Visual Studio users to move to any of
> > Emacs, XEmacs, or Vim is an awfully hard sell.
>
> Now you know *exactly* how I feel when asked to switch.
> Congratulations-
> we've just created another hurdle for people trying to adopt
> Ocaml, they
> have to learn a new editor/build environment to do so.  I
> know I for one wouldn't have bothered if that was the case.

There are different ways to ask people to switch, however, and different
factors involved.  For instance, to fulfil my strategic objectives I
need OCaml much more than I need the best editor in the world.  I had
already decided upon OCaml due to many other value propositions.  I will
swallow GNU Emacs eventually under sheer duress if I have to.  That
doesn't seem to be the case with you, if you were willing to allow a
mere editor to stand in the way of you and OCaml.  Did you just try it
out and like it one day?

A webpage that actually markets the use of a GNU Emacs toolchain for
OCaml, and demonstrates how it really isn't all that bad, and packages
things up so you're ready to go right away, and shows how there's far
fewer steps for getting started than you'd think, would go a long way to
getting someone like me to move over.  But currently that website does
not exist, or cannot easily be found.

What doesn't work, is William's contention that "it would take a monkey
about five minutes to write an install script."  Clearly, if
corporations need to deploy a monkey to do that, then there's a problem,
and we should solve that problem for everyone.  It is a non-starter to
offer a potential convert a bunch of futz factors to dink through.  The
barriers of resistance are high enough already.

It is about selling the initial experience.  This is ocaml-biz, so we
talk about how to market to people.

> time_to_learn + (num_times_used * avg_time_per_use)

The reason you will never have this culture shift, is because your
projected time savings in the future is a leap of faith.  There is no
way to know that OCaml will actually save you work, for having gone
through the pain of getting started with it.  Businesses understand this
risk, that's why they assess and manage their risk.  Usually this means
making exceedingly conservative decisons about what platform to use.

> But then I got thrown into an environment where my choice was
> vi or vs, no
> emacs.  After arguing with vs for a month or two, I sat down
> and learned vi.  And have never look back.

Another important point is that the line worker doesn't count.  The
manager or Decisionmaker is what counts.  They have the power to impose
an editor upon a lot of people.  That is usually how people are actually
made to switch: kicking, screaming, and clawing.

> That being said, I don't think you should have to ditch
> visual studio to
> pick up Ocaml.  We'll lose too many developers that way- even
> if (IMHO)
> switching to another editor would be better for them.

Well, in the longer term, it would be better to have OCaml support
directly under VS.  But that's a big project and I don't personally have
the expertise for it.  So I am concentrating on the here and now.  I
hope Eclipse is decent.  If Eclipse looks and behaves "a lot like VS,"
VS users can definitely be made to switch with some marketing.


Cheers,                         www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every               Seattle, WA

"We live in a world of very bright people building
crappy software with total shit for tools and process."
                                - Ed McKenzie