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by Breefield 5579 days ago
This list of steps applicable to learning any programming language. 1.) Switch to appropriate environment 2.) Download an IDE built for your language 3.) 2 + [insert language]Lint 4.) Read some books on the language 5.) Write a program that actually does something useful
1 comments
silentbicycle 5579 days ago
Requiring an IDE specific to your language should be the exception, not the rule. Why the hell should you have to learn a completely different editor just to try out a new language? Is the language really so verbose and inexpressive that you can't even maintain it by hand?
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kenjackson 5579 days ago
An IDE is about making it easier to deal with your own code, not the language per se.

Any nontrivial program... say 50,000+ lines, would benefit from an IDE. Helps even simple tasks like finding all uses of a given function or pretty printing.

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silentbicycle 5579 days ago
Oh. My objection isn't to having to learn an IDE, it's having to learn a new IDE, specific to that language. If you already know an editor which is excellent for editing, indexing, searching, navigating, slicing and dicing text, why should you have to learn a new editor that only even works for that one language (that you may not even use, in the long run)? Being that tightly coupled to the IDE should raise a red flag about the language's longevity / flexibility.

If my editor/IDE has to call out to utilities included with the language to run build tools, generate some kind of navigation tags, etc., that's fine. Needing a completely different editor just for that language seems crazy, though. If it's going to insist on that, it should at least be Smalltalk. ;)

By all means, put your time into an IDE which will remain useful for the next years (if not decades).

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kenjackson 5579 days ago
Ok, I largely agree... you really should be able to get away with knowing any of vi, emacs, vs, or eclipse ... getting language specific features via addins.
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Breefield 5573 days ago
I only added that comment because I was thinking about PHP/JS vs...Java or Objective-C. It really makes sense to switch out of Coda and into Xcode.
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