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by zdouglas 5182 days ago
This is the binary-vs-plaintext argument all over again. Java's been through this once before, and they settled on .jar files containing bytecode (the author's ASTs, etc.), and human-readable source.

To jinshaun's point: I wouldn't mind requiring an IDE, but it should absolutely not be required to run in a window system. The overwhelming majority of administration is conducted over CLI, and if you've never had to hotfix something on an X-less production server, you're either a deployment rock star or lying to yourself and others.

I lastly want to reiterate that programming languages are "languages" by definition, and their syntax and terminology are what makes them universal. Using "dingbats" to represent functionality inherently breaks down the out-of-band communication of ideas. "Add a left-pointer-finger to pass the value to the caller of the function." WAT?

2 comments

I lastly want to reiterate that programming languages are "languages" by definition, and their syntax and terminology are what makes them universal. Using "dingbats" to represent functionality inherently breaks down the out-of-band communication of ideas. "Add a left-pointer-finger to pass the value to the caller of the function." WAT?

Yeah, every time someone comes along and says something like "text is so barbaric; we need to use GUIs to do things better!", I'm reminded of a quote along the lines of language being the only thing expressive enough to accomplish a broad range of tasks. Whether it's programming or system administration, there's a reason that technical people still have keyboards. If someone has something better, by all means show it. So far, no one has been able to meet this simple requirement.

I'm not saying you aren't typing symbols into an editor. Programming should still be done with a language. I'm saying: why should what you type be the same thing that is stored on disk. We are a decade into the 21st century and we still edit code the way we did in the 70s. Am I the only one who sees something wrong with that?

Let me ask you this. How will software for the Starship Enterprise be written? If we are still doing it in VIM then there is something seriously wrong with the future. Surely something better will come along. Let's explore what that something is.

It sounds like you're referring to a "structured editor", something like this:

http://www.guilabs.net/