Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!usenet.pasdenom.info!news.albasani.net!feeder.news-service.com!news.glorb.com!usenet.stanford.edu!news.iecc.com!nerds-end From: HiramEgl Newsgroups: comp.programming,comp.compilers,comp.editors Subject: Re: New editor/Integrated Development Environment/compiler Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2011 20:31:28 +0200 Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server Lines: 43 Sender: news@iecc.com Approved: comp.compilers@iecc.com Message-ID: <11-04-030@comp.compilers> References: <11-04-009@comp.compilers> <11-04-011@comp.compilers> <11-04-018@comp.compilers> <11-04-021@comp.compilers> NNTP-Posting-Host: news.iecc.com X-Trace: gal.iecc.com 1302897392 3071 64.57.183.58 (15 Apr 2011 19:56:32 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@iecc.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2011 19:56:32 +0000 (UTC) Keywords: code, editor Posted-Date: 15 Apr 2011 15:56:31 EDT X-submission-address: compilers@iecc.com X-moderator-address: compilers-request@iecc.com X-FAQ-and-archives: http://compilers.iecc.com Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.programming:239 comp.compilers:97 comp.editors:82 > Of course, we know that unix is the ultimate Integrated Development > Environment. But some people don't like unix (there are arguments, > see one below), and want something even more "integrated", ie. in a > single application. Never mind that applications or systems are all > the same: they're virtual machines. > Totally agreed! > There's no need for files, each function or method can be compiled > separately. This helps greatly while developing because instead of > having a edit-save-compile-debug-loop, you can use a > read-eval-print-loop, with feedback at a much finer grain. This is exactly one of the advantages of working with the structure, Isn't it a waste of resources the possibility to write a program with wrong syntax? Shouldn't be much easier to validate and restrict the typed text as the user types, and even restructure the binary product immediately? No need of compilation stage, that's pure waste of time and resources, from my point of view. > As for the proprietary format, I entirely agree. We want to be able to > exchange our programs, possibly on different systems. That's why there > are features such as the fileOut: and fileIn: methods in Smalltalk (and > equivalent in InterLisp, see the reference provided), to serialize or > deserialize the code into ASCII for interchange. I think that it should be possible to create a standard-representation of symbols, like an international table, similar to ascii. > So remember, we're not in the context of the unix IDE, with tools such > as vim, gcc, git and tag, but in the context of a different system, with > a different granularity of integration, and where the tools can work > directly with the data objects that represent the programs, instead of > having to serialize/deserialize constantly meaningless ASCII streams. Yep, absolutely. [I think I'll bring this thread to a close now. Structure editors are not new -- there were lots of them in the 1970s and 1980s, and they all died for reasons unrelated to lack of broadband connections. You can find many papers written on them (not neccessarily all available for free online), and I really think anyone planning to go down that road should start by learning about all the sinkholes that smart people ran into before. -John]