Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!news.glorb.com!border3.nntp.dca.giganews.com!Xl.tags.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!local2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.earthlink.com!news.earthlink.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2012 21:55:16 -0500 Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2012 19:55:11 -0700 From: Patricia Shanahan User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.2; WOW64; rv:13.0) Gecko/20120614 Thunderbird/13.0.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.help Subject: Re: Whay IDE am I supposed to use/is the best? References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: Lines: 17 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 70.230.202.8 X-Trace: sv3-j0tD2EInmgB94OPuV7qj21rQGowKKngVcVU1HiY53AZsy/rhwekjgIeNpZNWztRzGXyVZQm71zrNW0n!dNgpRZpeHkUqe/GAwfKYScnTWBpw8K1DeMWYE//BH6eXjkkkZczqn5MOQJXKXlVXzSxuHH05Gvr0!EKU8jo2GgQLntGIDLpP8PM3tGKZnL1CbDIwAkMxPwkwA X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 X-Original-Bytes: 2079 Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.java.help:1933 On 7/3/2012 5:48 PM, Patrick May wrote: ... > I do think there is value in simplicity (and yes, I do see the > humor in calling Emacs simple). I also think there is value in > understanding what your tools are doing, and many IDEs make that > difficult or impossible. It is possible to deliver large enterprise > projects using a programmer's editor like Emacs and a shell window or > three, with occasional reference to documents in a web browser. Why is understanding what your tools are doing such a good thing? And is it feasible, even if desirable? Computing advances by making details irrelevant, and letting people focus on bigger issues. Even the simplest of program editors, let alone a tool like emacs, hides many layers from its users. Patricia