Comments on: IDE’s and Dynamic Languages

By: The Punch Barrel / IDEâ€™s and Dynamic Languages

The Punch Barrel / IDEâ€™s and Dynamic Languages — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 09:27:28 +0000

[...] IDEâ€™s and Dynamic Languages at Ted Leung on the Air [...]

By: The Real Adam – Not your father’s IDE

The Real Adam – Not your father’s IDE — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 08:49:38 +0000

[...] IDEâ€™s and Dynamic Languages. Ted Leung’s got some useful and insightful things to say about dynamic languages, history, IDEs and the people who use them. While I still think many of the features in a modern IDE are crutches, I hope that what Ted is alluding to becomes a reality. [...]

By: Programming Language Nuclear Winter at Fiat Developmentum

Programming Language Nuclear Winter at Fiat Developmentum — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:54:49 +0000

[...] — Ted Leung [...]

By: [:undefinedObject] » Blog Archive » Ted Leung Ã¼ber dynamisch getypte Sprachen

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 08:00:48 +0000

[...] Zitate zum Thema dynamisch getypte Sprachen fand ich zuletzt in Ted Leung’s Post “IDE’s and Dynamic Languages“, der sich auf jeden Fall zur vollstÃ¤ndigen LektÃ¼re eignet – auch die [...]

By: Nikola Stjelja

Nikola Stjelja — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 06:10:52 +0000

I think most modern IDE features are just bells and whistles just put there to give something new each year. Lets be serious most developers, regardless of the language they are using, do not use the majority of the features their IDE of choice gives them. Syntax checking, syntax coloring, auto complete, auto documentation generation and maybe GUI building are the most we use these days.

By: Mitch

Mitch — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:37:01 +0000

A perplexing problem trying to find a real IDE for dynamic languages. So much so, I wrote a version 0.1 for (Iron)Python on the .NET framework at: http://www.codeplex.com/gsb

What success would look like to me is being able to launch an IDE in a web browser, from any location, and point it to whatever project I happen to be working on, which is usually a web-based project. It seems soâ€¦ what, I donâ€™t knowâ€¦ that we do not have any real web-based IDEâ€™s for developing, you know, web applications. It seems our paradigm is oh so wrong.

By: Joshua Kugler

Joshua Kugler — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 21:25:36 +0000

“But I do wonder how much success IDEs will have in markets currently dominated by text editors”

You might want to ask Wingware. Their WingIDE for Python seems to be doing pretty well.

By: Heikki Toivonen

Heikki Toivonen — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:47:53 +0000

Funny, I actually wrote about IDEs being useful for dynamic language developers in April. I am one of those Python developers that likes good tools, and IDE is a nice way to tie them together.

Probably the main thing I look in an IDE is the debugger support. I was really spoiled with the debugger in the Microsoft Visual C++. I can work with gdb and pdb (and in fact do for quick little checks), but I just find that I work faster with a visual debugger that let’s me see everything at a glance and it also makes it easy to drill down into directions I wasn’t anticipating when I started debugging.

When I switched from C++ to Python, one of the main annoyances I had was that there was no compile step to catch my typing mistakes. Instead, I had to launch the application which in case of Chandler took a long time, use it to get to the piece of code that exercised my code, and if I hit a typo it was aggravating. Good, fast tests help of course, but this is an area I think IDEs can also shine. When I found Pydev, and its integration with Pylint, things suddenly became enjoyable: the IDE is pointing out my errors as I type!

I take syntax highlighting for granted, but I have never really used refactoring tools so that is an area of functionality that I don’t miss much.

By: yml

yml — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:36:27 +0000

Hello,
Komodo Edit is hitting the suit spot for me even. I would be very happy if all the features you have describe are added.
–yml

By: Adrian Kuhn

Adrian Kuhn — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:28:57 +0000

One of the best IDE's of dynamic languages is Hermion, a recent extensions of Squeak's normal IDE. It traces your running program/tests and feeds back traced type information into the code editor. Type information is used for better auto-completion and even available as in-test drop-down menues (like the ones in MS Office). Really worth checking out, I am addicted. http://smallwiki.unibe.ch/hermion/

By: keith

keith — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:44:19 +0000

Thank you, thank you. An excellent summary of a situation that I find deeply vexing. It boggles my mind to have folks claim that, for instance, there’s just no way to have good support for refactoring tools in a dynamic language. When one points out that what we now think of as refactoring tools came from Smalltalk they just get this blank look on their faces.

Personally, I find it very weird that people can be fans of dynamic languages, with all that this implies about rich, flexible, explorable _runtime_ behavior and yet still think of their programs as lumps of text sitting in files.

By: Seo Sanghyeon

Seo Sanghyeon — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:29:13 +0000

vi and emacs are extensible, so why “willingly give up their text editors with IDE features”? Why not have those features as an extension of vi and emacs?

In other words, why wouldn’t one prefer Bicycle Repair Man, if it improved enough?

http://bicyclerepair.sourceforge.net/

By: Michael Hudson

Michael Hudson — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 10:26:06 +0000

5-10 years? Heck, even Python is 17 years old now, Ruby 12, … 30 is about right for Smalltalk, but Lisp is more like 50

By: marxy

marxy — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 09:58:56 +0000

The benefits of dynamic languages, such as being able to re-factor the type of object being passed around without changing all the declarations of methods that take that object, run counter to the ability of an IDE to do intelligent things like show code completion accurately while writing rather than running your code.

This is a tough problem.

I use Komodo and it does a remarkable job considering this problem.

Personally, I think the solution lies in having a dynamic language that lets you give hints about the types, perhaps as decorators, that might be used by an IDE.

If you want to pour out code, a simple editor, with some code colouring and bracket balancing smarkts is terrific.

I switch between the two depending on my mood.