Seriously Impressive: Sun Java Studio Creator - Ubuntu's killer app?

[Pete Ryland]

On 14/12/06, Derek Broughton <news at pointerstop.ca> wrote:
> At least one IDE that I can think of: Shift-Ctrl-L.  For simplicity, I
> win :-)

Which one?  And it doesn't seem very generic or easy to remember.  How
would you move a line to a few lines down?

> > Or how about auto-indenting a block of code?  How many IDEs offer
> > anything like that?  In vim it's as easy as preceeding a movement key
> > with '='.
>
> The two most common that I use, Oracle JDeveloper and Eclipse, do it with a
> keystroke.  I win again!

Cool.  BTW, this isn't about winning as far as I'm concerned.  I'd be
very happy to see IDEs make improvements in their text-editing
interfaces.  It seems they're *finally* actually listening to whingers
like me, probably after wondering why no-one wanted to switch from vim
to their product.

> RAD IDEs (at least good ones) don't spit out unmaintainable code.  They spit
> out code - you _maintain_ the original source.  This has been true for
> decades - I was working with systems in the 70s & 80s that produced code
> from higher level methodologies.  When you needed to insert your own code,
> that's exactly what you did, but within the higher-level source, so you
> never tried to maintain the C (or even Cobol) code that was the
> end-product.

So how do you tweak the database connection string for example?  Or do
something that the IDE's auto-stuff hasn't thought of?  You have to
hack on generated code.  What you suggest does sound nice in theory,
but really doesn't work well in practice on code that needs to be
maintained for long periods of time.  At least not without a robust
framework, like the gob2 thing for glib/gtk/gnome, which of course is
then accessible from any editor, even vim.

> > I've actually not tried Eclipse for a few years now, so perhaps it's
> > time I had another look.  Maybe things have improved enough now to
> > make the switch worth it.
>
> And perhaps not - but if you haven't looked in a few years, you've missed a
> lot :-)  I didn't like it a few years back, and I'm still not using it as
> much as I could, but it is _definitely_ much improved.

Ok, I'll have another look.

Pete