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New IDE: code bubbles

cs.brown.edu

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Re: New IDE: code bubbles

#81

Post by jrockway »

mulander wrote: post #65
guelo wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The demo is relying heavily on code navigation features that are only available to static language IDEs such as "Open Declaration", "Find All References", code completion, navigating object hierarchies, code outlines, inline docs, and other fancy code traversal techniques.

Take a look at Squeak. The Smalltalk folks have been doing this for a long time with the GUI utilities. SLIME is another dynamic environment that knows and can tell You much about itself.

This information comes from actually running the code.

Not that this is a bad thing, though. People seem really afraid of having the code they just wrote be executed, but I think this is an unfounded fear. And, as SLIME shows, you get great information from running the code; much better than mere static analysis.

Re: New IDE: code bubbles

#82

Post by chubbard »

I like the concepts of the bubbles and the fact that it show call execution so well instead of one file at a time. That's really cool, but what I find so amazing is that since they built on top of Eclipse they got much further towards a usable system like having an integrated debugger was a nice surprise to me. 10-20 years ago the gap between an academic project and a finished product would have been much wider. Not to mention they got to explore more ground with the concept. Just shows how open source software enables innovation better.

Re: New IDE: code bubbles

#83

Post by jasonkester »

gjm11 wrote: post #50
jasonkester wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programming hasn't been about files for a long time now. That's the reason that we have IDEs in the first place, and why I cringe when people talk about writing code in a text editor. Any IDE worth its salt will do all the things in that video, except for the little draggable bubbles.

In other words: All the things in that video ... except for the things the video was about.

The video highlighted an annoying feature of Squeak Smalltalk, where you get tiny little views of individual methods in their own window, which seems like a good idea until you actually try to do something complicated using it. It's pretty to watch though.

The cool things there, in my opinion, were the code navigation pieces. Those are the things I actually think work better with tabbed files.

In other news, yikes! I seem to have started an IDE vs. Text Editor flamewar. Sorry about that.

Re: New IDE: code bubbles

#84

Post by guelo »

jrockway wrote: post #70
guelo wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The demo is relying heavily on code navigation features that are only available to static language IDEs such as "Open Declaration", "Find All References", code completion, navigating object hierarchies, code outlines, inline docs, and other fancy code traversal techniques.

These things are possible in dynamic languages with static analysis, it's just not as easy. (Oh, and if you write code that's unreadable, then the static analysis fails. But most people don't do that.)

Then where are the Python/Ruby/PHP/Perl IDEs with these features?

Re: New IDE: code bubbles

#85

Post by perplexes »

Reminds me of Squeak, first, because of the white->blue gradients. Second, this is like the Canon Cat/Archy (Raskin interfaces), where you have tons of room, and you just demarcate segments you want to look at.

What was striking for me was the "capture my workspace and send in email" feature. Couple this with the Omniscient Debugger (http://www.lambdacs.com/debugger/), and you've got me sold. Oh, but I'm a Ruby programmer.

Re: New IDE: code bubbles

#87

Post by jrockway »

guelo wrote: post #84
jrockway wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These things are possible in dynamic languages with static analysis, it's just not as easy. (Oh, and if you write code that's unreadable, then the static analysis fails. But most people don't do that.)

Then where are the Python/Ruby/PHP/Perl IDEs with these features?

It's hard, and people are lazy. Getting this information out of Java is Really Really Easy, so it's been done.

Personally, I have all the pieces together for doing this with Perl, but I have not put it together into anything coherent because it's largely useless. An occasionally-updated tags table is really all I need, so I can't get motivated to make "Eclipse for Perl".

Maybe someone else that sees the value in these tools will do it. Let me know what information you're interested in, and I will show you how to implement it.

Re: New IDE: code bubbles

#88

Post by shaunxcode »

jacquesm wrote: post #80
shaunxcode wrote: post #51

I have an unfinished project where I was attempting something similar - I am going to throw it up on google code now and I guess put up a demo in case anyone is interested in the code. It's all just simple javascript/jquery proof of concept. You can see it here http://www.churchofturing.com/dragedit/dragedit.html and google code is http://dragedit.googlecode.com

Nice stuff! I just played around with it for a bit and it seems you have the basis of something interesting there, now for an application!

thanks - I am always hesitant to release projects where I know it is only a quarter of the way there. But what good does it do just having it sit on my hard drive? hah. There are some key bindings working ctrl+space creates a new editing pane, ctrl+arrow keys should let you move between panes - however I wrote this so long ago that I did not know ctrl+space brings up a menu on mac. hah. The other key bindings do not seem to work on my mac either. If I get some time this weekend I think I will polish this up, get saving/loading/exporting working etc.

Re: New IDE: code bubbles

#89

Post by pgbovine »

this sort of thing would be awesome for boosting developer productivity if they have 3 24" monitors ... nowadays it's quite affordable to buy 3 24" monitors (at ~$300 a piece), and when they're all linked-up horizontally, an IDE like this one could truly kick butt

Re: New IDE: code bubbles

#90

Post by alexgartrell »

sofal wrote: post #49

Guys, we need a better way for exploring big open source projects (like Android, for example), preferably online. Google Code Search is pretty good, but I think there is so much more that can be done.

The most striking thing is how few people here have addressed this point. Everyone seems to be living in a fantasy land where "learning APIs" is as hairy as it gets. I've messed with portions of the Linux Kernel, Chromium, Mozilla, and Coda Filesystem codebases. In each occasion, tools like code-search (provided by lxr.linux.no, mxr.mozilla.org, Google COde, and even `find . | xargs grep`) have been invaluable in getting anything done.

Chromium, Mozilla, and the Linux Kernel were unpleasant, but manageable with the existing tools, because of the incredibly strict guidelines imposed upon contributors as far as code style and other things. On the flip side, the Coda Filesystem, which has grown as the result of many relatively disjoint Ph.D. research projects) requires a whole lot of help and handholding from the guys who have put a decade into it already. I can only imagine private code bases being a LOT worse.

An IDE that makes semantic relationships more obvious to the new guys would do a lot to ramp new people up faster and would really be a huge benefit from a community standpoint as well as just being generally helpful to existing developers.

That said, this is a good first step, and not necessarily perfect. It kind of looks like a toy now, so managing screen real-estate better would be the next big step, I think.

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