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IDEs we had 30 years ago and lost (2023)

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Re: IDEs we had 30 years ago and lost (2023)

#181

Post by jll29 »

karmakaze wrote: post #148
CGamesPlay wrote: post #125

(Article is from 2023, so the title should be updated to say "32 years ago", or something) The biggest loss in TUIs is the latest wave of asynchronous frameworks, which bring the joy of dropped keypresses to the terminal. In any TUI released before the year 2000, if you press a key when the system wasn't ready, the key would just wait until the system was ready. Many TUIs today still do this, but increasingly frequen…

I wasn't paying attention to when 30 years ago actually was... So disappointing to expect a GUI Smalltalk System Browser and seeing DOS TUIs. And then delight recalling Turbo C/Pascal and MS C 4.0 with CodeView that even worked in 43 or 50 line modes.

Yes, me too, I was expecting either Smalltalk or LISP machine GUIs.

Having said that, some old TUIs were clearer and faster even on weaker hardware. This should be a lesson for us today. Color transitions and animated icons flying over the desktop are NOT what I need, but speed, clarity, and discoverability of more rarely used functionality are vital.

Re: IDEs we had 30 years ago and lost (2023)

#182

Post by somat »

reaperducer wrote: post #122

The author notes that he programmed back in the 1980's, but the article only focuses on the mid-90's IDEs. I'd like to see a companion article about the IDEs from the 80's. I remember 64FORTH had a multi-pane IDE, but I could only find this low-res picture of it: https://www.c64-wiki.de/images/thumb/2/24/Forth64-audiogenic... There were others, though, including one I remember that was all text at the bottom half of…

I do want to point out that the 2600 was at it's heart a slightly generalized pong machine, to the degree that I don't find it surprising that you can make pong in 6 lines of 2600 basic.

The 2600 graphics were centered around 5 sprites dedicated to two players, two missiles, and a ball. Completely understandable, they were trying to make a toy computer affordable enough for everyone in 1975. but their design process was basically "what is the bare minimum video hardware required to make the games "combat" and "pong". Every single game found on the 2600 that is not a combat or pong clone is probably a masterwork example of making the hardware do something it was not intended for.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_Interface_Adaptor

Footnote: yes I know it was released in 1977, but it was designed in 1975.

Re: IDEs we had 30 years ago and lost (2023)

#183

Post by skopje »

1. coders will use every available resource, and

2. there is no limit on resources.

The consequences can be left to the reader (re: the article in this thread), but these two postulates are the source of all ills in commodity and open-source software today.

Re: IDEs we had 30 years ago and lost (2023)

#184

Post by skopje »

mkovach wrote: post #32

Ah, Borland’s IDE! An absolute delight. I’ve yet to find anything modern that matches it. Sure, nostalgia turns everything syrupy, but I actively hunt for excuses to use Free Pascal just to fire up that interface. Okay, fine—I like Pascal too. You caught me. I also use Sam and Acme from Plan 9 (technically from the excellent plan9port), but let’s be honest: those aren’t IDEs. They’re editors. Tools that let me think…

djgpp + vi for dos in 1991 ftw!

Re: IDEs we had 30 years ago and lost (2023)

#185

Post by vunderba »

Aurornis wrote: post #126
bombcar wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing about the "professional" DOS software (and you can see it in things like Emacs - eight modes and constantly shifting) was you were basically expected to live in it - it had the full attention of the computer and the user. You were also expected to learn it; which meant you became "one with the machine" in a way similar to an organ player. I remember watching Fry's Electronics employees fly through their TUI…

> it had the full attention of the computer and the user. This why I like to use the full screen mode of my editors and IDEs. It surprises a lot of people who see my screen. Full screen features are everywhere but rarely used.

Agreed. I do a lot my writing in Typora which, in addition to a full-screen mode, also has other "Focus" style features which get rid of distracting UI/UX elements, etc. so you can concentrate on the task at hand.

Re: IDEs we had 30 years ago and lost (2023)

#186

Post by bob1029 »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #39
pragmatic wrote: post #33

TUIs sucked and they still suck. Programmers are trying to bring them back bc nostalgia I guess? I floated the idea of TUIs to our data engineering team and got very negative responses. (My nostalgia for undergrad turbo pascal TUI I guess lol)

Care to elaborate as to why they suck?

It's not that TUIs suck in terms of their inherent capabilities. It's that they're generally a miserable tool for the job, especially if it's a big one.

TUIs are like shovels. A perfectly rational tool for doing a little bit of digging. Visual Studio 2022 is like Bagger 293.

Re: IDEs we had 30 years ago and lost (2023)

#187

Post by andai »

skopje wrote: post #183

1. coders will use every available resource, and 2. there is no limit on resources. The consequences can be left to the reader (re: the article in this thread), but these two postulates are the source of all ills in commodity and open-source software today.

Coders considered harmful.

Re: IDEs we had 30 years ago and lost (2023)

#188

Post by chiph »

bombcar wrote: post #73
mkovach wrote: post #32

Ah, Borland’s IDE! An absolute delight. I’ve yet to find anything modern that matches it. Sure, nostalgia turns everything syrupy, but I actively hunt for excuses to use Free Pascal just to fire up that interface. Okay, fine—I like Pascal too. You caught me. I also use Sam and Acme from Plan 9 (technically from the excellent plan9port), but let’s be honest: those aren’t IDEs. They’re editors. Tools that let me think…

One thing about the "professional" DOS software (and you can see it in things like Emacs - eight modes and constantly shifting) was you were basically expected to live in it - it had the full attention of the computer and the user. You were also expected to learn it; which meant you became "one with the machine" in a way similar to an organ player. I remember watching Fry's Electronics employees fly through their TUI…

Paying at Best Buy was torture - watching the cashier move their mouse around (on the slanted mousing surface they were given so they couldn't just let go) and click the buttons, going through 3 or 4 screens and waiting for them to load vs. using the keyboard. They would have been done with me and on to the next customer in half the time.

Re: IDEs we had 30 years ago and lost (2023)

#190

Post by SoftTalker »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #139
dimitar wrote: post #23

I think Emacs still does all of this; the argument the author makes is that it is "arcane", it just uses conventions he is not used to. It is however fully self-documented and interactive. For me the best textual interface I've ever used remains Magit in Emacs: https://magit.vc/ I wish more of Emacs was like it. I actually use emacs as my git clients even when I'm using a different IDE for whatever reason.

> It is however fully self-documented and interactive. Unfortunately not true. I've fired up emacs once or twice, and couldn't even figure out how to save a document because it didn't show me how to do that. It might be more documented than vi (but that bar is *on the floor, vi has one of the most discovery-hostile user interfaces ever made), but it's not self-documented enough to just pick up and use with no instruc…

I'm pretty sure that if you have an unmodified install and no .emacs that is configured otherwise, when you start emacs you are prompted with a help screen that includes instructions on using the built-in tutorial. If you do that, you'll learn the basics in about 10-15 minutes. If you skip that, yeah it's pretty different from most other software conventions.
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