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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)

#261

Post by pjmlp »

igouy wrote: post #212
jll29 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

May 1988 -- Smalltalk/V 286 -- on IBM-PC, PS/2 or compatible, with an 80286 or 80386 "INTRODUCTION TO THE SMALLTALK/V 286 ENVIRONMENT" http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/SmalltalkVTutorial...

That was my introduction to Smalltalk.

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

#262

Post by do_not_redeem »

whartung wrote: post #249

I think these modern TUIs are a testament to the general failure of modern GUIs. It's not like they're particularly easier to write these. But since there's no remote GUI option, much less a portable remote GUI option, particularly one that's not just a video of an entire desktop, we're stuck with these. WHo wants to fire up an entire desktop to get open a simple utility app? Obviously the Web satisfies much of the d…

> But since there's no remote GUI option

ssh -X and waypipe both work perfectly fine.

And to your point about portability, if you're stuck on an OS other than Linux, VNC/RDP aren't pretty but they'll get the job done.

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

#263

Post by inetknght »

> Each program was its own island because its interface was unique to the program. However, they were all so similar in how they looked like—80x25 characters didn’t leave much room for uniqueness—and how they worked that the differences didn’t really get in the way of usability and discoverability. Once you learned that the Alt key opened the menus and that Tab moved across input fields and buttons, you could navigate almost any program with ease.

This is the biggest thing I miss in modern GUIs, especially Windows, macOS, or mobile.

Tabbing across every single possible inputs, with alt or control keys for quick access is insanely powerful compared to "click here, scroll this, click click"

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

#264

Post by mlyle »

constantcrying wrote: post #231
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…

[flagged]

Modern terminals do color just fine-- 24 bit color support has existed since 2010-ish, and been mainstream since 2015.

There's nothing wrong with graphical IDEs... or text user interfaces. Great developers use both. Low effort troll is low effort.

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

#265

Post by uecker »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #71
api wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a great point. Another advantage is that at least for Rust you can do whole program optimization. The entire program tree is run through the optimizer resulting in all kinds of optimizations that are otherwise impossible. The only other kinds of systems that can optimize this way are higher level JIT runtimes like the JVM and CLR. These can treat all code in the VM as a unit and optimize across everything.

> Another advantage is that at least for Rust you can do whole program optimization. The entire program tree is run through the optimizer resulting in all kinds of optimizations that are otherwise impossible. I get why this might lead to big intermediate files, but why do the final binaries get so big?

Both C++ and Rust are based on monomorphization, which means generic programming is based on a expansion of code for each combination of types. This makes compilation slow and causes code bloat. One then needs whole program optimization to get this under control to some degree.

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

#266

Post by f1shy »

krs_ wrote: post #155
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

That's a fair criticism, although once you learn how to access the documentation and where to look for/expext it I find that most things, including add-on packages and whatnot, can be learned from within Emacs itself just fine. But it does take some knowledge to get to that point in the first place for sure.

I think is not fair at all, as a default installation has a menu bar, and you can save a file in file->save. While doing so it will tell you the shortcut.

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

#267

Post by pjmlp »

constantcrying wrote: post #231
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…

[flagged]

Agreed, we used TUIs because we couldn't afford anything better on MS-DOS, CP/M, 8 bit home computers.

People on better systems like the Amiga and Atari were already past that.

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

#268

Post by oblio »

inetknght wrote: post #263

> Each program was its own island because its interface was unique to the program. However, they were all so similar in how they looked like—80x25 characters didn’t leave much room for uniqueness—and how they worked that the differences didn’t really get in the way of usability and discoverability. Once you learned that the Alt key opened the menus and that Tab moved across input fields and buttons, you could navigat…

I haven't checked in Win 11, but all standard Windows apps used to be fully navigable by keyboard only. Notepad, Wordpad, etc.
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