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Apple Dylan IDE (2014)

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Re: Apple Dylan IDE (2014)

#31

Post by masklinn »

jitl wrote: post #18
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #4

What I like the most is the abstraction-away from plaintext source files. Imagine a C and C++ IDE that hid the (often ugly) source files from you put only exposed individual function definitions - it could automatically keep header files in-sync, for example, and automatically place each free-function or class member in the right file without manual refactoring. (I still think it's outrageous that C is still a single…

This is what Lighttable aimed to do - create an extensible, abstracted code editor for many languages. See also CodeBubbles (Java) and most Smalltalk environments. http://lighttable.com/2012/04/12/light-table-a-new-ide-conce...

And Self's Morphic, which went even further ("static" objects would be defined via UI elements with only the method bodies being written in small editors)

Re: Apple Dylan IDE (2014)

#32

Post by tjoff »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #4

What I like the most is the abstraction-away from plaintext source files. Imagine a C and C++ IDE that hid the (often ugly) source files from you put only exposed individual function definitions - it could automatically keep header files in-sync, for example, and automatically place each free-function or class member in the right file without manual refactoring. (I still think it's outrageous that C is still a single…

(I still think it's outrageous that C is still a single-pass language - we shouldn't need separate simultaneous declaration and definitions any more)

Maybe not, but I have a hard time to believe that it can be considered even a slight annoyance to anyone but people just learning how to program. The same people that are annoyed by it probably benefits from it anyway, forces them to actually think about what they are doing.

Also makes it easier to get an overview of the code using just a text editor. KISS.

Re: Apple Dylan IDE (2014)

#34

Post by mattkevan »

cm2187 wrote: post #26
etchalon wrote: post #2

Some days, I still miss OS 8.

What I miss the most is the extension system. Where installing something (driver, new feature, etc) on the OS is as simple as dropping a file in a folder. And uninstalling it deleting this file. And you know there is nothing left after you removed the extension.

What I don't miss is when the extensions conflict, crashing the machine on boot.

I also don't miss the process of removing each extension one by one, rebooting each time to find the culprit.

Re: Apple Dylan IDE (2014)

#35

Post by [deleted] »

cm2187 wrote: post #26
etchalon wrote: post #2

Some days, I still miss OS 8.

What I miss the most is the extension system. Where installing something (driver, new feature, etc) on the OS is as simple as dropping a file in a folder. And uninstalling it deleting this file. And you know there is nothing left after you removed the extension.

[deleted]

Re: Apple Dylan IDE (2014)

#36

Post by tajen »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #4

What I like the most is the abstraction-away from plaintext source files. Imagine a C and C++ IDE that hid the (often ugly) source files from you put only exposed individual function definitions - it could automatically keep header files in-sync, for example, and automatically place each free-function or class member in the right file without manual refactoring. (I still think it's outrageous that C is still a single…

Visual Basic / Excel VBA does that, and I thought it was the way to go until 18yo. But when you can only see one function/event handler at a time, you lose the understanding of how programming works. If only I had been exposed to plain-text programming (Maven + .java) instead of using Windows/visual editors for years...

Re: Apple Dylan IDE (2014)

#38

Post by cm2187 »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #30
cm2187 wrote: post #27

It's funny because this is basically the VBA editor. You have a tree on the left with classes and modules, then in the main pane you have a drop down at the top to select functions and the text editor (if configured that way) will show a single function. I wonder when Microsoft will do any work on the VBA editor. It's not like VBA is going away. Office users still write new VBA every day. They need it.

It clear Microsoft intends to replace VBA with JavaScript that will run both in desktop Office and Office Online - we have it already with "Office Apps", but Office Apps are sandboxed pretty bad and have zero access to COM and legacy Office components. Assuming Microsoft eventually brings JS-in-Office to feature-parity with VBA then they can kill off the old editor.

It will take many years before they can do that. First because they haven't provided an alternative yet (javascript is used to create addins, not for users to create scripts or make new functions available). Second because you have millions of business processes that rely on VBA. So as far as I can tell the transition hasn't even started.

Re: Apple Dylan IDE (2014)

#39

Post by dom0 »

melloclello wrote: post #22
jitl wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what Lighttable aimed to do - create an extensible, abstracted code editor for many languages. See also CodeBubbles (Java) and most Smalltalk environments. http://lighttable.com/2012/04/12/light-table-a-new-ide-conce...

> It’s no secret that I really like Clojure and as a lisp, it was the easiest language for me to start the prototype with, but there’s no reason this couldn’t be done for any language with a dynamic runtime. The rest is mostly simple analysis of an AST and some clever inference. I have looked into this. It is kind of criminal that for most real world languages (Ruby[1], C[2] etc), it's not possible to just define a g…

Most programming languages are context-sensitive [1] (at least with unbounded nesting), so parsing them correctly and efficiently is mathematically impossible. All practical implementations have to take shortcuts.

[1] Mainly due to begin..end blocks, curly braces or indentation (as in Python)

Re: Apple Dylan IDE (2014)

#40

Post by cm2187 »

mattkevan wrote: post #34
cm2187 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I miss the most is the extension system. Where installing something (driver, new feature, etc) on the OS is as simple as dropping a file in a folder. And uninstalling it deleting this file. And you know there is nothing left after you removed the extension.

What I don't miss is when the extensions conflict, crashing the machine on boot. I also don't miss the process of removing each extension one by one, rebooting each time to find the culprit.

That's still way better than trying to figure out which driver is causing a BSOD on windows today.

Let's keep in mind this was a pre-protected memory OS.

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