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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)

#401

Post by ranger_danger »

sheepscreek wrote: post #357

> Visual Basic was the pinnacle of graphics programming I am still shocked how no tool since has managed to come even close to VB. You could easily develop a moderately complex GUI application that felt snappy in an afternoon. C# with WinForms is the second closest to that. All other iterations since have not been designed with individual developers in mind, sadly. A powerful developing alternative to this paradigm c…

I find Qt Creator to be quite comparable to the experience I remember with e.g. VB6. Have you tried it?

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

#403

Post by jsrcout »

brucehoult wrote: post #118
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.

The thing is that emacs predates Apple developing cmd-z/x/c/v and Microsoft copying Apple in Windows. Before that, the most commonly copied keystrokes in programmer's editors were the freaking Wordstar ones e.g. in all the Borland products. Also OP apparently has no knowledge of the far better IDEs we had 30-40 years ago including but not limited to: - Apple MPW, 1986. GUI editor where every window is (potentially) a…

From my own experience, Think Pascal was fantastic for the time. MPW was serious and high-powered stuff for pro development on a late 80s/early 90s microcomputer; used it professionally for 2 or 3 years and loved it. Never tried the other ones you mentioned.

As you say, it's incredible how slick and sophisticated those systems were, given the hardware of the day. I mean sure current IDEs may be preferable but we're also using 4 Ghz systems these days instead of 40 Mhz or whatever.

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

#404

Post by p3rls »

sheepscreek wrote: post #357

> Visual Basic was the pinnacle of graphics programming I am still shocked how no tool since has managed to come even close to VB. You could easily develop a moderately complex GUI application that felt snappy in an afternoon. C# with WinForms is the second closest to that. All other iterations since have not been designed with individual developers in mind, sadly. A powerful developing alternative to this paradigm c…

[dead]

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

#406

Post by int_19h »

sheepscreek wrote: post #357

> Visual Basic was the pinnacle of graphics programming I am still shocked how no tool since has managed to come even close to VB. You could easily develop a moderately complex GUI application that felt snappy in an afternoon. C# with WinForms is the second closest to that. All other iterations since have not been designed with individual developers in mind, sadly. A powerful developing alternative to this paradigm c…

Delphi was superior to VB even back in the day, and is still around, as is Lazarus. C# WinForms is actually closest to that, not to VB - and is also still around.

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

#407

Post by int_19h »

brucehoult wrote: post #118
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.

The thing is that emacs predates Apple developing cmd-z/x/c/v and Microsoft copying Apple in Windows. Before that, the most commonly copied keystrokes in programmer's editors were the freaking Wordstar ones e.g. in all the Borland products. Also OP apparently has no knowledge of the far better IDEs we had 30-40 years ago including but not limited to: - Apple MPW, 1986. GUI editor where every window is (potentially) a…

> Before that, the most commonly copied keystrokes in programmer's editors were the freaking Wordstar ones e.g. in all the Borland products.

Borland switched to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access shortcuts in the last few versions of their TUI - Ctrl+Ins, Shift+Ins, Shift+Del for clipboard, for example. Since Windows also supported them (and still does!) this actually made for a nice common system between Turbo Vision TUI apps and actual GUI in Windows.

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

#408

Post by int_19h »

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.

One thing that greatly helped this in the DOS / early Windows era was standardizing on F1 being the key for "online help" (meaning, usually, a hyperlinked document that shipped with the product). That was basically the only thing you had to know to start learning any app.

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

#409

Post by int_19h »

geophile wrote: post #201

Turbo Pascal was completely amazing. I remember resisting it for a long time, because IIRC it implemented non-standard Pascal. But the competitive tools were less powerful and far more expensive, (e.g. the Microsoft tools). And then I tried it, and was completely blown away. I no longer cared about the non-standard stuff. I had a fast intuitive IDE running on my original IBM PC. As for modern IDEs, Intellij has been…

Visual Studio still supports WinForms including the graphical form designer, which is very close to the OG Delphi experience in late 90s (esp. since WinForms is such a blatant rip off VCL).

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

#410

Post by int_19h »

Twirrim wrote: post #242
markus_zhang wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I used to work as a phone surveyor, the one you hate. Our software is a terminal connected to a mainframe. I got used to it after a few weeks and was very productive. Costco Canada vision shops still use a terminal connected to an AS/400 machine as I snooped around last month.

In the late 90s I was required to slowly replace dumb terminals with PCs. One of the older ladies taking phone orders was most put out by this, understandably. She was lightning fast on that terminal. She'd never used a PC (I hit on the idea of using solitaire to learn to use a mouse, which worked amazingly well), and was never able to get to the same speed with one as she'd done on her dumb terminal. It's hard to be…

An inventory management app was one of my first paid software engineering projects. Sometime in early 00s I had to rewrite it for Windows because the ancient DOS codebase had a bunch of issues running on then-modern Windows versions. I sat down with the users and watched how they were using the DOS version, including the common patterns of keyboard navigation, and then meticulously recreated them in the WinForms version.

For example, much of the time would be spend in a search dialog where you had a textbox on top and a grid with items right below. In the TUI version, all navigation was with arrow keys, and pressing down arrow in the textbox would move the focus to the first item on the grid. Similarly, if you used up arrow to scroll through the items in the grid all the way to the top, another press would move the cursor to the textbox. This was not the standard focus behavior for Windows apps, but it was very simple to wire up, and the users were quite happy with the new WinForms version in the end.

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