Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

IDEs we had 30 years ago and lost (2023)

blogsystem5.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 607 posts

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

#421

Post by marssaxman »

skydhash wrote: post #362
marssaxman wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible I might once have given emacs a try, if the way people talk about it did not sound like such baffling moon-language: when I encounter stuff like "so I C-x C-f’d into my init.el, M-x eval-buffer’d, then C-c C-c’d an org-babel block before C-x k’ing the scratch buffer" I just want to back away slowly and leave them to it, whatever it is they're doing. Y'all have fun with your C-r X-wing mork-butterfly por…

So you don’t ‘git clone’ and ‘git commit’, or ‘mkdir’ and ‘grep’?

Not following you; how does that question relate?

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

#422

Post by mamcx »

albertzeyer wrote: post #332

Ok, this post is mostly about text-based IDEs, but I think the point mostly stands as well for IDEs in general. I'm thinking about Visual Basic or Delphi. I think such a IDE for Python would really be helpful for beginners. Not text-based, but more like Visual Basic. But everything integrated, everything easily discoverable (that's very important!). Maybe also with such a GUI builder as in VB. And a built-in debugger…

There was FoxPro too that was amazing and in some ways better than Delphi, in special for the integrate "command window" and the ability to show "widgets" at will (like BROWSE)

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

#423

Post by snuxoll »

sillywalk wrote: post #346
snuxoll wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, we still have an IBM i deployment kicking around at $DAYJOB, it's running natively on POWER hardware. Way back in the days of the original OS/400 running on AS/400 hardware, IBM had the foresight to have applications compile to MI (Machine Interface) code; which is a bytecode format closer to something like LLVM IR instead of something like JVM or CLR bytecode. When a PGM object is copied or created on an IBM i…

Nitpick: The Machine Interface dates back to AS/400's predecessor, the System/38.

Thanks, I was desperately trying to remember because I swore there was something beforehand, but It's been a very long time since I did the reading.

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

#424

Post by kccqzy »

int_19h wrote: post #407
brucehoult wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

And I only recently discovered that Ctrl+Ins and Shift+Ins worked in my Emacs despite me never configuring it; and it even works in the minibuffer. It also worked in a couple of terminal emulators I have tried on Linux. It's really more universal than one might think.

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

#425

Post by kccqzy »

int_19h wrote: post #410
Twirrim wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 vers…

The world needs more of this. It is nowadays rare for programmers to sit down with users and observe what they are doing. Instead we have UX designers designing the experience and programmers implementing that.

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

#426

Post by sexyman48 »

pkal wrote: post #377
internet_points wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odd, I can `C-s` just fine in transient buffers. It works exactly like in other buffers. The `C-h` override is pretty cool there too, e.g. if from magit-status I do `C-h -D` (because I'm wondering what "-D Simplify by decoration" means), then it drops me straight into Man git-log with point at --simplify-by-decoration Commits that are referred by some branch or tag are selected. (Ooh, I learnt a new trick from writin…

OK, try the following in a Transient buffer: - Search for something using C-s - Exit isearch by moving the point (e.g. C-n) - Is the transient buffer still usable for you? In my case it becomes just a text buffer and all the shortcuts just got mapped to self-insert-command.

Dayum, given Transient's prickliness (I always feel like I'm walking on eggshells when I'm in it) I've never dared to C-s. But I tried this, and yeah, the transient reverts to a plain text buffer, and you're left in the lurch.

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

#427

Post by sexyman48 »

pkal wrote: post #67
_2d30 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Magit experience is due to the use of the transient package for its UI. Some other packages also use it. Most notably for my personal usage is the gptel package.

Transient is the worst part about Magit IMO (the best parts are how you can prepare a commit to just include the right changes, or the functionality bound inside the transient menus that make complex operations such as fixups or rebases trivial). Transient UIs are consistently uncomfortable to work with, and could usually be replaced by just using a regular special-mode keymap in a custom buffer. The fact that Transi…

You say a lot of dumb ____ (but to be fair, I said a lot more when I was your age), but your disdain for transient is on the money. I'm a satisfied magit user, but transient is a blatant UX error and a confounded implementation. Some guy spends his 20% time hawking an entire suite around transient. No one cares.

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

#428

Post by Ferret7446 »

BeetleB wrote: post #219
dapperdrake wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Magit is mind blowing. How did the magit guy or people even come up with the data model? Always had the feeling that it went beyond the git data model. And git porcelain is just a pile of shards.

> How did the magit guy or people even come up with the data model? It's not all that different from a typical TUI interface. Magit isn't great because of the interface. It's great because the alternative (plain git) has such a crappy interface. Contrast principle and all.

Magit is pretty great because of transient, the model of showing what all the commands are. It's a very natural and easy UI affordance

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

#429

Post by mbirth »

emmelaich wrote: post #371
BeetleB wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How did the magit guy or people even come up with the data model? It's not all that different from a typical TUI interface. Magit isn't great because of the interface. It's great because the alternative (plain git) has such a crappy interface. Contrast principle and all.

Is magit much better than tig? I've never used magit.

If you’re still using tig, have a look at lazygit. Needs some getting used to (coming from tig) but supports way more git features.

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

#430

Post by EasyMark »

ranger_danger wrote: post #401
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?

Yeah if you know c++ decently, you can whip up a basic app pretty quickly.
Post reply on HN