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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)

#81
post #2

Now that CLI tools are in fashion again... has nobody thought to recreate a modern version of Turbo C++/Pascal? I know there's Emacs and vim, but they're far too programmable and bloated compared to the elegance of TC++, which did one job, and one job only, very well. Also, despite being an Emacs power user at this point, it's never going to be as ergonomic and well thought out with its arcane chords, while TC++ conv…

Have you seen tvision[0] and turbo[1]? [0] https://github.com/magiblot/tvision [1] https://github.com/magiblot/turbo

I use it instead of edit on Windows for everything in Windows Terminal, except development where I use helix editor.

It works fine with Yori too, not only CMD.

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

#82
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.

Agree about Emacs, and I used it already in MS-DOS back in the day. You could launch the compiler (or make, more likely) using M-x compile or use C-z to open command.com to run commands on the prompt and then exit from that back to Emacs. Almost like multitasking!

I never really liked any of the typical late-MS-DOS era TUI applications and have no nostalgia for those. I think a small TUI like a OS installer is fine, but I realised it is the command-line I like. Launching into a TUI is not much different from opening a GUI, and both break out of the flow of just typing commands on a prompt. I use DOSbox and FreeDOS all the time, but I almost never spend time in any of the TUI applications.

Despite that, I am currently working on a DOS application running in 40x25 CGA text mode. I guess technically it is a TUI, but at least it does not look much like a typical TUI.

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

#85
post #25

The knocks against Emacs feel unwarranted. It has plenty of colour; it has mouse support, even in the terminal, but not all terminals support it, so it's optional. It also runs in a GUI with, you know, image support and whatnot. You can rail against its defaults, but do not make misleading claims.

My cat is named Emacs, so I take those knocks against Emacs personally.

Interview with an Emacs Enthusiast [Colorized]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urcL86UpqZc

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

#86
post #28
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 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.

> The Magit experience is due to the use of the transient package for its UI.

(I'm the author of Magit and Transient. (Though not the original author of Magit.))

The transient menus certainly play an important role but I think other characteristics are equally important.

A few years ago I tried to provide an abstract overview of Magit's "interface concepts": https://emacsair.me/2017/09/01/the-magical-git-interface/. (If it sounds a bit like a sales pitch, that's because it is; I wrote it for the Kickstarter campain.)

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

#89

I used Borland Turbo Pascal in 1984. It was amazing to work with something so fast on a PC that was really so slow. No IDE/Compiler since then matched the speed. Today's code is massively more sophisticated and complex, so there is no way to match that performance today despite the speed of computers today.

Came here to share this mandatory link on this subject, Dadgm's Things That Turbo Pascal is Smaller Than: https://prog21.dadgum.com/116.html

I used Turbo Pascal 2 as late as 1991, if not later, because that was the version we had. It was really fast on a 386 40 MHz or whatever exact type of PC we had then. A bit limiting perhaps that it only came with a library for CGA graphics, but on the other hand it made everything simpler and it was good for learning.

A few years ago I wanted to run my old Turbo Pascal games and decided to port to Free Pascal. Sadly Free Pascal turned out to only ship with the graphics library introduced in Turbo Pascal 4, but on the other hand I got a few hours of fun figuring out how to implement the Turbo Pascal 1-3 graphics API using inclined assembler to draw CGA graphics, and then my games worked (not very fun games to be honest; more fun to implement that API).

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

#90
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.

Back in the day I had to use XEmacs as it was more advanced as plain Emacs.

After IDEs finally started being a common thing in UNIX systems, I left Emacs behind back to IDEs.

Still I have almost a decade where Emacs variants and vi were the only option, ignoring stuff like joe, nano, ed, even more limited.

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