FOSDEM Interviews On Free Development Tools

FOSDEM writes "The Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting folks, aka FOSDEM, have just released the second part of their speakers' interviews. These interviews are dedicated to their development tools track, with Andreas Zeller for ddd, Benoit Minisini for Gambas and Alexander Dymo & Harald Fernengel for kdevelop. Previous interviews were already discussed on Slashdot here"

Re:C++ autocomplete...

[jokumuu]

In general there is a problem with many of the tools in the world of free software.

The general problem is that those are usually built by true experts, that is people who know their programming inside out. The tools are built to "scratch a personal itch" thus they are generally very powerfull but not so userfriendly.

Re:C++ autocomplete...

[jokumuu]

I agree with you on that but maybe you are missing the point atlest a bit.

Wast majority of people doing any sort of programming in the world are quite frankly not that good. Thus they need easy, preconfigured tools that will help them do the basically simple things they have to do, but that seem so difficult and intimidating to them.

Re:C++ autocomplete...Gambas.

[jokumuu]

oh, not me, but having looked at way too many "programmers" and their "code" through the years I would say way too many people need such.

Re:C++ autocomplete...

[kwerle]

Wast majority of people doing any sort of programming in the world are quite frankly not that good. Thus they need easy, preconfigured tools that will help them do the basically simple things they have to do, but that seem so difficult and intimidating to them.

What a crock.

If "having easy, preconfigured tools that will help me do the basically simple thing I need to do" makes someone dumb/lazy/whatever, sign me up.

I don't want tools that could do something, or that can be tweaked to do something, or that can do something if you add other tools. I want tools that do what I want, right now.

Saying that those tools nearly exist, or can exist with some work, is saying that the DO NOT exist - only it makes it sound better to some OS folks.

(lover of jEdit, gnumake, etc)

Maybe better to get basic features working first

[edxwelch]

Autocomplete is not so useful as integrated help and other tools. It's intrusive, sometimes it pops up when you don't want it and slows down simply editing operations (the database of all possible c++ libraries is quite large).
Also it's quite difficult to implement. I see many opensource projects spending huge amounts of efforts trying to implement these trendy features and then they leave basic things like usability and debugging support half finished

Re:C++ autocomplete...

[Hamfist]

Maybe I'm not very good. Maybe that's a result of my job, where 20% of the time is programming and the rest of the time is tons of other stuff that keeps the company running smoothly. I've had to learn like many different programming languages over the years. Powerful autocomplete helps clear the cobwebs. If you mostly program in Java, do you remember your C++? How about javascript /PHP /perl and all of the other web languages, how about all of the associated standard and custom libraries? Sure I can read a man page, or heck, a paper page to remember the arguments; but why should I? Good autocomplete will tell you the function arguments, their types, reference styles and return values as you type. You simply cannot compare this to anything that requires additional keystrokes, window changes, book opening. I know the syntax, I know how to program effectively, but what was the name of that function? Did it take one argument,2 or 20? Modern programming requires access to a lot of information, and autocomplete is one of the best things I've seen. Add to that an annotated class/library browser and wow, holy productivity.

Being an effective programmer often means picking up new tools. As these new tools inevitably come with reams of new functions / objects etc. Having a powerful editor flattens the learning curve greatly. How much quicker is it to become productive in a New language when you have autocomplete?

btw: the point of this message is not 'difficult and itimidating', the point is 'getting the job done'. If having imperfect memory means 'frankly not being good', then welcome to the human race, mate.

Re:C++ autocomplete...

[mav[LAG]]

It also learns from the patterns you use more often in your code and sorts the suggestions in a way that the probability that you'd need to scroll down the list of the suggestions becomes lower and lower.

"Patterns you use" indicates it's just doing pattern matching, not understanding the language.

The gp wrote that paragraph - not me. You arguing for me? :)

Uncheck, it can't parse C++.

ctags can parse C++ just fine.


1. Do you actually code in C++?

Yes - got a current project of about 20 000 lines that's been going for 18 months now.


2. Have you actually used intellisense/visual assist (code compleition)?

Yep.


3. Do you realize there is more to code completion than recognition of function and vairable names?

Yes and I don't like it. Perhaps my bias has come through in my previous reply. I find my productivity with vim much higher than with vc++ and intellisense/code completion. This is the real problem with my previous post actually - not being upfront and saying "I find vc++ code-completion annoying and counter-productive IMHO for these reasons."


4. Ever heard of a C++ template?

I think so - is that where you write a skeleton file and fill in the blanks later?


5. Are you aware of the other features provided in VC++?

Used to be but I'm not a sharecropper any more.

My guess is that the answer to all the above is no. I really hate it when Slashdoters who defend OSS automatically get moded up even if their information is wrong or misleading.

Well your guess was wrong and you can back off on your hatred since I haven't been modded up (at least at this time of writing).

ctags, for the most part, processes just C language constructs.

Not true. [sourceforge.net]

Even then I'm betting it's rather limited in what it does. In order to do visual assist style code completion you NEED to have a full language parser for C++. ctags has no such thing.

Well, sure. But then I already have a full language parser for c++. It's called g++. I don't need another one built into my editor when I have a set of tools that does what I need to be productive.

Unnnngh, people who talk out of their ass.

Tsk tsk - manners. People are more receptive without personal attacks. You could have pointed out where I was wrong without any labelling or guesses as to my motivations and experience.

Smalltalk

[GnuVince]

When are programming tools for languages such as C++, Java or C# going to be as advanced as the stuff you get with Smalltalk?