NYCPHP Meetup

[David Krings]

Ajai Khattri wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Aug 2009, David Krings wrote:
> 
>> Sure, you can use some cryptic editor
> 
> Cryptic to *you* perhaps...

I know vi is the holy grail of editors, but I find it cryptic and unintuitive. 
Sure, after learning all the keyboard shortcuts that amount more to a 
scripting language you get a lot done, but I find it silly to spend more time 
on learning the tool than learning the trade..... unless I am a vi salesman.

>> and it really gets your hands dirty, but 
>> you are also less efficient.
> 
> Speak for yourself. With the right options and plugins, a good text editor 
> is great  - muscle memory means I dont to think about the act of editing 
> but just focus on the code. And again, for *me* constantly 
> switching between mouse and keyboard is totally inefficient.

I use NuSpehere and find that I do not constantly switch between keyboard and 
mouse. I use the mouse for tasks such as creating a new file in the desired 
location (browsing is faster using a mouse) or when scrolling through the code 
to set breakpoints.
I don't think that an IDE forces one to use a mouse constantly. There are 
plenty of keyboard shortcuts and tab sequences that allow for working mouseless.
And if you take a text editor and install add-ons and plugins to help along 
with coding it smells like IDE to me, at least the lines get blurred between 
IDE and text editor.
What I like about NuSphere (and other PHP IDEs as well) is the integrated 
server, the properly working debugger, and with that the option to set 
breakpoints. I know I can accomplish that in other ways, but I tried to do so 
with Eclipse and it was a total nightmare. Things may have changed by now.
By jolly, I'm not trying to make you a convert. I know of people who can 
compile code in the brains and if they had a network plug in their ears they 
wouldn't even need a PC.


>> Maybe the assembler developers who write firmware are fine with a simple 
>> editor that has some really basic functions
> 
> Actually I coded assembler languages when I was a kid too, and most good 
> assembly language systems are more than just simple text editors...

I learned assembler on the Z80 and the editor that we had was really not much 
more than a somewhat better text editor. It may depend on the development kit 
that is available for the platform.


David