[Ocaml-biz] IDEs

[William Neumann]

On Sep 9, 2004, at 3:52 PM, Brandon J. Van Every wrote:

> Yeah, so leave it to the sysadmins.  Show me fantastic OCaml support
> under Vim if you want me to think otherwise.

Not quite sure what you mean here.  Show me fantastic OCaml support 
under emacs and I might be able to reciprocate...

> I will get back to you at a later time why I don't think Vim's support
> of OCaml is as good as the Emacs support.

Please do so now.  I'm not a "true OCaml Vim advocate", I just happen 
to use Vim to do my coding in.  I switched from emacs back in the early 
days of OS X when emacs support on OS X was pretty sketchy, so I've 
seen both sides of the coin and as far as I can remember there wasn't 
anything one could do that the other couldn't.  So please elaborate.

> If I can't
> provoke an OCaml Vim or XEmacs advocate into the open with my unkind
> words, that says buckets right there.

No, I think most of us are just disinterested in hearing you drone on 
and on.  If you have a point, make it so it can be supported or 
countered.  Playing the passive-aggressive (well, this is more like 
aggressive-passive) games to the girls in high school.

>> Nothing turns me off to a language faster than
>> learning you
>> need to use the special language environment for that
>> language.  They're
>> text files.  If you want to use notepad, that should work.
>
> We are discussing IDEs, and your view regarding notepad is unrealistic.
> It is not an IDE.  It is a text editor, and a poor one at that.

And so was he.  His point was, "If I have to use a specific IDE to use 
a language I'm probably not going to use that language", cf. smalltalk 
and APL.  That one of the nice things about C, Java, OCaml, etc, etc, 
etc -- you can code in it using damn near anything.  Something like 
Lisp falls in the middle.  You can work in any editor, but you really 
need one with at least paren matching, and preferably smart indenting 
capabilities.  Bottom line:  "pretty good" support for a number of IDEs 
is much better than outstanding support for one and poor support for 
the rest.

William D. Neumann

"You've got Rita Marlowe in the palm of your hand."
"Palm of my hand?  You haven't seen Rita Marlowe..."

		-- Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?