[Haskell-cafe] IDE?

[peterv]

I just tried the Haskell Mode using xemacs, adjust my init.el file, loaded
my haskell file, and got great syntax highlighting! So far so good.

But people, emacs is sooooo weird for a Windows user... 

For example, ALL windows (and motif?) programs use CTRL-Z for undo. But not
emacs... So after some googling, I found and installed CUA, to get more
Windows compliant keys. CTRL-Z does undo, woohoo! But CTRL-Y doesn't do redo
yet, as in ALL windows programs. Select a block, press delete. ALL Windows
text editors will delete the block, but not emacs, it just deselects the
block and deletes the current character. I also couldn't get the auto
indentation working, not sure why, I thought that pressing ENTER would
automatically indent my code, especially when I end my line with $. Pressing
TAB will not insert a TAB, like in ALL Windows editors.

I guess I could spend time to configure all the keys and behavior. Heck with
LISP you can do anything! Even change the addition operator into whatever
other binary operator, at runtime, at any time, as a side-effect, horror! ;)
But I have no interest in learning emacs, I just want to learn Haskell
without having to perform too much manual text editing that one does not
expect to do in the 21st century :) 

So I could erase my brain and figure out all the emacs keys. But then I will
have a hard time using ANY other Windows program.

I'm sure if all you use is Emacs, this must really be great, but for the
average Windows coder that is used thay ANY other popular IDE, switching is
not obvious at all...

No pun intended; I know Emacs is an incredible system (I used to work with
it on OS/2, and if I recall correctly, I could even read my email right
inside of it, heck it could even make me lispy breakfast! ;), but it's just
so... alien, at least when looking at it from a Windows perspective. 

And that's why IMHO for Windows users, one needs a friendly IDE to get
started with Haskell in a modern way. And the Windows version should comply
to the Windows styleguides. Haskell is such a nice language, it should reach
a larger audience, and just like Concurrent Clean, that could be done by
providing a simple IDE.

Phew, my frustration leaked into this email, but at least now I got rid of
it, sorry guys ;)

-----Original Message-----
From: haskell-cafe-bounces at haskell.org
[mailto:haskell-cafe-bounces at haskell.org] On Behalf Of Peter Verswyvelen
Sent: Saturday, June 16, 2007 10:35 PM
To: haskell-cafe at haskell.org
Subject: Re: Re[2]: [Haskell-cafe] IDE?

That's just my point. Although I have no practical experience with Haskell
(besides writing a simple L-System using HOpenGL), from what I've read
Haskell is indeed much better than typical OO languages... So it *deserves*
an easy entry level IDE that will get many many more people started with it.
Like Concurrent Clean has, although their IDE is also far from perfect (e.g.
they don't have multi-level undo, sigh)

Anyway, it seems many people use Emacs for their Haskell edit/compile/run
cycle. I've used Emacs on IBM OS/2 a long time ago so I guess I can get back
into it. But man, was I happy back then when I could switch over to Visual
Studio... The productivity I nowadays have with Visual Studio 2005 and
Resharper for doing compilation, code-documentation-tips, code-completion,
refactoring, navigation, debugging, boiler plate code generation, is
amazing. Some of my colleagues still use Emacs, and maybe they are not using
it correctly, but at first sight their development is much much slower.

>From this cafe talk I now know such an IDE for Haskell does not exist. So I
won't search any further for a great IDE before starting to do some real
Haskell programming, because my L-Systems experiment was a lot of fun! 

So I just installed XEmacs with the latest Haskell mode. I'll go from
here... If that doesn't work, Notepad++ and GHCI/GHC in a command prompt
also works, although it does make me feel I'm back in the eighties.

Thanks for all the help folks!

>----- Oorspronkelijk bericht -----
>Van: Bulat Ziganshin [mailto:bulat.ziganshin at gmail.com]
>Verzonden: zaterdag, juni 16, 2007 08:50 PM
>Aan: bf3 at telenet.be
>CC: haskell-cafe at haskell.org
>Onderwerp: Re[2]: [Haskell-cafe] IDE?
>
>Hello bf3,
>
>Saturday, June 16, 2007, 3:23:40 PM, you wrote:
>
>> The point I wanted to make is, that I can't find an
>> easy-to-install-ready-to-use-and-rock-n-roll IDE for Windows that comes
with
>> all or most of those features. I mean something like Borland TurboPascal
>
>it's well-known trap. haskell is an order of magnitude better than
>widespread OOP languages. why it's not used by everyone? just due to
>shortage on libs, training and - yes - IDEs. "programming" in Delphi
>in many cases need just clicking here and there
>
>so, you got something, you lost something
>
>ps: i use editor which supports only syntax highlighting. it's very
>like working in tp 3.0 or quickc 1.0 - are you had such experience? :)
>
>
>
>-- 
>Best regards,
> Bulat                            mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin at gmail.com
>
>
>


_______________________________________________
Haskell-Cafe mailing list
Haskell-Cafe at haskell.org
http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe