[Haskell-cafe] Editor

Thomas Schilling nominolo at googlemail.com
Mon May 21 08:48:30 EDT 2007


Your rant accomplishes nothing.  Just note that programmers can
generally be considered more open towards harder-to-learn but
eventually more efficient to use interfaces.  Yes, to a large part
they lack visibility, consistency, integration, or other such
properties; then again, once you learn to use them you're so much more
efficient than before.  And you loose the incentive to improve things.

So instead of insulting people and complaining that nothing fits your
needs you have at least two options:

 1. Implement it.  Of course, this is a _major_ effort and many many
things are completely unsolved research issues.

 2. Take what's there, learn to use it.  Yes, it will lack so many
things but one way or another you'll eventually get things done.

On 5/21/07, Michael T. Richter <ttmrichter at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  On Mon, 2007-21-05 at 13:04 +0100, Rodrigo Queiro wrote:
>
>      My friend read your email and remarked:
>      "How is this guy not embarrassed posting on the internet about not liking vim because he doesn't like editing config files?"
>
>  Because, unlike your friend, I actually have seen the advances in HID over the past 30 years.  Editing text files is not the be-all/end-all of user interfaces.  Indeed there is astonishingly high volumes of evidence showing that it's a pretty miserable user interface -- a misery amplified by the fact that every two-bit program has its own entirely unique syntax (usually broken in many exciting ways!) full of cryptic commands and settings.  Don't believe it?  Go to your home directory and compare all the .<files> you find.  You really think it's a good thing to maintain each of those manually?
>
>  Oh, and of course it wasn't just the config files I showed problems with, now, was it?  I seem to remember something about modality and bad syntax highlighting.  Maybe I was tripping.  It happens.
>
>  For your friend's reference, here's a good outline of what principles underlie HID: http://www.asktog.com/basics/firstPrinciples.html.  For even more modern outlooks, I'm sure a quick search at Amazon.com (or his bookseller of choice) can give him other ideas.
>
>  So am I embarrassed for asking for something resembling a 21st-century user interface instead of a 1970s vintage one?  Not in the slightest.
>
>
>   --
>  Michael T. Richter <ttmrichter at gmail.com> (GoogleTalk: ttmrichter at gmail.com)
>  It's OK to figure out murder mysteries, but you shouldn't need to figure out code. You should be able to read it. (Steve McConnell)
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>



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