[antlr-interest] Serious doubts on usage of incrementalparsinginides

[Anthony Youngman]

And what percentage of your time do spend actually *working* in your
IDE?

I don't know what a good answer should be, but it should certainly be
pretty low!

If I only spend 20% of my time in my IDE, then even an 80% improvement
in my productivity within the IDE is not going to make much difference
to my overall productivity, is it?

Your point about a good tool and a good programmer is well made.
However, in my (limited) experience, even with good programmers I find
that the more powerful the tool is, the more it is misused to the
detriment of the program... (hence my point about not using it much -
the more you use it (%age of time wise) the more certain it is that you
are misusing it).

Cheers,
Wol

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Stanchfield [mailto:scott at javadude.com] 
Sent: 27 April 2005 01:33
To: Anthony Youngman; antlr-interest at antlr.org
Subject: RE: [antlr-interest] Serious doubts on usage of
incrementalparsinginides

> It's my belief (and experience) 
> that ides make life easier for the average guy, but that the 
> *good* programmer does even better without one.

If you'd ever seen me with Eclipse, you'd know that that statement is
100%
false.

A good programmer with a good tool that he knows well can significantly
increase productivity.

Note that I said "knows well". This means that a tool like eclipse can
really slow folks down if they don't know it well. For example,
switching
from emacs to eclipse can be a productivity drain for a while. However,
once
you come up to speed and learn a lot of tricks, many can increase your
productivity. (I've seen this countless times with ex vi/emacs users
moving
to eclipse.) But there are some folks who will always be better with vi
or
emacs than eclipse. (IMHO, it's mostly stubborn folks who insist "IDE"
== "I
Don't have Emacs" and just plain refuse to really learn the tool...)

Statements like you're making are just naiive. Just because you haven't
taken the time to really learn a good IDE (VAJ or Eclipse, for example),
doesn't mean they're toys. You have to give them more than a short (read
1-2
weeks) try. You have to really use them to find how productive they can
be.

If you only use the basic editing support (which is what most people do
at
first), of course it's less productive than some of the whiz-bang stuff
you
can do with a few keystrokes in vi or an elisp macro. But when you
really
open your eyes to the rest of the tool, it blows everything else away.

Of course YMMV.

Just don't spread totally unsubstantiated statements like that. For
every
person you can bring up to spout those statements, I'm sure I can find
several to counter it (just from places I've worked ;)

Later,
-- Scott




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