[antlr-interest] are ides a good thing? (was: Seriousdoubtsonusage of incrementalparsinginides)

[Anthony Youngman]

Well, I'm as much a coder as any of the others here - "can you write a
program to do X?" and I do.

As for 
> "Hackers"... Enough said.
What do you mean?

By definition, a hacker is one of the brightest of the bright (using the
original definition, not the media-mangled one). I'm inclined to think
that proves my point.

As for the studies, that one about working on paper is an old one, and
was probably the foundation behind peer review etc. And I have some
(second hand) experience of it - my first boss, when he joined the
company, had to work for six months without a computer before it turned
up. Okay, I'm going on his word, but he said when the program was
finally typed in and run, it ran perfectly first time.

The one about concrete/abstract thinking - that's from my Masters
studying from last year - something to do with "communication and
understanding your audience" (and "what is a 12-year-old capable of
understanding" :-) .

> I could claim that a recent study showed that "90% of programmers are
more
productive with IDEs".

Actually, that wouldn't surprise me if it were true :-) IDEs probably do
enhance the ability of the average programmer - with the emphasis on the
word *average*.

Cheers,
Wol

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Stanchfield [mailto:scott at javadude.com] 
Sent: 27 April 2005 11:58
To: Anthony Youngman; antlr-interest at antlr.org
Subject: RE: [antlr-interest] are ides a good thing? (was:
Seriousdoubtsonusage of incrementalparsinginides)

> I work for an end user. There's only about 4 coders all told, 
> and we tend to work somewhat individually.
> 
> And I find I spend most of my time talking to the users, 
> including quite often asking the question "are you sure what 
> you're asking for is sensible" (a lot of our work is statistics).

And what do your coders do? Sounds like you're not one of the main
coders,
but more of a requirements person. NOTE: THIS IS A GOOD THING, but
you're in
no position to make statements about "all coders"

> John Mitchell said I was unusual, in that I don't tend to 
> "see" things visually (he didn't put it that way).

I think John's point was that different people use different parts of
their
brains in different ways. Some are more visual than others, and that
says
nothing about the quality of their work.

> where the author said he noticed that much of Unix history is 
> very verbal. And it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if 
> most of the top Linux hackers were verbal people...

"Hackers"... Enough said.

> (Oh - and yes I am a (very) abstract person. Didn't I say 
> that educational academics were surprised "recently" to 
> discover that maybe 50% of people never make the cognitive 
> leap from concrete to abstract thought? :-)

Do you have any sources for any studies you keep quoting?

I would tend to agree on that one, but you really need to back
statements
like that up.

I could claim that a recent study showed that "90% of programmers are
more
productive with IDEs". Of course that "study" would only be my personal
experience at the past couple of jobs I've been at, converting people to
using eclipse from vi/emacs, and with nothing but their remarks as
defining
"more productive". Without knowing the source of such statements,
they're
pretty useless.

Later,
-- Scott




****************************************************************************

This transmission is intended for the named recipient only. It may contain private and confidential information. If this has come to you in error you must not act on anything disclosed in it, nor must you copy it, modify it, disseminate it in any way, or show it to anyone. Please e-mail the sender to inform us of the transmission error or telephone ECA International immediately and delete the e-mail from your information system.

Telephone numbers for ECA International offices are: Sydney +61 (0)2 8272 5300, Hong Kong + 852 2121 2388, London +44 (0)20 7351 5000 and New York +1 212 582 2333.

****************************************************************************