Re^2: What's the best Perl IDE?

[toro]

This is a 4-years-delayed question. But, can bruceb3 or someone else explain what bruceb3 means by "UNIX as IDE"? I get that

• nano, emacs, and vi are text editors
• you can run your perl script from the a terminal window, run smaller versions of the code, etc. to debug

What else?

[roboticus]

toro:

I can't speak for bruceb3, but what I do is this: I have a set of text consoles (bash) open. The top-left one is where I display documentation (man, perldoc), the upper-right one is where I have an editor open (vim), and the bottom screen is the compile/run screen. It's much like an integrated GUI, but I have the flexibility of window placement and tools in each window. The advantage is that I can do the same thing on nearly every system I use, irrespective of the OS running on it. While an integrated GUI may have "smart" interactions between the screens which you may miss, I normally find most of the "helpful automations" in them more a distraction/hindrance than a help.

+----------------+------------------------------------------------+
| Help window    |  Text editor (large font)                      H
| small font     |                                                H
|                |                                                H
|                |                                                H
|                |                                                H
|                |                                                #
|                |                                                #
|                |                                                #
|                |                                                #
| $ perldoc perlf|                                                H
+----------------|                                                H
| Compile/Run    |                                                H
| Window         |                                                H
| small font     |                                                H
|                |                                                H
| Error msgs and +------------------------------------------------+
| line numbers show up on left/bottom                             H
|                                                                 #
|                                                                 #
|                                                                 #
|                                                                 #
| $                                                               #
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+

Then I just choose the window I want, use the up-arrow to choose the command I want and press Enter. Once you're set up with a little history, then you can cycle through your windows pretty quickly and get through projects quickly.

I normally have the other monitor set up with a similar set of windows with a home-grown database viewer and alternate windows for less-common operations.

Update: I use vim as my editor in the editor window, so I often write little perl scripts to edit the currently-selected block of text (such as filling out column names with formatting in SQL, adding code snippets, reformatting, etc.) without leaving the editor. It doesn't give you all the features that IDE users have, but considering that you write your own scriptlets, you get what you *want*. For example, in my DB query tool, I've added row and column filters, column and table nicknames, variable substitution, etc., so I can do some fairly complex queries with very little typing.

...roboticus

When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.

[Anonymous Monk]

How can I set it up like that, what do I do?

[toro]

Thank you roboticus! That makes sense.

Um, side question, how long did it take you to type/draw your screen setup? And I'm assuming your bottom window is partially covered by the vim window?

[roboticus]

toro:

It didn't take too long to draw it, I'm guessing 10 minutes? I just put in the text I wanted with vertical bars between them. Then after the text was in there, I just added spaces to make the vertical bars line up, and then duplicated blank lines to get the screen proportion nicer. Then, as an afterthought, I replaced the rightmost vertical bars with characters to simulate scrollbars.

Yes, the bottom window is partially obscured by the vim window. At home, where I have a better/larger monitor, they don't overlap as often.

My morning ritual is to visit perlmonks in the morning while my son is preparing for school. So if perlmonks doesn't have much going on, I can easily spend a few extra minutes to build such a diagram. But when perlmonks is busy, I don't get to spend as much time on each node.

...roboticus

When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.

[JavaFan]

To add something to the "what else":
• It's the same IDE regardless of language. I use a forest of xterms with editors in some, manual pages in others, and tests/runs in yet another set. Whether I code in Perl, C, shell, SQL, LaTeX or something else. I even do mail that way, although usually I don't have a need for manual pages, or test runs.
• I haven't had the need to change my IDE for the past 20+ years or so. That's right. I spend *0* time learning IDEs the past 20 years. Whether I use Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, Linux or CIGWIN. It's just a matter of untarring a bunch of dotfiles and maybe installing a package or two and it just works. (Ok, so I learned how to use RPMs in the past 20 years -- but I had to do that anyway).
• The most basic components of my IDE (vi + man) are just on every platform I've ever worked on (is it POSIX compliant? You get vi and man). Install the OS, and you have them. I can have the core of my IDE up and running even before the install CD has stopped spinning.