Re^2: Is Java really better than Perl???

[adrianh]

IDE's are mental crutches and I wouldn't hire a "programmer" that need to use one

Am I the only person old enough to remember similar things being said about full-screen as opposed to line based editors ;-)

The line between an editor and and IDE is a fuzzy one. An IDE isn't a crutch, it's a tool. They can be used well or badly.

Sure I can write Java and Objective C in a plain text editor. Sometimes I do. However I'm damned if I'm going to stop using things like XCode and Eclipse which give me useful features like integrated reference material, automated refactorings, integrated distributed compilation, source control integration, test framework integration, etc. out of some misguided idea of programming purity.

One of the many reasons I'm looking forward to Perl 6 is that the OO system has much better reflection capabilities which means that writing automated tools to do things like extract-method are going to be way easier than in Perl 5. The more things I can get my editor/IDE to do for me the better, that way I can spend more time on producing useful code.

Of course real programmers just whistle down the phone at 400 baud.

[TomDLux]

300, not 400.

Anyway, REAL programmers whistle at 110 baud, while walking uphill both ways through the snow.

[TimToady]

Well, I guess I wasn't a real programmer, because I only had to walk uphill one way through the snow to see if the computer was still up. Which is why I actually did whistle at 110--whenever the lights would flicker in my girlfriend's dorm room while we were smooching, I would call up the modem and whistle 110 at it, and if it warbled back, I knew the computer was still up, and I didn't have to trudge uphill through the snow. Actually, this was in Seattle, so rain was much more likely...

And no, you can't blackmail me with that story, because, Gentle Reader, I married her. (The girl, that is.)

[adrianh]

Well, I guess I wasn't a real programmer, because I only had to walk uphill one way through the snow to see if the computer was still up.

I think it's the "girlfriend" bit that disproves the "real programmer" bit ;-)