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Ask Slashdot: Correlation Between Text Editor and Programming Language?

Posted by Soulskill on from the fortran-and-a-stack-of-recycled-construction-paper dept.

tyggna writes: "The flame wars of different shells and text editors have long been established, but my question is this: are text editors and various languages linked? Do the majority of Ruby programmers use Emacs? Are most Perl programmers using vim?

Please post your editor and language of choice in the comments."

13 of 359 comments (clear)

  1. Uh, sure.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Some editors are more useful or even custom tailored for specific languages or functional areas, and naturally people who use those languages or work in those areas tend to gravitate towards them.

    Some languages (like java) are almost unusable without one of several popular editors, which deal with a lot of the boilerplate and let you navigate around the kind of "a million small pieces" type code you get with java. You can code java in vim if you want to, but working on a large java project with vim is probably not a common practice (I'm sure several counter-examples will be provided below).

    Apple is probably the king of the designated editor group, with microsoft coming in at a close second. These are relatively closed stacks and have purpose built (and pretty decent) tools to work with them, so most people do.

    And then some languages (scripting languages, c/c++) are edited commonly with just about everything.

    Outside specific editor features designed with a specific language in mind, or tools which require a specific editor, I don't think anything drives someone to use one generic editor over another one of similar capability. People chose vim vs emacs for non-language specific reasons (for example: number of attached hands).

    Also this is a really lame question. Does anyone really care about editor flame wars any more? People use what they like, what works, or what they are mandated to.

    1. Re:Uh, sure.. by 1s44c · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think we should close the comments here. The parent covered all the important points.

    2. Re:Uh, sure.. by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Apple is probably the king of the designated editor group, with microsoft coming in at a close second

      Wut. Visual Studio is light years ahead of any other IDE anywhere

      --

      "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
    3. Re:Uh, sure.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I meant as far as having a "one true editor".

      Visual studio is popular for windows development, but there are also plenty of popular alternatives.

      Does anyone do any kind of development for apple without using xcode? I've never even heard of another editor in common use on apple.

    4. Re:Uh, sure.. by thewebsiteisdown · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Apple is probably the king of the designated editor group, with microsoft coming in at a close second Wut. Visual Studio is light years ahead of any other IDE anywhere

      This is the correct answer. IDGAF what anyone says about it, VS has no equal. That debugger is as close to magic as I've seen a computer come.

    5. Re:Uh, sure.. by DataPath · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Obviously false.

      Emacs comes with a built-in psychoanalyst - a critical feature for any experienced developer. Especially one using Emacs.

      Visual Studio lacks such a feature, so the logical conclusion is that developers using Visual Studio are simply inexperienced.

      Although, to be fair, Emacs isn't properly an IDE, it's an OS that comes with IDE features.

      --
      Inconceivable!
    6. Re:Uh, sure.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No, he missed at least one reason why scripting and c/c++ languages are commonly edited with just about anything. They're too complex or lack the proper hints to allow easily creatable intelligent tooling. Another factor is timing. Developers starting on Emacs/VI when there was nothing else around kept with those tools. Newer developers grab the newer tools and stick with those. I'd bet the older languages are more commonly edited in text editors compared to newer languages. The exception to this is when one first starts learning to program. Most people start out on a text editor because a full IDE looks too complex.

    7. Re: Uh, sure.. by dreamchaser · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Seriously. While I've done small C/C++ programs with just a text editor, and IDE is virtually a must for any sort of medium to large sized project.

    8. Re:Uh, sure.. by Rakarra · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No. The typical 486 motherboard had 4 simm slots. Anybody who didn't populate them with 4MB simms was a fucking idiot.

      Or in college. Or just "not rich."

      This was back before remember prices came down, in the early 90s memory was still f'ing expensive.
      I remember I could start a kernel compile when I went to bed and wake up to find it still going thanks to the hard drive thrashing.

      I scrimped and saved and managed to double my ram to 8 MB. Kernel compiles took about 1/4 the time after that. I still couldn't run both X and a compile at the same time though...

  2. Emacs, vi, IDE by mrflash818 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In that order.

    --
    Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
  3. emacs, vi in a pinch. by Mysticalfruit · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If I have to write a tool, I create a new buffer in emacs and have at it. If I'm standing in front of a machine fixing it, I'll reach for vi, only because it's on every platform.

    I work in almost a 100% UNIX environment and what I generally see on people's desktops are: emacs, Eclipse (some flavor) and IntelliJ.

    --
    Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
  4. Re:Oldster, not hipster by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 3, Insightful

    cat, sed and echo. What's "make"? A is certainly for Aho, and K for Kernighan, but I have no idea who "M" and "E" are . . . ?

    --
    Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
  5. Re: vi, Emacs or IDE by gdshaw · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I never understood why a couple of GNU command line tools made it worth calling the OS GNU/Linux.

    I'm told that they contributed a few libraries too, but with cryptic names like glibc they surely can't be that important.