On 01/20/2017 09:21 AM, William Dudley via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Why is an IDE needed or even useful for this process?
A lot of people go the IDE route because that's what they're told to do as beginners...frequently by other beginners. "Here, this is how you write software." People can't really be faulted for that approach if they have no way of knowing of the existence of any other approach. Some of this stems from the very common assumption that anything involving touching the keyboard is automatically "hard", and anything involving using the mouse is automatically "easy" and automatically "newer". (with "newer" being automatically "better", of course) An IDE can be great when effectively used as a tool. It causes big problems when used as a crutch. In my experience, it's most frequently used as a crutch. That's why (and that's the only reason why) I strongly recommend against them. I personally don't use them at all, but that's only a matter of personal preference and is thus irrelevant to any of this. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA