On 01/21/2017 07:55 AM, Devin Heitmueller wrote:
On Jan 20, 2017 7:59 PM, "Neil Cherry via vcf-midatlantic" <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org <mailto:vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org>> wrote:
On 01/20/2017 01:47 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On 01/20/2017 01:35 PM, Steven Toth wrote:
If you're writing a large software stack, need to integrate with other frameworks or libraries, an IDE is the way to go.
Not picking on Steven, but on the dislike of most IDEs. One more thing, and it's really at the top of my list since I tend to be very OCD on engineering related things ... it makes a @#$!%^& mess of the code indentation. I almost always know when someone uses an IDE because the code will end up getting some weird identation that no programmer could ever come up with. You can generally tell a programmers preference for the way they code but only an IDE can mess up indentation like that.
if(blah) { if (!red) { sub_function(); subfunct2(); } } else { subfunct2(); }
(Wow that was painful to type and look at)
I'm not arguing for or against IDEs but this isn't really a fair criticism of IDEs. Such formatting issues are usually a difference in an editor's defaults with regards to tabs vs spaces, and it's common when you have any project worked on by users of multiple text editors. Code can look just as crappy in emacs after a vi user comes along and makes changes.
I've never had that problem with emacs. Could be if I see it I hit a few keystrokes and poof problem fixed (I'm trying to be funny, of course a new problem ensues with the whole file changing).
There are ways to mitigate such issues through specification of tab/whitespace handling at the file or project level, but they are not uniformly supported by all editors. The real frustration I have is not about what the "right" answer is about tabs but rather that after decades the editors haven't arrived at a uniform standard for specifying the whitespace policy and having all the editors know how to parse and abide by it.
Agreed, I've seen tabs equal to 2, 3, 4, 5 (really?), 7 (what?), 8 spaces and some really odd tab stop (not spaces or tabs) so they could use a proportional font. I understand 2, 4 and 8 but the rest have no logic.
In short, I agree with your frustration but an IDE user is just as likely to see their source code mangled by your non-IDE editor of choice.
Devin, very good an valid point. The VCS should have regulated that portion of checking to clean up such issues. I've worked with git and I know it can be done with git. I would expect similar functionality in most modern VCS. Unfortunately the folks I work with are not doing that. Kicking my OCD into overdrive. :-( -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies