Re: Development Tools

On 10 Jul 2002 at 18:07, Uwe Birkenhain wrote: > I think that - on windows - nothing is better than textpad > (www.textpad.com). > Simply the best editor the world has seen so far! > > What makes development tools better than a good editor? (serious > question) Well let me get my 2 cents in. It's a religious question. But oh well. I recently had a lot of trouble with someone at work about this, so I'm gonna rant. I too use TextPad and have been since I'm too lazy to get really good at vi or emacs. I also know and use Perl extensively as a code generator. Someone talked about the work in creating a form, just give me the keys and boom form is done and read to be handed to the designers to ruin in their special way. You could use Ruby or Rebol or even Python I guess or PHP on the command line but I can't imagine anyting being faster than a Perl script (to write). I keep trying these IDE tools. I type about 70+ wpm, so you can imagine I'm not a fan of my hand speding half it's time in the air between keyboard and mouse. I also try never to repeat the same code twice so I don't cut and paste ... I put common functions in modules and use them but few IDEs that I've used easily allow me to use those or I haven't seen how. If anyone wants to create a great IDE for Perl I'd love to help. It should work for PHP as well. I also separate my programming from my view and since I'm a programmer and not a designer the visual view is not paramount to me and can always be done later or at the same time by me or someone else. I have a feeling that most PHP programmers also do their own design and that's a reason for so much PHP stuff to have html strewn all over the place. In any case I always think in terms of a theme and since I've got most of my html code abstracted into "boxes" it's just a question of my program to manipulate and supply the proper data to the template. So for me, the best development tools are: 1. Imagination 2. Knowledge of your tools (language, PHP, HTML, CSS, etc. in this case) 3. Knowledge of the computer and it's potential (I use NT as desktop but have cygwin and use unix command tools and lots and lots of perl scripts to aid in development) 4. A good text editor (there are lots, they all have macros, revision control, keyboard commands for as much as possible). Personally, I've never worked with a programmer who taught me anything who used Dreamweaver or FrontPage etc ... all the good ones I know use vi, emacs, textpad, etc. I'd suggest using a text editor and then moving to an IDE or more advanced GUI and knowing that it is faster for you as opposed to starting with an IDE or GUI because you'll probably end up like most people and begin to think possiblities are what your tool allows you. Peter -- http://www.readbrazil.com/ Answering Your Questions About Brazil