On Saturday, 12 May 2012 at 06:53:34 UTC, SomeDude wrote:
Indeed, and Timon forgot the best feature of IDEs for bytecode compilers imho: they compile in the background, so that errors are detected while you type. There is no annoying "write-correct" cycle as compile-time errors are shown in real time. That's a *huge* productivity boost. It's actually better than with interpreted or scripted languages, because once you've finished writing code, it will run ! Basically, with modern IDEs, the productivity with languages like Java/C# is comparable to Python.
Background compiling shouldn't be too hard to implement for an editor, I guess: run the compiler in background on the current module every other second (or only when a set of simple syntaxic conditions like parentheses/accolades matching are matched, conditions which can easily be checked by the editor itself), and display the error messages in semi real time on screen where they appear.
Perhaps what could make that better is not only compiling as you type, but if you have unittests already written it will run and test against those giving you feedback instantly on what parts fail.
