On September 14, 2015 at 14:17:43, Daniel Carrera (dcarr...@gmail.com(mailto:dcarr...@gmail.com)) wrote: > On 14 September 2015 at 12:40, J Luis wrote: > > > > > > segunda-feira, 14 de Setembro de 2015 às 09:26:05 UTC+1, Daniel Carrera > > escreveu: > > > > > > On 14 September 2015 at 08:16, Uwe Fechner wrote: > > > > While I understand your point, the success of a new programming > > > > language depends on the availability of a good IDE. > > > > > > No it doesn't. > > > > > > C, C++, Perl, Python, Fortran, JavaScript, PHP, and arguably even Java > > > became successful long before they acquired an IDE. I think that there > > > are more languages that became successful without an IDE than with one, > > > so let's not overstate the issue. An IDE is *good* to have because *some* > > > people want them. Good documentation is more important. Having the right > > > features and being at the right place at the right time is even more > > > important. > > > > Yes it does (IMO off course) > > > This is not a matter of opinion. This is an empirical claim. With little > effort we can define a criterion for language success, and determine whether > any language has ever become successful before it acquired an IDE. A single > example (e.g. Fortran) falsifies the claim. In fact, I would make a stronger > statement: that MOST successful languages achieve success before acquiring an > IDE. Off the top of my head, I offer the following successful languages: > > Without IDE: C, C++, Perl, Python, Fortran, JavaScript, PHP, Java > > With IDE: C#, VisualBasic, Matlab
I suppose you could also take the counter-counterpoint of LISP. People not only built IDEs but entire *machines* tailored specifically to running and debugging LISP, and it still hasn’t (really) caught on (yet). That said, I think the Clojure community provides a useful example for how to approach the editor/IDE debate. All the early Clojure developers used emacs, and much of the early community was either on emacs or vim (yes, there were a few of us). In the intervening 7 or so years, though, as new developers who were familiar with other IDEs entered the community, they began projects to develop plugins for their IDE of choice. As such, Clojure now has first-rate plugins for both Eclipse and IntelliJ. It was really only later that projects were started to build “true” Clojure IDEs, and still I don’t think any of these surpass (or even really approach) the utility of the IDE plugins (the three IDEs of which I’m aware are: LightTable, NightCode, and clooj). One important element that allowed much of this for Clojure was the early development of nREPL, the network-enabled REPL. With this, all editors/IDE plugins stand on equal footing with access to the REPL. I noticed in the code to REPL.jl there’s a function `start_repl_server`, but it doesn’t seem to be used anywhere. If I had to pick someplace to focus effort on improving tooling for Julia in general, I’d look at improving/adding a network interface to the REPL.
