Hank, no offense, but you obviously aren't familiar with Emacs, so I don't think you should be telling people about how it works. You are completely wrong on almost every point.
I totally agree with the Pragmatic Programmers. Emacs rules and it is great for any type of editing. Emacs has what are called "Major Modes" which are specific to whatever type of file you are editing. These modes customize every aspect of the editor to suit the language. I can edit html, css, xml, ActionScript, Python, and Lisp all in the same editor at the same time and have each buffer specific to the language, but at the same time many familiar keybindings will work across any language. One of the reasons that Emacs is so great and powerful is that it has been in widespread use for over 30 years and contains it's own internal scripting language for customization. The result is that thousands and thousands of programmers have been refining and perfecting Emacs over that time. It is true that Emacs has been around long before graphical editors and it does not contain a lot of the graphical features that you might expect from IDE's such as Visual Studio, but most Emacs users consider that a good thing. If you can learn to stop using the mouse, you will find that you can navigate through your code and make edits much faster. Emacs has ways of jumping all over your code with just a few keystrokes that are hard to imagine if you've only been using the arrow keys. Specifically, I want to address Hank's claims: 1. Emacs is not clunky in the least. It's more like a surgical tool for programming. 2. Emacs is not a programming language, but it does utilize a dialect of Lisp as it's scripting language. 3. Emacs has incredible syntax highlighting support. 4. Emacs can do code completion, but I don't think that it works in the same way as some other editors. This is something that I wish it could do better. Some other benefits of Emacs: 1. I can edit files remotely via ssh, side by side with my local files. 2. I can easily add new editing functions, such as inserting a trace method for the current function signature. 3. I can collapse functions to just their signatures. 4. Very powerful regular expression searching and replacing. 5. I can collect the trace output from my swfs directly into an emacs buffer, and use all of the power of the editor there. For example, in multiplayer games, I can capture the output from two players into the same buffer and use emacs regexp-highlighting functions to highlight all messages from one player as blue and the other as red. 6. I've also built a runtime swf profiler into Emacs. 7. Every aspect of Emacs can be customized. If there is anything that you wish could be different, you can change it. I think this is why the Pragmatic Programmers recommend it. 8. Whenever Emacs opens a brand new file that ends in .as, I have set it up to automatically insert a bunch of boilerplate code, such as the package line, class line, constructor skeleton, and a toString method. 9. I can compile my actionscript from Emacs, using either mtasc or mxmlc, with one button. If there are any errors, Emacs will find the error in the correct file, highlight it in red, and put my cursor on it. ...but, Emacs has literally millions of features and add-on packages that I'm still discovering every day. I read that Pragmatic Programmer book and I think they were dead on. Automating everything is the way to go and using Emacs (and shell scripting) are the ways to do it. -austin On Sat Dec 30 07:51 , hank williams wrote: > Hi Marcell, > > Personally, I think its insane. > > Using one editor for everything gives you a lowest common denominator editor > rather that a best of breed for the language. > > Things like syntax checking,code completion, and highlighting require that > the editor be essentially a form of a compiler in order to understand the > context of the language and the code. I am no Emacs user, but I have never > heard of Emacs doing that kind of thing. In fact from what I recollect, > Emacs is around since before there were graphical editors and so I would > guess (but don't know) that these kinds of things are, if even possible, > clunky to the point of unpleasantness. > > I am sure that because Emacs is, as I understand it, also a programming > language, that there are things that you can do in Emacs that you cant do > in, for example the Eclipse Java editor. But for my money the Eclipse Java > editor is the best editor ever created for any language. > > The Eclipse Java editor lives and breaths Java. I act, and it reacts, as if > knowing what I wish to do or, more often than not, what I *should* wish to > do. It is like a "painted-on glove". Its an extra "Java brain" that sits by > my side, making little suggestions and just doing the right thing. > > That is what an editor should be. An intelligent partner, not a slave. It > is, I believe, impossible (or so difficult that no one would consider it > worth the effort) to create a generic editor that would be such an > assistant, that will work seamlessly for every language. > > The people who preach the benefits of something like Emacs over a more > customized editor either don't understand the benefits which I described, or > more likely, they are in some other realm of programming where: > > a. they don't make errors so they don't need syntax checking > b. they have all 100 megabytes of their environment APIs totally memorized > so code completion is of little value, > c. they consider syntax highlighting for girlie men (or women). > > I am not such a programmer. > > Regards, > Hank > > P.S. there are no actioscript editors as good as the Java Eclipse editor, > but the Flex editor is trying, and I suspect given the resources behind it > will get there. Many people love FDT for similar reasons. I hate it because > I believe the company and the people behind it are incredibly obnoxious and > provide horrible support for a (I think) 200 euro product. > > On 12/30/06, Marcelo de Moraes Serpa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > >Hi folks, > > > >I've been reading "The Pragmatic Programmers - From Jorneyman To Master". > >Something that called my attention was that is recommends you to stick with > >a editor and use it for everything. Emacs seems to be a very cool piece of > >software and allows you to do every kind of neat tricks really fast once > >you > >learn how to use it. But I've been thinking - most programmers use > >different > >IDE's for each language. The book gives the idea of using a good editor for > >everything (particulary recommending emacs). What do you guys think about > >this? Have you ever used emacs for ActionScript programming? > > > >Cheers, > > > >Marcelo. > > > >_______________________________________________ > >osflash mailing list > >[email protected] > >http://osflash.org/mailman/listinfo/osflash_osflash.org > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > osflash mailing list > [email protected] > http://osflash.org/mailman/listinfo/osflash_osflash.org -- Austin Haas Pet Tomato, Inc. http://pettomato.com _______________________________________________ osflash mailing list [email protected] http://osflash.org/mailman/listinfo/osflash_osflash.org
