The Joys Of Programming

As this is a thread about the joy of coding...
Eclipse detracts from my joy most of the time. It feels clunky and sluggish and like a weight around my neck any time I try to do anything beyond typing in java.

Squirrel feels the same.

Yeah, Eclipse is meh. If it didn't tie in with the debug system and code tracing of our server, I'd consider something else.

I don't mind Netbeans, though.
I wish MS would make a Java IDE. Their Dev tools always just "feel" good. Sql query analyzer, oh, how I wish you would talk to db2 and mysql!

Eclipse just really needs a good UI Designer to overhaul it. Maybe even one of them there newfangled UX Designers.

Have you tried IntelliJ, duckilama? It's always felt like it was done by a developer doing real work instead of a committee trying to guess (like Eclipse). Once I learned to trust it, which I never got to with Eclipse, I really loved it.

If it is free, I'll try it. We don't spend money on tools. And the rest of the team are invested in Eclipse.

Also, Eclipse feels too much like a developer made it ... if that makes any sense.

There is a free version of IntelliJ, but the good version requires money. I am currently using it to look at a project I don't want to load into Netbeans. I find it is clunkier then Netbeans and Eclipse but I have heard nothing but good things about its usability. I have never been a fan of Eclipse though. Every time I see a developer using Eclipse, I see a little code window (around 50 characters wide and 20 characters tall) surrounded with informational windows. I feel claustrophobic just looking at it.

Oh, a bigger monitor helps with the code window, but on a laptop, it's moves from unfun to "I should update my resumé".

I may spend some time trying to get either Netbeans or IntelliJ doing the right thing for our environment.

I wish the joys of programming weren't often interrupted by users with problems that I have zero control over.

I also wish PHP was something I enjoyed to write every day.

And while I'm at it, I wish for a pony too.

trueheart78 wrote:

I wish the joys of programming weren't often interrupted by users with problems that I have zero control over.

I also wish PHP was something I enjoyed to write every day.

And while I'm at it, I wish for a pony too.

I can do something about your second wish.

Funny thing I saw somewhere this week: Rails Hotline. A toll-free 800 number staffed by volunteers to answer your Rails questions.

One of my team members asked if there was a similar thing for PHP. I gave him the suicide hotline number.

dukilama wrote:

Also, Eclipse feels too much like a developer made it ... if that makes any sense.

I used Eclipse a lot before I started really using Vim. I totally understand that feeling with Eclipse. But eventually, for me, the feeling went away. It made sense after a while.

NetBeans's awful font rendering on Linux has kept me from ever using it for more than a few minutes. Eclipse follows GNOME's AA/subpixel settings out of the box, while NetBeans cannot be made to follow them no matter what.

jakeleg wrote:

My new favorite editor is Sublime Text 2

It is fast, has a great packaging system, is extensible and customizable (the backend is Python), and is multi-platform (OSX, Win, and *nix). I can even use vi hotkeys if I want.

Thanks for the tip! This has replaced TextMate as my random use editor on Mac. Still not sure if it will trounce UltraEdit as well... I'll have to use it for a few weeks and see.

jakeleg wrote:

My new favorite editor is Sublime Text 2

It is fast, has a great packaging system, is extensible and customizable (the backend is Python), and is multi-platform (OSX, Win, and *nix). I can even use vi hotkeys if I want.

Ok, yeah, I like this. Just thought I'd let you know...

*Legion* wrote:
dukilama wrote:

Also, Eclipse feels too much like a developer made it ... if that makes any sense.

I used Eclipse a lot before I started really using Vim. I totally understand that feeling with Eclipse. But eventually, for me, the feeling went away. It made sense after a while.

NetBeans's awful font rendering on Linux has kept me from ever using it for more than a few minutes. Eclipse follows GNOME's AA/subpixel settings out of the box, while NetBeans cannot be made to follow them no matter what.

Linux is too painful to develop on for me. It can't even handle the hardware I use (without a lot of hacking). I looked at those screenshots and personally the fonts look fine to me, but to each his own.

complexmath wrote:
jakeleg wrote:

My new favorite editor is Sublime Text 2

It is fast, has a great packaging system, is extensible and customizable (the backend is Python), and is multi-platform (OSX, Win, and *nix). I can even use vi hotkeys if I want.

Thanks for the tip! This has replaced TextMate as my random use editor on Mac. Still not sure if it will trounce UltraEdit as well... I'll have to use it for a few weeks and see.

If you like Sublime, make sure you try out these add-ons:

https://github.com/buymeasoda/soda-t...
https://github.com/ChrisKempson/Tomo...
https://github.com/lunixbochs/sublim...
http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/pa...

It can't even handle the hardware I use

Have you tried a recent Ubuntu? Linux is getting pretty good at keeping up with most hardware, although the ATI video card support is still pretty spotty. It's improving, but even with ATI's support, it seems to be taking a long time.

Malor wrote:
It can't even handle the hardware I use

Have you tried a recent Ubuntu? Linux is getting pretty good at keeping up with most hardware, although the ATI video card support is still pretty spotty. It's improving, but even with ATI's support, it seems to be taking a long time.

I'll throw in another vote for Ubuntu, though I just had to reinstall on my VM at work, since upgrading to Natty couldn't download some file. I really need to figure out how to version control my dotfiles to make that process even smoother.

Bonus_Eruptus wrote:

I'll throw in another vote for Ubuntu, though I just had to reinstall on my VM at work, since upgrading to Natty couldn't download some file. I really need to figure out how to version control my dotfiles to make that process even smoother.

You can look at mine in my Github profile (LegionSB). I have a Rakefile which I use for making all the symlinks. I need to improve it a bit (it's mostly stolen from elsewhere, but customized some) but it mostly gets the job done. Certainly nicer than manually symlinking.

As for Linuxes, I've been using Ubuntu since Warty, but recently I have begun using Linux Mint Debian Edition. It's a lot like what Ubuntu used to be: Debian prettied up with the non-free packages Debian can't include by default.

I have an interesting relationship with coding, since it's something I've only done on my spare time for hobby/fun stuff. Some of the most fun I've had is sculpting my GWbasic-to-Qbasic-to-visual basic 16-bit-esque old-school RPG into a meaningful form since I was a kid (which I plan to inflict on the GWJ crowd some day soon - indeed I do).

The most coding I've done recently is in the G.E.C.K. - Fallout/New Vegas's editor. Out of curiosity, what sort of language does this seem to be inspired by? It seems to have a lot of Basic-y-ness, at least to me, as it made sense almost immediately, what with all of the endifs and ifs and what not (and a lack of confusing brackets).

[i] if guntimer > aaxayGunTimer ; ************************************************ WEAPON CYCLE aaxAYAudreyOne.removeallitems aaxAYAudreyOne.additem AmmoCentaurSpit 1 aaxAYAudreyOne.additem AmmoSmallEnergyCellRobot 1 if aaxayAllowedWeapons == 1 if aaxAYevolve == 2 || aaxAYevolve == 3 aaxAYAudreyOne.additem aaxaySporeWeapons 1 elseif aaxAYevolve ==4 || aaxAYevolve == 5 aaxAYAudreyOne.additem aaxaySporeWeapons2 1 elseif aaxAYevolve ==6 || aaxAYevolve == 7 aaxAYAudreyOne.additem aaxaySporeWeapons3 1 elseif aaxAYevolve ==8 || aaxAYevolve == 9 aaxAYAudreyOne.additem aaxaySporeWeapons4 1 elseif aaxAYevolve < 2 aaxAYAudreyOne.additem aaxaySporeWeaponsOrganicOnly 1 endif else aaxAYAudreyOne.additem aaxaySporeWeaponsOrganicOnly 1 endif If GetHasNote aaxnotez85 == 1 && aaxayAllowedWeapons == 1 if getrandompercent < 40 aaxAYAudreyOne.removeallitems aaxAYAudreyOne.additem AmmoCentaurSpit 1 aaxAYAudreyOne.additem AmmoSmallEnergyCellRobot 1 aaxAYAudreyOne.additem aaxWeapLightningAudrey 1 endif endif[/i]

Like many other languages, it is in the fine tradition of ALGOL.

A lot of game engines use Lua as their scripting language, some use python. Never seen Ruby... yet.
More used to use proprietary C derivatives.

But I'd bet on Lua or Python. Easy enough to find out from forums, faqs, and howtos, usually.

Lua is very common in game engines. Individual engines can also, of course, simply define their own language. It doesn't have to be anyone else's. Compilers are hard to write, but interpreters usually aren't that bad, and it can often speed development of a project to write a domain-specific language in which to express your algorithms.

From some quick digging, it looks like this may be exactly what Bethesda did... wrote either an interpreter or a compiler for a custom language, rather than using anything off the shelf.

Malor wrote:
It can't even handle the hardware I use

Have you tried a recent Ubuntu? Linux is getting pretty good at keeping up with most hardware, although the ATI video card support is still pretty spotty. It's improving, but even with ATI's support, it seems to be taking a long time.

Yep, still no go. I use 6 monitors at work, some of them rotated with two NVidia video cards. The driver just plain sucks on linux. It loses rotation all the time and trying to line the monitors up correctly is next to impossible. Also, Linux does a poor job of supporting multimonitors. Even with two, it feels cluncky compared to Windows.

Also, the default version of Ubuntu 11.04 comes with a front end that is trying to copy Mac OSX, which is very frustrating to me. I use XUbuntu on one of my machines which is much nicer (though it is only a dual screen PC).

Yeah, multimonitor support has always been weak on Linux. There was an early company doing some pretty kickass drivers for about $100 that would handle multimonitor perfectly, but that was many years ago, and I think they went out of business when ATI and NVidia started dominating the market -- there was no real documentation on their chips, and thus no way for them to write drivers. It was a shame, too, because whoever they were, they made my early Thinkpad T20 video sit up and sing under Linux.

I got the same book, Michael. I don't know how they can afford to give it away.

I'm a little late for the version control discussion, but you really can get something for free: Version Control by Example. It covers all the current major version control systems and offers some examples of how they would get used in a practical setting. I've already received my copy, so I can indeed verify that it's a free book. If I recall I think they sign you up for some e-newsletter that you can unsubscribe from (or just give them your spam email address).

Skimmers, the both of you.

It's a good book, quick read, since they use the same examples for SVN, Git, Mercurial, and Veracity. As to why it's free, I assume it's a loss leader so they can get people interested in Veracity. Veracity is open source, but since I can't get the page to load, I don't know if it's just free as in speech, or as in beer. Seems simple enough to use, so I can't imagine they'd make much on support contracts, but you never know.

EDIT: Site's back up, looks like this is how they plan to make money.

Open Source? How are you guys gonna make money?
The core of Veracity will be open source, but we plan to sell other products and services on top of that core.

Oh, sorry Bonus. I think I actually found the link here and forgot.

So have spent some on again / off again time learning some Ruby and Vim, and so far, Ruby is aces and Vim... well, it's much better than any other command-line editor on Windows.

kazar wrote:

Every time I see a developer using Eclipse, I see a little code window (around 50 characters wide and 20 characters tall) surrounded with informational windows. I feel claustrophobic just looking at it.

Eclipse isn't so bad. You can hide all the informational windows if you like (which I do). Although, to be fair, I don't really use it for anything beyond a glorified text editor. The one thing I use that I haven't seen in a decent text editor is the inline diff (select two files and "compare with -> each other" in the context menu) which I really like.