[SWLUG] Not seeing the Code for the IDE

[Dick Porter]

On Sun, 2005-01-30 at 21:05 +0000, peter wrote:
> These applications have just too many files in them (usually at least 
> 100+) for me to be able to keep them organised without help.  And I hate 
> building makefiles of my own: it's the sort of thing that computers were 
> built to do.

You only have to write a makefile once, then whenever you add a new file
you just add it to the sources list.  Or not, you can construct your
makefile with wildcards, but that starts to get painful when you need to
be selective.  In mono, we used to use nant (a .net version of ant) to
build the class libraries, but the default wildcard file selection just
proved to be too awkward.

We have a simple file hierarchy, one file per class:

assembly/namespace/class, eg corlib/System.IO/File.cs

There are 7320 files, in 491 directories.  It takes no thought at all to
locate the file that defines a particular class.

> You clearly don't have these problems.  I admire you for that.  'Cos I 
> sure can't do it.  I want to be writing code, not worrying about how to 
> compile it, or organise it on the file system.  :)

It works for us, and also for all the volunteer contributors.  The
infrastructure has to be written once, so it takes no effort once it's
been done.

> You are obviously better at remembering method names and overloads than 
> I am: and you are also obviously a better typist.  I could never trust 
> myself to get every call right first time (especially in terms of 
> capitalisation, never remembering all the overloads and their parameter 
> types).  Code completion means I never have to look for typos in method 
> calls - which is a big saving for me.

Well, frequently used methods are remembered, but for anything else I
have to look in the documentation to see a) what it's called (completion
doesn't help here - it's the typical 'using a dictionary to spell a word
problem' - unless you just browse up and down the list, and I can do
that in monodoc anyway), and b) what all the overloads do.  I probably
have been scanning the documentation beforehand anyway.  The compiler
catches typos if they happen.

> I really admire you guys who can get by without a sophisticated IDE.  I 
> can't, and I'm sure - well I know - that I'm not on my own.

But we _do_ use sophisticated IDEs - they just aren't usually called
that.  The 'I' part just depends on your point of view.

>   When I've 
> got my dissertation out of the way, and if they'll have me, I'd love to 
> try to help get monodevelop up to speed.  I'm convinced it's critical 
> for mono's success.

Me too, it will help draw many more people to mono.

- Dick