[Israel.pm] Completion and editors (offtopic)

[Shlomi Fish]

Mikhael and Yuval,

If I understand you correctly, I think both of you try to convince each other 
and the world at large in your opinions. These opinions are extreme and you 
absolutely refuse to agree with the other side. What is deceptive here is 
that there is a grain of fact to your arguments.

What Mikhael is claiming is that features such as auto-completion or syntax 
highlighting are Evil, because they do not necessarily work correctly, and 
give way to incorrect practices. (like adapting your code for that instead of 
the other way around). As opposed to him, Yuval claims (or at least used to) 
that these features are an _absolute must_ in an editor and that every 
programmer _should use them_. (you can both correct me if I am wrong).

My opinion on this is more rational than either. Editors can have any features 
that programmers can find useful (and even those they don't), or they can 
lack these features. Similarly, programmers can choose to use any subset of 
the features present in their editor of choice. This is as long as they 
produce well-written, well-formatted, well-structured, etc. code that 
complies with the relevant coding conventions.

You can use ed for this, or you can use Emacs for this, or you can use 
something in between. I don't try to tell programmers with which tools and 
their features to write their code. I just want to tell them how to write a 
high-quality code. (And naturally, do my best to practice what I preach.)

For example, when my sister had to work on my Linux box for her university's 
UNIX assignments, I recommended her how to use kate (the so-called "KDE 
Advanced Text Editor") because I figured out it would be most similar to what 
she was used to. She got the hang of it pretty quickly. Maybe in time she'll 
switch to something more powerful.

Editors' users of the world unite!

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

On Wednesday 09 June 2004 10:26, Yuval Yaari wrote:
> Mikhael Goikhman wrote:
[ SNIPPED ... ]

-- 

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Shlomi Fish      shlomif at iglu.org.il
Homepage:        http://shlomif.il.eu.org/

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
        [Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.]