As someone once said, if you need an IDE to make your language usable, you've got a crappy language.

I'm curious at what point the Java community actually thought they had something useful to contribute to the agile crowd. I guess Martin Fowler's blog entry finally gave them something to attack - method count. Woot!

My favorite quote: "this [Array#pack] method alone is easily complex enough to justify several separate classes. What it's doing here I have no idea."

Yes, YES! That's the answer! More classes, not convenient methods! Never mind that I don't understand this method! We can't have an Array with shift and pop - those are a Queue's job! Didn't you hear me? MORE CLASSES! Fuck pragmatism!

It's interesting to note that the only people complaining about Ruby's methods and libraries are people who don't use Ruby.

PS - There is no Array#abbrev method.

The comment you attribute to Elliotte Harold, is titled "Quote of the Day" and is a direct quote from Cedric Beust.

James wrote "No mention of Smalltalk, or Lisp"
Well, if you look at "An Interview with TestNG's Cedric Beust" you'll find this:

"A lot of veteran developers point out that Smalltalk showed that it was possible to have such an IDE in a dynamic language, but they are only partially right. Today's IDE's are doing much more than anything Smalltalk's environment ever did, so the problem is still wide open (and maybe impossible to solve)."

Perhaps you could ask Cedric Beust what exactly he's talking about.

As someone once said, if you need an IDE to make your language usable, you've got a crappy language.
Daniel... Take the IDE/GUI/Workspace/whateveritscalled away from Smalltalk and see how you like it. If you want to try, try GNU Smalltalk...

Not to mention that the Smalltalk version I've looked at (Squeak) has no AutoComplete comparable to Eclipse (maybe it's hidden somewhere, but I didn't see it)... not to mention that its editing capabilities are actually worse than the ones offered by Notepad.

murphee: eCompletion (http://homepage.mac.com/moniquebakker/squeak/eCompletion.html). The 'e' stands for Eclipse.

murphee, I don't use Smalltalk, so if it sucks without an IDE, that's a dig on Smalltalk. I'm a Ruby guy. My IDE of choice, when I use one, is Eclipse, but mostly I use that for project management and the CVS/SVN integration because I'm too lazy to remember the command line stuff.

The only time I need an IDE for Ruby (or any language really) is when I need a graphical debugger, and that only happens rarely. Otherwise, I do most of my editing in gvim.

It's no use pointing Java developers at Cincom Smalltalk or Squeak. Both those environments look very dated compared to IntelliJ. If you want to convince them that a Smalltalk IDE can compete with the best that Jetbrains can offer show them the latest version of Dolphin. It's gorgeous, but unfortunately only runs on Windows.

I agree with the last comment about smalltalk IDEs not being as polished as IDEA. James I've mailed you several times about this already without any effect it seems. Please just consider for one minute that all this talk about the Java IDEs being better is not the talk of gibbering, misguided idiots, and please consider instead that there might just be something in it. I use Java and Squeak and some VisualWorks, so I am not uninformed. The WhiskerBrowser for Squeak is the best smalltalk IDE I have used, but it does not have the polish of IDEA (in terms of keyboard bindings and navigation). Once again, please for the sake of smalltalk, don't in this case jump to the response 'yeah, well smalltalk's had that for years and where do you think its invented'. Smalltalk can and should learn from the java world in this case. Its not beneath smalltalk to do that.

Comment by James Robertson

Well, a few things. Isaac - note that I cited Cedric. Yes, I read his entire post. Yes, I saw that he blew by a comment on Smalltalk. On the "no need for an IDE" - all I can say is, I'm happy to let you wallow in your lower level of productivity. One additional thing to bear in mind - in Smalltalk, the language is the IDE, and the distance between development and deployment is minimal. In fact, this server is running on top of a full Smalltalk development environment, but without a GUI attached. Believe you me, it makes debugging it a whole lot simpler.

Finally, as to Intellisense. First, I've had a look in Eclipse, and I find it to be intensely annoying. In Smalltalk, there's an implementation, but I don't even bother loading it. It's just not something I find useful.

As I said, "Perhaps you could ask Cedric Beust what exactly he's talking about" - what exactly does he mean by "Today's IDE's are doing much more than anything Smalltalk's environment ever did". What Smalltalk environment is he talking about?
(Seems a shame to let him get away with such a sweeping generalization.)

James "Yes, I read his entire post. Yes, I saw that he blew by a comment on Smalltalk."
So you're saying that when you wrote "No mention of Smalltalk, or Lisp" you knew it wasn't true?

(I'm happy to let you wallow in your lower level of productivity
That would be Daniel Berger - not me.)

I have to agree on the IntelliSense issue. When I started off with Smalltalk I thought "How will I get by without it", and in actual fact, it seems to be more annoying than useful.

I tend to use IntelliSense as a poor mans class browser. In Smalltalk there is a much more full featured version.

When Dolphin CE comes out later this month, we'll see a Smalltalk that can compete with IntelliJ in the eye candy department

The difference between Smalltalk and Java when it comes to IDEs it that Smalltalk remains the most productive one. In Smalltalk, the collection methods #select:, #reject:, #detect:, #collect: and #inject:into: make it short and simple to work with collections as a whole. In Java, you still need to work item by item, by using a for loop. Without shortcuts to create boiler plate code, Java becomes pretty unproductive, while Smalltalk would still be better, because the operation on a collection is captured by the language, not by the IDE.

I program in Java full time 3 days a week. We build some pretty sophisticated software in Java. Let me say that if I didn't have a super smart IDE like Eclipse to do my Java work in, there would not be an ice cube's chance in hell of us getting our job done there. All that automatic stuff and dynamic compiling with real time type checking is really needed or I would be in a heck of a mess. I would quit real fast if we had to use anything that didn't have these features. Java is a hard language for building complex systems. Lots of type declarations and casting everywhere make the code read like a tangle of yarn. The only way to get decent polymorphism is with lots of interfaces, which gives the developer just one more kind of artifact to bear the mental weight of. Eclipse is a badly needed krutch for Java.

On the other hand, I have been building serious object oriented software in Smalltalk for nearly twenty years. The Smalltalk IDE is not as heavyweight as Eclipse, and IT DOESN'T NEED TO BE. The very nature of the Smalltalk IDE is very freewheeling and I can code about as fast as I can think. Even on an old Celeron laptop with 128MB of RAM Smalltalk is blazing fast compared to Eclipse. The dynamically typed nature of Smalltalk let's me write much less code, much more clearly. I can experiment with my ideas in a workspace more or less by the seat of my pants, then put that code into a browser if I like. I can also use refactoring tools, but even without these Smalltalk is superior to the likes of Java. Could Smalltalk IDEs use a few enhancements? Sure, I guess so but the real point here isn't how many features the IDE has, but what is its very nature? There is no Java IDE that gives Java that "clay in the hands" mental tactile experience of Smalltalk. Smalltalk is more than a language, and more than an IDE.

Less is more.

Just my 2 cents on the IDE smack - I think there is a misconception in trying to compare IDEs. Like someone noted - Smalltalk is the IDE; Smalltalk deals with Classes, objects, and methods. Java reqires an IDE because it deals with Files, Classpaths, and JAR files.

Just because Smalltalk isn't pretty doesn't make it an environment you can't work in. On the contrary. I found, with it's Workspaces, Smalltalk (the IDE) gets out of your way and let's you try things out.

Developing in Java is very different then developing in Smalltalk. A Java developer thinks different then a Smalltalker; they each have different needs and require different support from their environment.

That's all I've got to say about that. Peace --Mel

http://www.cdegroot.com/blog/2005/12/08/cedric-who/#comment-20

Now we're talking: http://www.macta.f2s.com/Thoughts/dolphin.html