Agreed, I was more trying to point out that discarding a tool just because it costs money is not a right mindset (especially considering its price). I didn’t say there weren’t any other tools (free or not) available that might be someone else’s cup of tea. A former collegue of mine swears by Eclipse, but hey, I don’t understand his choice of women either Joking aside, you should first look at the tool and how well it works for you and afterwards take money into consideration.
If TextMate is the tool that works for you , not
willing to spend $50 is just foolish to say the least.
But if it isn't the tool that works for you, then it's foolish to pay
$50 for it.
Exactly. My job gave me a copy of TextMate. I think I used it for one
session, then went back to KomodoEdit. I certainly don't see it as
being worth $50 for the way I work.
However, knowing that NetBeans has now got visual Ruby debugging
inspires me to give it another try for Rails at some point. I still
don't think that Rails benefits from its heavy IDE nature, but visual
debugging and the Git plugin might be a good combination if both work.
Except...while writing this, I just found out that NB (like Eclipse)
*still* doesn't have word wrap in 6.9, even though it was promised.
Generally speaking, I don't like to work in an editor without word wrap.
Back to Komodo, I suppose. Oy.
visual debugging and the Git plugin might be a good combination if both work.
The Git plugin was a bit poor when I used it last (six months ago
now...). But the Mercurial plugin works just fine for me!
Except...while writing this, I just found out that NB (like Eclipse)
*still* doesn't have word wrap in 6.9, even though it was promised.
Generally speaking, I don't like to work in an editor without word wrap.
Back to Komodo, I suppose. �Oy.
See... it's horses for courses...
That's actually not what the phrase means; it means more like "use the
right tool for the job at hand".
I *hate* word-wrapping! And turn it
off on any editor I can
My goodness, why? It's long been a tenet of user interface design that
any interface that requires horizontal scrolling of text probably needs
to be redesigned. I do occasionally write and read long lines of code,
and it's essential to me to not have to lose context by scrolling
horizontally. (Granted, it doesn't happen often in Ruby since the
syntax is so terse, but when I need it, I *really* need it.)
Anyway, we're going way off topic here, so I probably shouldn't go on.
That's actually not what the phrase means; it means more like "use the
right tool for the job at hand".
This is the meaning I'd apply to it...
...and that's the sentiment I used it with.
I *hate* word-wrapping! And turn it
off on any editor I can
My goodness, why?
I do occasionally write and read long lines of code,
and it's essential to me to not have to lose context by scrolling
horizontally.
For me, I "lose context" when the next "line" is actually a
continuation of the previous. Of course, I avoid long lines where
possible (refactor and rewrite to get rid of them), but where I come
across them (for instance looking at a CSV) I want no wrapping!
Anyway, we're going way off topic here, so I probably shouldn't go on.
You raised a good enough point that I can't resist one more reply.
Michael Pavling wrote:
[...]
My goodness, why?
I do occasionally write and read long lines of code,
and it's essential to me to not have to lose context by scrolling
horizontally.
For me, I "lose context" when the next "line" is actually a
continuation of the previous. Of course, I avoid long lines where
possible (refactor and rewrite to get rid of them),
Right. At the same time, if the clearest form of an expression is wider
than my screen, I'm not going to worry too much about rewriting it just
to have short lines.
but where I come
across them (for instance looking at a CSV) I want no wrapping!
Ah, now that's an interesting point. For CSV, I'd often agree with you
-- tabular data should probably be presented at full width. (Though for
quickly viewing a CSV file, I'd be inclined to use a spreadsheet or
something to put it into tabular form, so I probably wouldn't be doing
much examination of it in a text editor in the first place.)
However, source code feels to me more like running text. When I'm
reading English text on a Web page, I don't want my reading flow broken
by scrolling back and forth. The same is true for me for source code.
In KomodoEdit, we can each choose the word-wrapping setting we like --
it's a configurable option. But in NetBeans, I have no choice but to
scroll left and right. The developers keep promising word wrap in the
next version, and keep breaking their promise (even though it's a
priority 1 issue on their tracker!). It's a frustrating stupidity in an
otherwise good IDE.
Every book is likely to contain some errors, most will have forums
where you can ask questions of the subject material as well.
Netbeans has everything I need. The side panes which show the project
structure and page elements which make not only navigating, but
understanding, the project easier. The code completion rocks and
really helps when editing html templates and css files as I try and do
as little html as possible.