Review of featured applications

[Rick Spencer]

On Fri, 2010-03-26 at 03:32 +0000, Shane Fagan wrote:
> On Fri, 2010-03-26 at 14:22 +1100, Robert Ancell wrote:
> > On 26/03/10 14:05, Shane Fagan wrote:
> > >> - Remove Eclipse
> > >>     - Huge download
> > >>     - Only supports Java out of the box
> > >>     - The Eclipse brand is strong enough that it doesn't need promoting
> > >>      
> > > Im going to go out on the limb and suggest we replace it with
> > > Monodevelop it supports mono,java,python,vala....etc although require
> > > the user to install the support for each language.
> > >    
> > My review of all the supplied IDEs showed MonoDevelop to appear to be 
> > the easiest to use, but:
> > - I've never used an IDE for any significant period of time
> > - I didn't use any of the proposed IDEs to do more that write a hello 
> > world program.
> > 
> > We need to consider what sort of user clicks on featured applications 
> > and which users would benefit from the suggested IDE.
> > My experience of IDE users is:
> >   - They're generally passionate users who have a preferred IDE (much 
> > like text editors for non-IDE programmers).  So by suggesting an IDE 
> > we're targeting people who haven't already chosen an IDE.
> >   - IDEs tend be a part of a developer package.  If we suggest 
> > MonoDevelop will users link well to documentation and the developer 
> > community?  Or will it just be a fancy text editor/compiler?
> > 
> > Saying it in a simpler way:
> > - Will an IDE encourage people to learn programming?
> > - Will opportunistic developers be able to use it to complete their 
> > desired project?
> > - Will experienced developers find the suggested IDE helpful or will 
> > they already use their existing IDE/do the research themselves?
> > 
> > 
> Well no it wouldnt encourage people to learn programming. 
> Hmmm I dont think there is any good python IDE for the opportunistic
> developer.
> I dont think many experienced developers use IDEs too much. The ones I
> know in development companies use eclipse (or different flavors of
> eclipse) or text editors. I use netbeans in college but for python I use
> gedit. 
Sorry Fagan, but this is really really wrong. Almost all developers use
Visual Studio. The rest use Eclipse or such. A few don't use IDES.

However, you are also really really right. We should make Ubuntu it's
own IDE. This is an old unix concept that I would like us to embrace and
bring to other programmers, new or IDE dependent.

Cheers, Rick