🚀 go-pugleaf

On Fri, 12 Jul 2002, cmyers@N0.S.P4.M.austin.rr.com wrote:
> 
> Well, for me, jEdit was like Emacs without all the head-keyboard
> banging =)  Emacs for Java is not that great. Every time I've worked
> with someone using Emacs for Java, the code they write is always
> messed up. 

Emacs has fantastic indentation and formatting capabilities.

> they can never get their indenting right and it hoses it for everyone
> else. 

Haven't seen this.  Maybe early in java's infancy or something when
there weren't that many Emacs users zeroing in on making java modes, but
today, it is very very solidly a fine java environment.  The only
environment that used to drive me nuts was the Visual Age output.  It
would always reindent my code.  (Maybe they didn't know how to make
Visual Age play nice with other editors or something, but that's the
only one where I hated when someone else touched my code)

> I've seen them using it too and it never seems to get the syntax
> highlighting correctly.

Works great these days.  Emacs 21.1 highlighting is great.  I don't
remember it being all that great in 20.7, but I wasn't nearly as good
with it then.

> And don't use Emacs for JSP. Christ. It had to reload the syntax
> parser each time you move the cursor between HTML and scriptlets.
> How annoying! I guess Emacs doesn't support having multiple
> syntax highlighters for one document.

I use mmm-mode.  Other modes did have the described issue.  mmm-mode
allows for as many modes as I could want, but I only use it for two.  I
have cursor sensitive commenting, indentation and most importantly, my
mode-specific abbreviations are available as I move throughout the
document.  The definition of multiple modes was quite simple as well.
The package came with examples for some of the main ones, javascript,
jsp, here-documents.  I needed one for Oracle XSQL pages.  In about 15
minutes with the documentation, I had defined to Emacs how to parse one
of the files with the ".xsql" extension.  I opened it up and I had
different background colors for the SQL parts vs the XML parts.

> In the end, jEdit supports most or all of the features of Emacs
> you could want for Java

Maybe.  From a previous discussion, sounds like a pretty damn nice
environment. 

> and it doesn't suck!

Neither does Emacs.

> IMHO, sometimes IDEs can get in your way or even dumb you down
> (because you don't know how some of the basic stuff works).

A good IDE won't make you a good coder.  But an IDE will help you be
better than you could be without it.  But, I have seen some great coders
using fairly basic tools.  One really smart guy I'm working with today
does alot of stuff with notepad.  The thing that impresses me is that he
can type the package names and such by heart.  I think he likes
challenging himself that way.  It certainly is impressive that he can do
all of his work without any help from anything, when he so chooses.  He
is also quite handy with JDeveloper.

> My advice would be to get an editor like jEdit which is
> simple (and very-Windows-like in that you can pick up on
> what's going on without having to read the docs much) and
> allows you to learn Java without having to learn the IDE too.

My advice would be, if you are only doing java coding, then get a java
coding only environment.  If you want an environment that you will be
much better at using today than yesterday and are continually
anticipating the new things you will be doing with it down the road,
then Emacs is your journey.  Emacs takes time, and the more time you
give it, the more time it will take.  I love that about it. In my
profession of database development I used to use some of the best
environments available. (I used DBArtisan, SQLProgrammer, TOAD, vi with
a command line and the MS suite when on SQLServer).  But, with Emacs and
a sqlplus prompt controlled by an Emacs buffer, I code circles around my
oldself.

-- 
Galen deForest Boyer
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.