> Compared to modern IDEs like VisualStudio or IntelliJ products, however - not so much.
Those IDEs only work on some languages, and force you into their workflow. Emacs and vi are both more all-encompassing and less restrictive.
Those IDEs only work on some languages, and force you into their workflow. Emacs and vi are both more all-encompassing and less restrictive.
However all the major languages and frameworks are covered by IDEs, and the workflows they enforce are good enough for 99% of developers.
Programmers who are working in a fringe language or who need a specific workflow - vi and emacs are great options - but these days it's a disservice to recommend those out of the gate to a new developer.
I edit shell scripts, config files, and a host of other non-.rb files all the time in RubyMine, for example. Many of the features, particularly the code navigation, that you demo on your site are available in JetBrains IDEs.
(ps: your demos are awesome - great resource.)
It looks like you do a lot of C/C++ systems programming. That's one area where I would recommend trying emacs or vi before an IDE. The language and editors have grown together over 30+ years. That's not the case for things like Rails and Java.
Is it available for shell scripts? When I write shell scripts in Emacs, press TAB and it shows me a list of available shell commands in my editing file. You can also jump around function/variable definitions in your shell scripts.
> (ps: your demos are awesome - great resource.)
Thanks :)
> That's one area where I would recommend trying emacs or vi before an IDE
Well, Emacs is also an IDE of its own language, Emacs Lisp. You have code navigation/completion, functional debugger, profiler and byte compiler all it one. Emacs is not merely an editor, it's an environment for people write programs to run in it. That's why you see IDE features in the demos I posted there. And those demos shows that Emacs also evolves itself over 30 years.
And for dynamic language, Cider for Clojure https://github.com/clojure-emacs/cider can compete with any Clojure IDE. In fact, I don't see anything better.
Tab complete and jump to definitions are available in shell scripts.
> Well, Emacs is also an IDE of its own language, Emacs Lisp.
IntelliJ is too :) although I will say that I'd rather write editor extensions in Lisp over Java.
I also used to think only emacs had this stuff but since switching to JetBrains IDEs a couple years ago, I've been pleasantly surprised.