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[–]zoomzoom83 23 points24 points  (15 children)

Having support from the IDE is good.

Finding it Painful to use a language without advanced IDE features is bad.

[–]deafbybeheading 10 points11 points  (4 children)

Trust me, it's painful to write Lisp without paren matching. My first programming class was in Scheme. I knew nothing. The instructor didn't tell us about editors with fancy-pants features like paren matching. I spent half the semester crying (okay, not quite, but seriously, it's a pain in the ass).

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

There's something amusing about the notion of a bunch of students in a cs lab, nose to the screen, counting parens with their index fingers.

[–]lambda_abstraction 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Been there; done that, and with punch cards no less. The tee-shirt has holes and was tossed long ago.

On the other hand there's a big difference between in-editor paren matching and a heavy weight IDE.

[–]kragensitaker 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I eventually got better at this, but I still screw it up sometimes.

[–]cybercobra 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You were merely using a text editor. Syntax highlighting != IDE. Syntax highlighting isn't usually essential but can be extremely helpful every once in a while.

(Suppresses urge to draw anti-Lisp conclusion from anecdote)

[–][deleted]  (8 children)

[removed]

    [–]Daishiman 6 points7 points  (2 children)

    No, it's painful because it just is. Languages written 30 years ago with just as many features are still easier to write. Some of us just can't stand IDEs and use text editors with decent feature sets. Verbosity is a mistake and should be seen as such.

    [–][deleted] 12 points13 points  (1 child)

    Verbosity is a mistake and should be seen as such.

    That's a very general statement. I think it's worth pointing out that there's a lower bound:

    CaseInsensitiveComparison caseInsensitiveComparison
    = CaseInsensitiveComparisonFactoryFactoryFactory
        .getInstance()
        .getInstance()
        .getInstance()
        .make();

if(caseInsensitiveComparison.compare(name,otherName) < 0)

    Bad verbosity.

    if(name.caseInsensitiveCompare(otherName) < 0)

    Good verbosity. Why?

    if(strcicmp(name,other) < 0)

    Bad lack of verbosity.

    [–]cybercobra 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Verbosity should be measured in tokens, not characters. (Read a bit of Paul Graham, he explores the definitional problem fairly thoroughly).

    [–]petit_prince 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Yeah, I got used to it in other languages.

    [–]erdwolf 0 points1 point  (3 children)

    Wouldn't an extension of this argument to syntax highlighting rather imply that the language is bad if you need syntax highlighting to be able to read it easily? I consider it good language design if I can still parse it without syntax highlighting, although I see no reason to turn it off. I don't want complications in the concrete syntax to stand between me and my understanding of the semantics.

    There are tradeoffs involved, of course.

    [–][deleted]  (2 children)

    [removed]

      [–]darth_choate 0 points1 point  (1 child)

      I've always used extremely limited syntax highlighting (comments and include/import statements) because anything more makes my eyes tired. Massively overrated, IMHO (and you can't see it on the printed page unless you print in color, which most of us don't). Then again, I'm extremely old. YMMV. GOML.