[Interest] Interest Digest, Vol 82, Issue 15

[Roland Hughes]

On 07/31/2018 07:10 AM, interest-request at qt-project.org wrote:
> Um, besides being a bit on the slow side (java?.), what was wrong with Eclipse for C++ dev? Back when it was around the choices were pretty limited. It still has a killer feature that even QtCreator does not have and that is the ability to hover over a macro and have the complete (including multiply levels) code generation show up. For code basis that heavily use macros this was a really great feature to have. And I could just have it use my premade makefiles or use my cmake generated makefiles without any complaints or regeneration.
It was really nasty with a lot of bugs. At the time it was created both 
KATE and KDevelop were better, but, Eclipse was the "teaser app" for Java.

The C plug-in was and still is rather horrible. I just used Eclipse 
earlier this year editing some OpenVMS C files. When you get past a few 
thousand lines Eclipse loses all ability to enforce your chosen style 
format so when you hit return after something you cannot be certain 
where the cursor will land. When a source file gets past 5,000 lines the 
editor becomes useless. Keep in mind I was just editing, then sending 
back to OpenVMS for compile and test.

I actually tested quite a few editors for that project because it ran 
longer than it should and Eclipse failed me. I chose Eclipse initially 
because the original C source files had ever coding style known to man 
and at least 3 which weren't. When I got done merging things together 
along with coding a whole bunch new I wanted it to look at least the 
tiniest bit coherent. I knew the style plugins for Eclipse would let me 
force a style on every file. What I didn't know was it had a severe size 
limitation. Java is a pig. This desktop has 24Gig of RAM but the JVM has 
always been worthless at resource allocation. Yes, I could have spent 
however long it took to find the place one needed to tweak for JVM 
memory allocation (it keeps moving), but, nobody should have to. The JVM 
should realize it's about out of RAM and go get more if it is available.

Atom failed pretty horribly editing for that project. So did UltraEdit. 
It failed bad enough I ended my subscription to the product. 
Code::Blocks and Codelight also had significant disappointments, I just 
don't remember what they were. Pluma didn't have quite enough uumph. I 
did purchase a Sublime license, but, it came up short too. Notepadqq 
served well as a scratch pad editor but had something . . . probably 
with style enforcement, which made it unusable for anything else.

Ultimately, during the last month of coding and debugging I did 
everything with KDevelop. The only annoying thing with KDevelop was I 
couldn't find out how to make it stop being helpful. When typing 
"standard" C functions it tried to be helpful using the version of C on 
the desktop prefilling values and popping up little syntax hints. The 
version of the C compiler on the target machine was pre-C99. Most of its 
help wasn't any use.

I did think about using Emacs, but I remembered my last experience with 
Emacs.

If it had an editor it would be a great operating system!

I was more focused on getting the project done than an exhaustive editor 
test. Ordinarily I, and most of us, don't need an editor which will let 
us toggle a very large source file between standard C source code 
formats. Usually I'm writing new and it is already set to my style. 
Because there were so many pieces coming from so many places I needed to 
continually do this.

Just my 0.0002 cents

-- 
Roland Hughes, President
Logikal Solutions
(630)-205-1593

http://www.theminimumyouneedtoknow.com
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