[plt-scheme] saved window configurations

On 9/26/07, Matthias Felleisen <matthias at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
> On Sep 26, 2007, at 12:15 PM, Grant Rettke wrote:
> > DrScheme is more of an editor than an IDE. There is no notion of
> > "projects" for example.

> So whatever you call it, it's not a plain editor or Emacs
> replacement.

While it wasn't my goal to rip on DrScheme, it looks like I succeeded!

I guess there was a time when describing as something "more like an
editor" was an insult (vim or emacs or even worse notepad), but that
is no longer true today. From my perspective, jEdit
(http://www.jedit.org/) does or has the potential to do everything you
listed that DrScheme does. Would you equate that with vi or emacs? I
wouldn't. Still, for me it seems more like an editor with lots of
features for a single reason: there is no notion of a "project".

> An IDE i.e. integrated development environment
> has nothing to do per se with Projects. To think so is a consequence
> of two historical developments:
>
> 1. Historically, IDEs are created for programming languages in which
> it is impossible to produce a deliverable without the notion of a
> project around. Ergo, a project plays a central role and you think
> that an IDE is about a project.

I use an IDE for my Ruby and Perl projects. It has everything you
describe, plus projects. For me it is a huge value add to be able to
open up ProjectX and have the file and directories conveniently in the
right place, plus all of the features you described. As I type this, I
suppose that my notion of an IDE is very simplistic: it is the
features you described plus projects!

While this may not be the mainstream, it is a concept I've seen in
virtually every IDE I've ever used. In each case, the folks that
didn't provide projects were taking a stance explicitly:  sticking
with the idea that "you can edit code with us, and write plugins, but
we aren't telling you how to structure your notion of "projects"".

I figured DrScheme did the same thing; no bones against that.