[plt-scheme] Jane Street Summer Project 2009

Hi Matthew,

On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 10:29 AM, Matthew Flatt <mflatt at cs.utah.edu> wrote:
> For my part, I've tried to avoid introducing the notion of a "project"
> into PLT Scheme tools.
>
> It isn't because I'm unused to the project concept. My first real
> programming experiences were using CodeWarrior on the Mac. I still
> (have to) use projects with VisualStudio. And I'm forced to use XCode
> sometimes.
>
> Personal taste aside, the technical problem with projects --- as
> usually implemented --- is that they are outside the programming
> language. If your project tools are missing some functionality, then
> you're either stuck doing things manually or you learn the project
> system's ad hoc extension API.

I've used an IDE with projects like you mention; Microsoft Visual
Studio. In that IDE, there is no notion of building code unless it is
associated with a project. I am not interested in that and I don't
think it would be a good fit for DrScheme. Here is the use case I
experience when I want to work on a project:

1. Start DrScheme.
2. Open the 3-5 files I care about while working the project: a couple
modules, the tests, and maybe a scratch file (Stephen's plugin
addresses this).
3. Work on some particular functions in files or modules.

For me the project notion exists to help me, not the code. I can
browse by file or module, and see all of the definitions in a module.

ActiveState's Komodo IDE works like this. It works for Ruby and Python
and Perl. It just works with files and if it can parse them it shows
their functions.