[plt-scheme] Re: An Editors Tale

Dear Michael,



Michael Sperber wrote:
>   For list-related administrative tasks:
>   http://list.cs.brown.edu/mailman/listinfo/plt-scheme
> 
> 
>>>>>>"Guenther" == Guenther Schmidt <gue.schmidt at web.de> writes:
> 
> 
> Guenther> But there is far more to writing an application than
> Guenther> algorythms.  The difficulty with this newsgroup here is that
> Guenther> most of its subscribers are skilled, highly skilled.
> 
> You've said that, but I'm not sure what exactly you mean.  Earlier,
> you mentioned three points:

The thing with the skills is this:
Most people here are so far advanced and already so deeply inside PLT they can no longer fathom the problems a beginner faces or gets stuck with. There is no doubt that DrScheme is very powerful and a skilled programmer can take it to "where no man has gone before".
I for one fail even with writing most trivial apps. As a beginner at least the "gadgets" mentioned below.

I previously posted an excert from Miguel de Icazas Lessons from the PLC (http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel//texts/pdc.html):

"And the reason is simple, XML might be a nice replacement for a few lines of code, but doing GUI layout in code is always a boring, error-prone, and most of the time the results are of low quality."

I know even fancy GUIs can be done in DrScheme, but *I* won't have acquired the skills for that in a long time, not in DrScheme. And since I'm not realy all that special I suppose that there are other people out there with the same problem.

I have *views* for instance on Java, but then again Java was designed with mediocre programmers in mind, or so I understand. And that is legitimate, because most people are. So there *are* far more people which Java does enable to write apps, regardless of wether Java is rotten at the core or not.

With all this said, bottom line:

	DrScheme
	a) is great for getting alomost everyone started with Scheme
	b) but only taking realy skilled people further.

The others drop out or give up after a).

Best regards

Günther



> 
> - the interactive development environment
> - the debugger
> - the GUI builder
> 
> Now, I can easily see that VS's development environment does things
> DrScheme can't do.  However, the opposite is just as true.  It also
> seems that, in general, DrScheme's facility are a lot more easier to
> use than VS.  (In fact, a place I work at routinely asks for specific
> VS skills because people assume they difficult to acquire.)
> 
> I agree with you that a stepping debugger would be useful---and I
> believe John Clements is working on one.  On the other hand,
> DrScheme's clickable "stack inspector" also does a lot of what I
> usually want from a debugger.
> 
> I also agree that VS's interactive GUI builder is helpful at building
> simple, static GUIs.  I've found that it quickly reaches its limits as
> you try to build flexible, geometry-managing, cross-platform GUIs.
> This issue is maybe the most pertinent for beginners.
> 
> So it'd be very helpful to the PLT folks if you listed where
> specifically DrScheme is giving you trouble where VS isn't.  From what
> you wrote, I've so far only gotten a hazy idea.
>