[plt-scheme] comments on drscheme

From: Shanon Fernald (sfernald at gmail.com)
Date: Tue Jul 20 14:28:57 EDT 2004

I have just discovered drscheme and find it to be a great interactive
tool. I'm going through SCIP and typing all the examples and doing all
the exercises in drscheme. This is really what an interactive
environment should be like. It really reminds of the 'Query Analyzer'
tool which I use for T-SQL development every day.

I was thinking it might be nice to see the following additions to it though:

1. Have an option for automatic execute when focus is removed from the
source code window. Basically whenever I click down to the interactive
pane at the bottom I would like it to reload the source above. Then I
can run my tests in the interactive window.

2. Break the interactive windows into a set of panes, like in query
analyzer. One would be the interactive prompt, one would be the
results, one would be error messages, maybe one for tasks,  one for
profiling / code analysis, etc.

3. The break / interrupt feature doesn't always seem to work well on
my laptop. Hitting the break button should stop the running
application smoothly and cleanly. Right now sometimes it is a
challenge just to click it and then it can take some time for the
interrupt to occur.

4. Have a high resolution clock (as in query analyzer) that measures
and displays the duration of a running function in milleseconds. Great
for optimizations and such things. I use it all the time when writing
t-sql queries. Why not for sorting algorithms too?

5. Let the key bindings be customized. Some of the defaults are really
strange choices and I would like to be able to customize many of the
keys.

Anyway, overall terrific program! I love what you are doing. Keep up
the great work!!


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