Jorgen Grahn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Thu, 16 Oct 2008 07:47:36 +1100, Ben Finney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Instead, I find the greater gain comes from a working environment > > of *loosely-coupled* tools, with standard well-defined interfaces, > > that one can flexibly mold and reconnect to meet whatever task is > > at hand. The deeper this extends into the operating system, the > > more the system as a whole will be able to support this > > flexibility, and the more likely the tools will have been designed > > to do so. > > > > Because of the inescapable central role in our craft of > > manipulating text files, essential in this development environment > > is a highly-customisable text editor with a broad *and* deep > > library of existing customisations, to maximise the amount of work > > already done for you when embarking on work in an area that is, to > > you, new. > > You think like I think, but I think your standards are too high. I > like claiming "my IDE is Emacs and Unix", but in fact I know very > little about how to customize Emacs using elisp
No, I'm in the same situation: my Emacs Lisp knowledge is virtually non-existent. Fortunately, just about anything I want Emacs to do has already been programmed by someone else, so in practice all I need to know is how to access the community's extenstions, as said above. > I use a Unix shell on the side to do the non-editing tasks which I > guess you train your editor to do. Yes, I didn't stress the importance of a full-blown Unix shell (with all the commands one normally expects at such a shell) in such an environment. I think “powerful editor (Emacs or Vim) plus Unix shell environment” is a good first approximation of my recommended development environment. (good sigmonster, have a cookie) -- \ “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex… | `\ It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in | _o__) the opposite direction.” —Albert Einstein | Ben Finney -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
