most IDEs get in the way. i was an emacs & ant (and command-line) junkie. i used visual studio for C# simply because i didn't have time to really learn the libraries (and it was pretty much the only way to do it back then), so its auto-complete features were nice so i didn't have to keep looking something up.
but for my core languages, java and php, i was doing it the old fashioned way (well, without the punch cards).
until I learned about refactoring.
the refactoring tools built into eclipse (at least, for java) are amazing. want to rename a variable, done, everywhere. want to move a class to a different package, done, including it'll look inside and fix every XML config file that makes reference to the old class name. The IDE is also far more useful when you aren't dealing with a 2,000 line program, but one with code in the millions. i can make a change and instantly see very other package and class that's been affected by it to know where i need to fix...and if i used the refactoring tool to add a parameter to a function/method, it can automatically populate EVERY call to that function with a default parameter for me so i don't have to clean up the mess everywhere.
but again, that's mostly for java. C++ and/or C# refactoring tools likely cost extra (in eclipse, its all open-source free).
and i still write GUIs by hand. i don't believe in GUI builder tools; they simply don't know as much about Swing (or now, Jsp/Html/CSS/DOM/Javascript/Ajax) than I do. and they never will.
(no subject)
but for my core languages, java and php, i was doing it the old fashioned way (well, without the punch cards).
until I learned about refactoring.
the refactoring tools built into eclipse (at least, for java) are amazing. want to rename a variable, done, everywhere. want to move a class to a different package, done, including it'll look inside and fix every XML config file that makes reference to the old class name. The IDE is also far more useful when you aren't dealing with a 2,000 line program, but one with code in the millions. i can make a change and instantly see very other package and class that's been affected by it to know where i need to fix...and if i used the refactoring tool to add a parameter to a function/method, it can automatically populate EVERY call to that function with a default parameter for me so i don't have to clean up the mess everywhere.
but again, that's mostly for java. C++ and/or C# refactoring tools likely cost extra (in eclipse, its all open-source free).
and i still write GUIs by hand. i don't believe in GUI builder tools; they simply don't know as much about Swing (or now, Jsp/Html/CSS/DOM/Javascript/Ajax) than I do. and they never will.