About the discussion on the old IDE

Hi guys,

This is my first post to this list in a long time. I feel like I need to
express myself concerning the old IDE issue. It's mostly a copy/paste
from this thread on github:

<a href="https://github.com/amber-smalltalk/amber-attic/issues/3#issuecomment-72740668" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" onmousedown="this.href='https://www.google.com/url?q\75https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Famber-smalltalk%2Famber-attic%2Fissues%2F3%23issuecomment-72740668\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNHYaG8_bvqTuXQT2lx2bkx03ZDblw';return true;" onclick="this.href='https://www.google.com/url?q\75https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Famber-smalltalk%2Famber-attic%2Fissues%2F3%23issuecomment-72740668\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNHYaG8_bvqTuXQT2lx2bkx03ZDblw';return true;">https://github.com/amber-smalltalk/amber-attic/issues/3#issuecomment-72740668

I strongly disagree with putting effort into this. Getting the old IDE
in a decent shape with half of the features Helios has will be a huge
work.


Not to mention splitting efforts in a small community is IMO not a good
idea.

Do not under-estimate the effort it will take to redo it. Because that's
what this is about, redoing the same, again. Maybe slightly differently,
but that's it. And you will face the same issues and technical problems
that were faced when developing Helios.

In your post @sebastianconcept you do not exactly say what it is that
you don't like in Helios.

You want context menus? That should be doable in a couple of
hours. Helios uses commands, applyable in contexts, so it's easy to
do. No keyboard required.

There's no bottom pane support? That can be added in less than 10 loc
(and it was there at some point).

Speed is an issue? Well, it wasn't for me, but if it is, it should be
fixed. And that will take much less time than making the old IDE as good
as Helios in all other aspects.

Maybe I'm missing something crucial, but for me as I see it currently
this would just be a huge waste.

Cheers,
Nico
--
Nicolas Petton
<a href="http://nicolas-petton.fr" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" onmousedown="this.href='http://www.google.com/url?q\75http%3A%2F%2Fnicolas-petton.fr\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNElA-qGe8D9XlAoeJGd_-UTu4s_wg';return true;" onclick="this.href='http://www.google.com/url?q\75http%3A%2F%2Fnicolas-petton.fr\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNElA-qGe8D9XlAoeJGd_-UTu4s_wg';return true;">http://nicolas-petton.fr

Manfred managed to already reply more or less hoe I wsnted, but anyway.

Dňa 5. februára 2015 0:51:46 CET používateľ "Mircea S." <[hidden email]> napísal:

Nobody asked, but there is a reason to resist this change. 

The "Legacy" IDE is actually too good to pass on just like that and

Helios is not good enough to be worth the effort learning yet a new

thing. 99% of the stuff I do now can be done with the "legacy" IDE

because I'm trying to learn how to use Amber.

More and more things are added to Amber. And legacy IDE is not supported (that well, that's not to dau thay when something breaks it and can be fixed, it is), but Helios gets the first-class support for new features.

Package imports is the real-world example of this. Officially Amber team only supports Helios, supporting more would take more energy. Legacy IDE was put into tbe attic.

The first feeling I got when I visited http://amber-lang.net was very

very warm and luminous. I saw the big button Try Amber and I clicked

it and the golden Browser appeared.

Is this the metaphor? IIRC it is white-grayish and only thing resembling gold is the icon, which is, wrll, amber.

You have to understand that the Browser you call "Legacy" was a shock

to me. I had never seen such a thing in Javascript development (these

guys get excited when "the" new text editor has tabs). I clicked

around and everything just worked, I found my own way around it. In

That is undeniable plus of the minimal design with opinionated defaults. Maybe having such opinionated defaults in Helios would also make things better: Having Workspace and SUnit Runner opened by default (a la pinned tabs in Chtome, that is, taking as little screen space in tabbar as possible), then one Browser and making adding new Browser easier and adding other pieces harder. Plus, clear "Ctrl+space to main menu" always written in the free space in tab bar, clickable.

You can't really understand what I feel because I don't get it either.

We can, a bit. It is similar as when we got to know Smalltalk after those Basics, Pascals, Cs and Assemblers.

I tried learning Javascript and got good at it, jQuery was my friend,

but that's like having text editing compared to Amber. Amber is my

love, I actually tell other people about it. I am determined to use it

to develop something for my clients, to give it a place, to use it so

I can come back to it again and again. I want to forget I ever met

Javascript, I want it to become what C is to Objective-C, a thing,

ES6 and others (TC39 finally agreed on more frequent releases and will release annually) looks good.

that is there as a necessity.

To wrap up, I only used Helios once and the blue grey color scheme was

bland. I clicked around and it seemed not that different. I remember

it had a smaller popup window with some buttons and shortcuts I can't

be exactly sure. There is this lingering memory that it actually did

something I thought was cool but it seems I forgot what the thing was.

Lots of things that work in Helios:

You can save a method in other view (not sure of debugger, pretty sure of search view).

You can commit a package from any view with source code and the right one gets committed (think extension methods).

These two are enough to me to see Helios as much better to work with. But I am a developer, not a designer.

Plus, you see when commit finishes (a small growl like notice appears), similarly for recompilation (Compiler recompileAll in legacy IDE just does something and you generally wait until CPU load drops; in Helios you _see_ it happening).

My gut feeling is that it was still in beta somehow, lacked polish and

visual appeal to make it an instant winner. I decided I'd go back to

the golden IDE and revisit Helios later to check on the progress.

It still has lots if issues, mainly UX

As for functionality, it is far ahead.

Now compare that to using you iPad to write readable code directly on

the page you develop, in a thing they call a "Browser" that the

Javascript community has never dared to dream up. And it comes in

yellow and gold. It's love!

I would in fact thought of making Helios leaner and mobile-first. Though it seems crazy, who would develop in mobile, making things mobile-first tend to make them leaner and less monolithic which is always a plus.

The golden IDE is not old, you can't deprecate it. It is new! For

It happened years ago. It is deprecated for long.

people coming from other worlds it's the greatest thing ever, keep it

make it better give it Helios powers, call it the Classy IDE with

Helios super powers, it shines through with golden superpowers!

Nico is sceptical that this may happen because if how it was designed. It may as well be that it is faster to just write new minimal IDE or slim down Helios.

PS. Willing to help bring polish to Helios and help it become

resolution independent and usable on mobile devices, if you guys say

it's worth it. Willing to take your word for it that it will deliver.

This is the best part. Yes, please! ;-)

As long as we save the good parts from the classic one and keep it in

yellow and gold (and add a couple of well chosen other themes).

Whatever. I want proportional fonts in source code editor. :-)

Herby

Pe 4 feb. 2015, la 15:24, "[hidden email]" <[hidden email]> a

scris:

On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 2:19 PM, Herby Vojčík <[hidden email]>

wrote:

[hidden email] wrote:

Nicolas,

Thing is that in practice, most developers are using the Classic

IDE...

The question is why. I see basically three reasons:

- inertia (they don't want to learn new thing when current one

works)

- old Amber version (where Helios wasn't as usable)

- conscious decision (they think Helios is worse)

My gut says most of them is in first pigeonhole, some of them still

in second, and only part of them in third one. But there are no data.

I am using Helios.

It must be found what makes it so slow (especially Test Runner if

it's open in parallel with Class Browsers) and fix it. To me it seems

it's combination of Announcements' handler taking too much CPU plus

eyecandy making things worse (progress bar animations are not really

compatible with fast progress bar updates).

Is there any to profile things there? In Pharo we have a lot of

things, but I am at a loss when it comes to Amber and Javascript

performance tuning.

Hey, I want to learn.

Also, making Amber itself faster helps Helios being faster ("use

strict" and inlinings).

One plus thing about Amber is that it provides a great framework for

creating all kinds of tools that can be modeled with splitters and

lists, and commands;

As such, it is very valuable to me because creating such tools is

quite hard without some booster stage that Helios provides.

For me, Helios is not as much as an IDE only, but a toolkit to do

web based tools for lots of use cases.

Phil

Phil

Le 4 févr. 2015 13:25, "Nicolas Petton" <[hidden email]

<[hidden email]>> a écrit :

  Hi guys,

  This is my first post to this list in a long time. I feel like

I

  need to

  express myself concerning the old IDE issue. It's mostly a

copy/paste

  from this thread on github:

https://github.com/amber-smalltalk/amber-attic/issues/3#issuecomment-72740668

  I strongly disagree with putting effort into this. Getting the

old IDE

  in a decent shape with half of the features Helios has will be

a huge

  work.

  Not to mention splitting efforts in a small community is IMO

not a

  good

  idea.

  Do not under-estimate the effort it will take to redo it.

Because

  that's

  what this is about, redoing the same, again. Maybe slightly

  differently,

  but that's it. And you will face the same issues and technical

  problems

  that were faced when developing Helios.

  In your post @sebastianconcept you do not exactly say what it

is that

you don't like in Helios.

  You want context menus? That should be doable in a couple of

  hours. Helios uses commands, applyable in contexts, so it's

easy to

  do. No keyboard required.

  There's no bottom pane support? That can be added in less than

10 loc

  (and it was there at some point).

  Speed is an issue? Well, it wasn't for me, but if it is, it

should be

  fixed. And that will take much less time than making the old

IDE

  as good

  as Helios in all other aspects.

  Maybe I'm missing something crucial, but for me as I see it

currently

  this would just be a huge waste.

  Cheers,

  Nico

  --

  Nicolas Petton

  http://nicolas-petton.fr

  --

  You received this message because you are subscribed to the

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  Groups "amber-lang" group.

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it,

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Philippe Back

Visible Performance Improvements

Mob: <a href="tel:+32(0)%20478%20650%20140" x-apple-data-detectors="true" x-apple-data-detectors-type="telephone" x-apple-data-detectors-result="26">+32(0) 478 650 140 | Fax: <a href="tel:+32%20(0)%2070%20408%20027" x-apple-data-detectors="true" x-apple-data-detectors-type="telephone" x-apple-data-detectors-result="27">+32 (0) 70 408 027

Mail:phil@highoctane.be | Web: http://philippeback.eu

Blog: http://philippeback.be | Twitter: @philippeback

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/philippeback/videos

High Octane SPRL

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Pharo Consortium Member - http://consortium.pharo.org/

Featured on the Software Process and Measurement Cast -

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Manfred managed to already reply more or less hoe I wsnted, but anyway.

Dňa 5. februára 2015 0:51:46 CET používateľ "Mircea S." <[hidden email]> napísal:

Nobody asked, but there is a reason to resist this change.

The "Legacy" IDE is actually too good to pass on just like that and

Helios is not good enough to be worth the effort learning yet a new

thing. 99% of the stuff I do now can be done with the "legacy" IDE

because I'm trying to learn how to use Amber.

More and more things are added to Amber. And legacy IDE is not supported (that well, that's not to dau thay when something breaks it and can be fixed, it is), but Helios gets the first-class support for new features.

Package imports is the real-world example of this. Officially Amber team only supports Helios, supporting more would take more energy. Legacy IDE was put into tbe attic.

The first feeling I got when I visited http://amber-lang.net was very

very warm and luminous. I saw the big button Try Amber and I clicked

it and the golden Browser appeared.

Is this the metaphor? IIRC it is white-grayish and only thing resembling gold is the icon, which is, wrll, amber.

You have to understand that the Browser you call "Legacy" was a shock

to me. I had never seen such a thing in Javascript development (these

guys get excited when "the" new text editor has tabs). I clicked

around and everything just worked, I found my own way around it. In

That is undeniable plus of the minimal design with opinionated defaults. Maybe having such opinionated defaults in Helios would also make things better: Having Workspace and SUnit Runner opened by default (a la pinned tabs in Chtome, that is, taking as little screen space in tabbar as possible), then one Browser and making adding new Browser easier and adding other pieces harder. Plus, clear "Ctrl+space to main menu" always written in the free space in tab bar, clickable.

You can't really understand what I feel because I don't get it either.

We can, a bit. It is similar as when we got to know Smalltalk after those Basics, Pascals, Cs and Assemblers.

I tried learning Javascript and got good at it, jQuery was my friend,

but that's like having text editing compared to Amber. Amber is my

love, I actually tell other people about it. I am determined to use it

to develop something for my clients, to give it a place, to use it so

I can come back to it again and again. I want to forget I ever met

Javascript, I want it to become what C is to Objective-C, a thing,

ES6 and others (TC39 finally agreed on more frequent releases and will release annually) looks good.

that is there as a necessity.

To wrap up, I only used Helios once and the blue grey color scheme was

bland. I clicked around and it seemed not that different. I remember

it had a smaller popup window with some buttons and shortcuts I can't

be exactly sure. There is this lingering memory that it actually did

something I thought was cool but it seems I forgot what the thing was.

Lots of things that work in Helios:

You can save a method in other view (not sure of debugger, pretty sure of search view).

You can commit a package from any view with source code and the right one gets committed (think extension methods).

These two are enough to me to see Helios as much better to work with. But I am a developer, not a designer.

Plus, you see when commit finishes (a small growl like notice appears), similarly for recompilation (Compiler recompileAll in legacy IDE just does something and you generally wait until CPU load drops; in Helios you _see_ it happening).

My gut feeling is that it was still in beta somehow, lacked polish and

visual appeal to make it an instant winner. I decided I'd go back to

the golden IDE and revisit Helios later to check on the progress.

It still has lots if issues, mainly UX

As for functionality, it is far ahead.

Now compare that to using you iPad to write readable code directly on

the page you develop, in a thing they call a "Browser" that the

Javascript community has never dared to dream up. And it comes in

yellow and gold. It's love!

I would in fact thought of making Helios leaner and mobile-first. Though it seems crazy, who would develop in mobile, making things mobile-first tend to make them leaner and less monolithic which is always a plus.

The golden IDE is not old, you can't deprecate it. It is new! For

It happened years ago. It is deprecated for long.

people coming from other worlds it's the greatest thing ever, keep it

make it better give it Helios powers, call it the Classy IDE with

Helios super powers, it shines through with golden superpowers!

Nico is sceptical that this may happen because if how it was designed. It may as well be that it is faster to just write new minimal IDE or slim down Helios.

PS. Willing to help bring polish to Helios and help it become

resolution independent and usable on mobile devices, if you guys say

it's worth it. Willing to take your word for it that it will deliver.

This is the best part. Yes, please! ;-)

As long as we save the good parts from the classic one and keep it in

yellow and gold (and add a couple of well chosen other themes).

Whatever. I want proportional fonts in source code editor. :-)

Herby

Pe 4 feb. 2015, la 15:24, "[hidden email]" <[hidden email]> a

scris:

On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 2:19 PM, Herby Vojčík <[hidden email]>

wrote:

[hidden email] wrote:

Nicolas,

Thing is that in practice, most developers are using the Classic

IDE...

The question is why. I see basically three reasons:

- inertia (they don't want to learn new thing when current one

works)

- old Amber version (where Helios wasn't as usable)

- conscious decision (they think Helios is worse)

My gut says most of them is in first pigeonhole, some of them still

in second, and only part of them in third one. But there are no data.

I am using Helios.

It must be found what makes it so slow (especially Test Runner if

it's open in parallel with Class Browsers) and fix it. To me it seems

it's combination of Announcements' handler taking too much CPU plus

eyecandy making things worse (progress bar animations are not really

compatible with fast progress bar updates).

Is there any to profile things there? In Pharo we have a lot of

things, but I am at a loss when it comes to Amber and Javascript

performance tuning.

Hey, I want to learn.

Also, making Amber itself faster helps Helios being faster ("use

strict" and inlinings).

One plus thing about Amber is that it provides a great framework for

creating all kinds of tools that can be modeled with splitters and

lists, and commands;

As such, it is very valuable to me because creating such tools is

quite hard without some booster stage that Helios provides.

For me, Helios is not as much as an IDE only, but a toolkit to do

web based tools for lots of use cases.

Phil

Phil

Le 4 févr. 2015 13:25, "Nicolas Petton" <[hidden email]

<[hidden email]>> a écrit :

  Hi guys,

  This is my first post to this list in a long time. I feel like

I

  need to

  express myself concerning the old IDE issue. It's mostly a

copy/paste

  from this thread on github:

https://github.com/amber-smalltalk/amber-attic/issues/3#issuecomment-72740668

  I strongly disagree with putting effort into this. Getting the

old IDE

  in a decent shape with half of the features Helios has will be

a huge

  work.

  Not to mention splitting efforts in a small community is IMO

not a

  good

  idea.

  Do not under-estimate the effort it will take to redo it.

Because

  that's

  what this is about, redoing the same, again. Maybe slightly

  differently,

  but that's it. And you will face the same issues and technical

  problems

  that were faced when developing Helios.

  In your post @sebastianconcept you do not exactly say what it

is that

you don't like in Helios.

  You want context menus? That should be doable in a couple of

  hours. Helios uses commands, applyable in contexts, so it's

easy to

  do. No keyboard required.

  There's no bottom pane support? That can be added in less than

10 loc

  (and it was there at some point).

  Speed is an issue? Well, it wasn't for me, but if it is, it

should be

  fixed. And that will take much less time than making the old

IDE

  as good

  as Helios in all other aspects.

  Maybe I'm missing something crucial, but for me as I see it

currently

  this would just be a huge waste.

  Cheers,

  Nico

  --

  Nicolas Petton

  http://nicolas-petton.fr

  --

  You received this message because you are subscribed to the

Google

  Groups "amber-lang" group.

  To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from

it,

  send an email to [hidden email]

  <mai

lto:amber-lang%[hidden email]>.

  For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

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<[hidden email]>.

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Philippe Back

Visible Performance Improvements

Mob: +32(0) 478 650 140 | Fax: +32 (0) 70 408 027

Mail:phil@highoctane.be | Web: http://philippeback.eu

Blog: http://philippeback.be | Twitter: @philippeback

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/philippeback/videos

High Octane SPRL

rue cour Boisacq 101 | 1301 Bierges | Belgium

Pharo Consortium Member - http://consortium.pharo.org/

Featured on the Software Process and Measurement Cast -

http://spamcast.libsyn.com

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect and Ability Engineering EADocX

Value Added Reseller

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