About the discussion on the old IDE
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About the discussion on the old IDE
 
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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]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. |
Re: About the discussion on the old IDE
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Nicolas, Thing is that in practice, most developers are using the Classic IDE... I am using Helios. Phil Le 4 févr. 2015 13:25, "Nicolas Petton" <[hidden email]> a écrit :
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Re: About the discussion on the old IDE
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[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). Also, making Amber itself faster helps Helios being faster ("use strict" and inlinings). > Phil > > Le 4 févr. 2015 13:25, "Nicolas Petton" <[hidden email] > <mailto:[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 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 > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > -- > 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] > <mailto:[hidden email]>. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- 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]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. |
Re: About the discussion on the old IDE
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On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 2:19 PM, Herby Vojčík <[hidden email]> wrote:
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.
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
--- Philippe Back Visible Performance Improvements Mob: +32(0) 478 650 140 | Fax: +32 (0) 70 408 027 Blog: http://philippeback.be | Twitter: @philippeback 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 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]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. |
Re: About the discussion on the old IDE
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In reply to this post by philippeback
[hidden email] <[hidden email]> writes: > Nicolas, > > Thing is that in practice, most developers are using the Classic > IDE... As Herby said, we should try to know why. Then again, if Helios is lacking in some ways, it should be improved. I'm not saying it's perfect, but that redoing (because that's exactly what it would mean considering the quality of the old IDE) the same again would be such a waste... I would also point out that the online poll is missing some crucial questions to be remotely meaningful, (How long have you been using Amber, which version, have you ever heard about Helios, etc.), and that the post on medium.com is IMHO not constructive enough to understand what could be a problem with Helios. I am in fact not even sure to know what is Helios missing compared to the old IDE. I got it about the speed issue though. Again, please consider the amount of time it will take to do this. Don't think that it will take a few weeks or months. I spent a fairly high amount of hours per week on Helios for 2 years, and Helios is still not finished, not to mention Ben's time spent on it, and several patches people contributed. 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]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. |
Re: About the discussion on the old IDE
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"The question is why?" Really? :-) This is what I see when I go to the homepage:  When I CTRL+F for "Helios" it's not present. If the project's leadership wants people to use Helios, I might consider the effect of the current call to action telling them to do otherwise? Jeremy On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 6:15 AM, Nicolas Petton <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Re: About the discussion on the old IDE
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Jeremy Shute <[hidden email]> writes:
> "The question is why?" > > Really? :-) > > http://amber-lang.net/ > > This is what I see when I go to the homepage: > > > When I CTRL+F for "Helios" it's not present. If the project's leadership > wants people to use Helios, I might consider the effect of the current call > to action telling them to do otherwise? You have a point. The website should be updated. 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]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. |
Re: About the discussion on the old IDE
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In reply to this post by Nicolas Petton-3
It will show problems that will be obvious and at the same time will be resisted and rationalised by experts before rendering any improvement. I didn’t run any study (I think that’s a great opportunity to partner some Design Department on some University) but I did informally observed myself and teammates' productivity. It was clear for us that working with the classic IDE was simply more productive. Helios has all actions hidden behind a wall of keystrokes. At the same time I’m, moving out of the way, I (passively) support all efforts to improve Helios. And if it turns the table I will be the first to re-adopt it and promote it.
The poll does not try to understand what Helios needs in order to be great. The poll just raises a bit of cold data about which one you consider your main IDE and how much. That’s it. As usual, the meaning will come from the various interpretations you can do about that data. So far we have 30 answers, it would be great to have more people to answer (not all Amber users join this group) Here is the link again:
You’re very kind in caring about the possibility of wasted efforts and costs Nico. Thanks for that. I’m not aware of what you are estimating there but I’m planning for small incremental improvements. Half of more of the things I’ve listed in this post are easy enough. I was about to fork it and make a library before even mentioning anything about this to anyone, but since a couple of teammates and other guys told me they would appreciate it, then I’ve made my perception public and the poll to have an additional measure of relevance outside lowering my own costs. The main driver is making productivity go up with an IDE with some UX problems removed, at least starting with the easy ones. So the Economics argument ruled. You can say that the Classic IDE has the serious problem of not being designed to be able to connect to a remote environment and that’s a huge no-no for it. But as I said in that post: In the end, Economics decided for me. Yes, Helios could connect to a remote environment but (a) that does not happen today and (b) might never do because the development of that feature, sadly, is not moving forward. The day to day result is that Helios made me overall less productive and slower than using the good old Legacy IDE. I hope this experiment allows us to get one order of magnitude faster while developing with flow, if it fails, with the ECMA6 incoming features then it will start to make more sense to just use sublime+http://aurelia.io/ and LittleSmallscript, coffescript or just JavaScript
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Re: About the discussion on the old IDE
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sebastian <[hidden email]> writes:
> Helios has all actions hidden behind a wall of keystrokes. If keyboard shortcuts are the problem, Helios uses commands for all actions, apply-able per context. There is no restriction whatsoever preventing the addition of buttons/context menus or anything else for all user interaction. It's quite the opposite: it would be rather easy to do so. > > You’re very kind in caring about the possibility of wasted efforts and > costs Nico. Thanks for that. I’m not aware of what you are estimating > there but I’m planning for small incremental improvements. Half of > more of the things I’ve listed in this post > <https://medium.com/@sebastianconcpt/improving-the-amber-experience-26764d5d578> > are easy enough. I was about to fork it and make a library before even > mentioning anything about this to anyone, but since a couple of > teammates and other guys told me they would appreciate it, then I’ve > made my perception public and the poll to have an additional measure > of relevance outside lowering my own costs. The main driver is making > productivity go up with an IDE with some UX problems removed, at least > starting with the easy ones. I've seen Helios used at Inria by several coworkers, and I designed Helios *with* some of them. I can tell you that they felt much more productive using it. I'm not saying that to convince you, simply to show that it's a matter of perspective. And again, Helios can have both keyboard shortcuts and buttons/menus. And if nobody uses keyboard shortcuts as they are today, that could even be removed, it's not my point. About small incremental changes, I'm all for it. But to get something decent from the old IDE would take much more than your listed points. I did the old IDE without knowing where I was going. It was a dead end, and that's why I did Helios: to have a better design for a Smalltalk IDE that must run on the web and try to do things right. > You can say that the Classic IDE has the serious problem of not being > designed to be able to connect to a remote environment and that’s a > huge no-no for it. > In the end, Economics decided for me. Yes, Helios could connect to a > remote environment but (a) that does not happen today and (b) might > never do because the development of that feature, sadly, is not moving > forward. I never talked about remote access, I don't think that it's important at all here. Not being able to run on a separate frame instead of injecting HTML and CSS into the page (and thus being dependant on the other CSS rules applied on the page, possibly breaking the IDE) could be an issue for the old IDE.. > The day to day result is that Helios made me overall less > productive and slower than using the good old Legacy IDE. Why do you feel this? What if you could click around to do your work, just like the old IDE? My point really is: the old IDE is so badly done that I really fear this would be a waste of time. Helios should be extensible enough to be easily modified to behave the way people want. Let's not split the efforts, the community is too small for that. 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]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. |
Re: About the discussion on the old IDE
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Nicolas Petton wrote: > sebastian<[hidden email]> writes: > >> You can say that the Classic IDE has the serious problem of not being >> designed to be able to connect to a remote environment and that’s a >> huge no-no for it. >> In the end, Economics decided for me. Yes, Helios could connect to a >> remote environment but (a) that does not happen today and (b) might >> never do because the development of that feature, sadly, is not moving >> forward. > > I never talked about remote access, I don't think that it's important at It was me. Helios uses abstraction to access the running image, so it may be possible to connect to for example running node.js process. IIRC there is an old issue in the tracker for this as well. > all here. Not being able to run on a separate frame instead of > injecting HTML and CSS into the page (and thus being dependant on the > other CSS rules applied on the page, possibly breaking the IDE) could be > an issue for the old IDE.. > >> The day to day result is that Helios made me overall less >> productive and slower than using the good old Legacy IDE. > > Why do you feel this? What if you could click around to do your work, > just like the old IDE? > > > My point really is: the old IDE is so badly done that I really fear this > would be a waste of time. Helios should be extensible enough to be > easily modified to behave the way people want. Let's not split the What we need here, is some course into how to work with Helios code, as I myself am too frightened by the sheer amount and lots of levels of indirection and formalisms (that is how it looks like). The problem is, it takes time. The ideal would be if you and Philippe Back could make a shared session implementing https://github.com/amber-smalltalk/amber/issues/1093 (he started to work on that, according to my information). > efforts, the community is too small for that. > > Cheers, > Nico Herby -- 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]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. |
Re: About the discussion on the old IDE
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In reply to this post by Nicolas Petton-3
>> The day to day result is that Helios made me overall less >> productive and slower than using the good old Legacy IDE. > Why do you feel this? What if you could click around to do your work, > just like the old IDE? > > Hi Nico, All here are my productivity concerns regarding this. Helios: I need to toggle windows and jump forth and back. That is anoying on a netbook while I am not at home. Legacy IDE: integrated in the same window mean I can scroll Helios: Documentations is checked by default and I need to uncheck it all the time when ever I browse a new class Legacy IDE: I decide when the documentation is presented Helios: Category "All" is not selected by default. One has to click all the time to see methods Legacy IDE: I open a class and all needed information is visible. Helios: I am asked all the time whether I really want to leave the page. Legacy IDE: that's just fine Helios: menus only represent a small variaty of the funktionality and most stuff is only accessible via short keys that sometimes do not even work Usage of existing menues is difficult since the icons/buttons are so small. It took me several days do finally ralize that they are there at all. Legacy IDE: The most important stuff is just there. Helios: Difficult to impossible to get started with as a Beginner. I am asked on a regular base how to work wit hit since the shot-keys are not really mentioned Legacy IDE: Most stuff ist just visible Helios: Debugger as bad as before Legacy IDE: Without stepping debugger or a working save button currently more or less useless and the most critical reason not to get started with Amber at all. Helios: It is unclear how one can import/fileIn existing Smalltalk code Legacy IDE: There is a button in Workspace and one can just import stuff.... one of the initial powers of Amber... When I compare both then Helios askes for much more user interaction than the Legacy IDE and that is why I stay with the Legacy IDE. Because interaction costs time and therefore productivity But Pharo suffers the same issues. Most used actions like "browse implementors" and such are sometimes hidden on menu's second level. So Pharo crowd seems to be used to that or they all use short keys. The reason why I am a short key user is jsut due to the fact that I am working on different keyboard layouts a day and it is too hard to adapt all the time. My 5cents Sebastian -- 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]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. |
Re: About the discussion on the old IDE
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Nothing unfixable. I can relate to your points. Thanks for sharing. Phil > 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]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. |
Re: About the discussion on the old IDE
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In reply to this post by Nicolas Petton-3
That’s one of the issues but in any case yeah seeing an improvement like that would be great
That’s okay, all products “works” for some people and do not for others (market fit). Is nice to know that detail of your developing days but you need to also note that your presence there had an impact on the adoption (influencing the experiment). There is the force effect :D Like… I would like Helios more if Nico is around me because I like Nico, he do smart things. I know when Nico is around he makes me feel smart too specially when the machine doesn’t respond like I intended making me feel like I’m stupid. But the UI exposed to an isolated user is a different experience. And terrible product designers blame the users (undesigners). Poor / mediocre designers blames themselves (because they didn’t figured out how to unEgo their thinking) Great product designers don’t get distracted by blaming anyone because they know how smart is to pre-supose that there are no stupid users but stupid designs instead and they take their users from zero to hero. So once again :D I support that people want to improve Helios
Is natural that Helios was a pivot with your improved more experienced self :D Some times for life to continue you need to go where you can with whatever you have instead of the ideal (utilitarian argument). Note that you might be underestimating the results that the “dead end" thing achieved (and still does) in its own modest and technically unelegant merits. Here is a practical thing to face: I’ve already heard from people really trying Amber that if the legacy IDE gets removed they are out of Amber in the next second (I have to keep it anonymous to protect investments but note that I heard that first hand). The easy way out of this is to ignore or decide that is not true. The data of the poll is still supporting that it might be true for many others. And I’ve heard that by total chance, make a guess and think how many people experiences that when you are not there? With google anaytics on the call to action of the site can even be measured and estimated (comparing with the number of engaged people in this group).
The instant open has a big impact since I reload very intensely, that’s one thing. Another is the stateful commands. Context menus and a couple of drag drops would do wonders yes.
I already have the CSS that makes all way less worst, only that would justify making a repo and a library to start using it. Your intention is great but I don’t think there is a split of efforts as things are not really moving. Making the old IDE be in its own repo in amber is like unblocking efforts that are currently blocked only because I’m holding the decision of where to push the commits. What’s the harm of allowing the Legacy IDE to continue its legacy? :D
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Re: About the discussion on the old IDE
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A little comment here... It feels to me a bit like what has been going on the pharo-dev list: philosophical discussion becoming a bit out of hand. Sebastian, this is a tad TL;DR... I am not reading the blurbs anymore. Are others feeling that way here? Phil > 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]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. |
Re: About the discussion on the old IDE
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In reply to this post by Amber Smalltalk mailing list
'Sebastian Heidbrink' via amber-lang <[hidden email]> writes: > > Hi Nico, All > > here are my productivity concerns regarding this. Thank you, that helps a lot! 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]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. |
Re: About the discussion on the old IDE
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In reply to this post by sebastianconcept
sebastian wrote: > > The instant open has a big impact since I reload very intensely, that’s > one thing. For reload, there is https://github.com/amber-smalltalk/helios/issues/45. That's a better solution than reloading and opening in-page IDE over and over. -- 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]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. |
Re: About the discussion on the old IDE
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In reply to this post by Amber Smalltalk mailing list
I made a wiki page in the Helios project to keep track of this.
https://github.com/amber-smalltalk/helios/wiki/IDE-Comments-to-improve-Helios Phil -- 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]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. |
Re: About the discussion on the old IDE
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In reply to this post by philippeback
[hidden email] <[hidden email]> writes: > A little comment here... > > It feels to me a bit like what has been going on the pharo-dev list: > philosophical discussion becoming a bit out of hand. > > Sebastian, this is a tad TL;DR... I am not reading the blurbs anymore. > > Are others feeling that way here? I agree. I tried to start a constructive discussion, and explain my point of view, I hope I got understood. I think Sebastian that we'll just have to agree to disagree, and that's ok. I would like though in the future to avoid such discussions to get out of hands, and keep this list focused on the development of Amber. This felt to me like a startup/marketing talk, not a discussion about an opensource project. 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]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. |
Re: About the discussion on the old IDE
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In reply to this post by Herby Vojčík
Herby Vojčík <[hidden email]> writes: > What we need here, is some course into how to work with Helios code, as > I myself am too frightened by the sheer amount and lots of levels of > indirection and formalisms (that is how it looks like). The problem is, > it takes time. The ideal would be if you and Philippe Back could make a > shared session implementing > https://github.com/amber-smalltalk/amber/issues/1093 (he started to work > on that, according to my information). I understand your point. I'll talk with Philippe about it. 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]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. |
Re: About the discussion on the old IDE
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In reply to this post by Amber Smalltalk mailing list
'Sebastian Heidbrink' via amber-lang wrote: > >>> The day to day result is that Helios made me overall less >>> productive and slower than using the good old Legacy IDE. >> Why do you feel this? What if you could click around to do your work, >> just like the old IDE? >> >> > > Hi Nico, All > > here are my productivity concerns regarding this. > > Helios: > Documentations is checked by default and I need to uncheck it all the > time when ever I browse a new class > Legacy IDE: > I decide when the documentation is presented > > Helios: > Category "All" is not selected by default. One has to click all the time > to see methods > Legacy IDE: > I open a class and all needed information is visible. These two are fixed for long time. Update Helios to newest (bower install "heiios#*" --save-dev). Herby -- 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]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. |
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