Re: IDE

[Tom]

> Emacs with GUD is an IDE.  It has a big advantage compared with
> other IDEs: when you see a source file, you're editing it with Emacs.

This is an advantage for Emacs users who want to use Emacs. Other
IDE users do not care about this that much.

> If it falls short compared with other IDEs, I think this would be a
> great area for improvement of Emacs.

The number one requirement by IDE users today is perfect code completion
and powerful refactoring support for the language they develop in
(Java, C++, etc.).

Any IDE which wants to compete with the popular IDEs must have these,
because users find these features much more helpful in development,
than keyboard macro support and such.

So if Emacs wants to compete with these tools then it has to have seamless,
context aware code completion and refactoring support, and GNU tools
has to provide Emacs the necessary information to implement these
features.