Re: No automatic tabs in Emacs?

[Elena]

On Dec 6, 3:52 pm, Stefan Monnier <monn...@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
> > Programming is heavily concerned by drudge tasks, unless someone has
> > come up with ways to automate them.
>
> Your world of programming then is very different from mine.
>
> I've only worked on Free Software projects (some of them linked to
> academic research, others not), so maybe I'm biased or blind, but really
> if the amount of "drudge tasks" is so high, it would seem to me that you
> probably have a real problem elsewhere which would be better solved by
> eliminating those tasks completely rather then by automating them
> via IDEs.

Indeed I think we are just grown in different cultures.  One guy has
sent me a mail about my dismissing comments about Emacs as an IDE, and
I answered explaining that I learned to code on Microsoft Visual C++ 6
and Borland C++ 3.  Pretty enhanced environments at their time (and
still now, I would say).

I don't know what you mean by drudge tasks, but as a developer of
commercial applications, I sometimes need to quickly implement a
feature by using some existing libraries.  When such need arises, the
availability of an IDE which understands existing code and helps me
browsing it is essential.  Moreover, sometimes I inherit some old
projects, and here again the helpful presence of an IDE makes a world
of difference.  Commercial development means that time-to-market
matters a lot.  If I were developing code on my own, as I've done
already, I could get by without an IDE, but after having experienced
what an IDE offers, I would feel the difference.

Emacs Lisp is a powerful IDE for developing Emacs Lisp code, and I
would feel the loss if I were to develop Emacs code outside of it.
Wouldn't you?