Lpc2000

Charles and co,

Am I correct that you are just embittered about the way the development 
tools industry is going?

I think you are are totally wrong on the subject of IDEs, and I don't 
believe you've ever used a modern IDE  properly on a real project (from 
start, to completion), or would ever want to.

You should not be sending the wrong signals to younger generation 
programmers who are getting used to IDE based products from birth (well 
pretty soon in any case). Please stop this nonsense.

Here's what I think you should do:
Try out Rowley Associates CrossStudio**** for a couple of projects. Let 
everyone know at LPC2000 how you get on, and whether you still think 
IDE's are waste of time.  You have no excuse, because there is a 30 day 
evaluation of the FULL package available from the Rowley site which you 
can try out:

http://www.rowley.co.uk/arm/index.htm

Where I work, our R&D team have just completed a number of fairly 
complicated projects (450K code) using the above tools, with hundreds of 
modules, where we needed non standard linker scripts for various run 
time environments. It's was all doable within the IDE, and saved in 
project file. We can rebuild a complete project (from CVS) and load it 
into a chip via JTAG with a single click. It's like typing in the name 
of a batch file at the command prompt, but quicker. We can optionally 
connect a debugger (after the code has started running!) just to see 
what's happening - more difficult from a command line I expect.

Yes, we've all done the GNU tools makefile, linker scripts etc, and run 
them from a batch file stuff etc, I myself was a die hard command line 
developer for years - but what a pain, and waste of time. It made we 
feel like a hippy. Remember, makefiles, linker scripts etc were the 
things which put many engineers off from using GNU tools, while IDEs 
have enabled engineers to adopt GNU based tools more readily.

As engineers we should be concentrating on delivering commercially and 
technically successful projects, striving to save on development time, 
but not spending too much time  pondering about what's under the hood of 
a compiler suite. (Though I am not necessarily saying one should have 
blind faith in dev tools, and not take note of what is being generated!!!)

This is why we have IDEs. They focus engineers on one thing: The project.

****[By the way I am not a 'Rowley' sales agent. It's just that Rowley 
is a very good example of how an IDE should work. We evaluated IAR, Keil 
and others, but  found Rowley to have the richest set of development 
tools within one development suite, but at a fraction of the cost (\ufffd500) 
of the competition. We went for Rowlay approximately nine months ago, 
and have never looked back]

Cheers

Jane
 
Charles Manning wrote:

>
> > I agree on this, but for selling a GUI is the thing. Even better an IDE.
> > My problem with IDEs is, that most if not all are limited. Some do not
> > allow
> > you to build libraries, other hide compiler/linker switches the
> > command-line
> > tool offers but most do not allow to integrate code generators into the
> > build
> > process.
> > A simple makefile-line:
> >
> > sconf.c : hello-phyCore2294.xml
> >       sconf -c $<
> >
> > is not possible in any IDE I'v seen so far (even not Eclipse, but 
> this one
> > is a
> > horror anyway with only 450MHz :-(
> >
> > Just the 2cents from an emacs/make addict :-)
>
> My 2c...
>
> I hate IDEs because they lock you in and hide stuff. Too often they 
> force you
> to do things their way. The hiding is a pain because frequently you 
> need to
> do just that little bit more than the IDE offers and you end up digging
> through proprietary ugly configuration stuff.
>
> For me, first prize is:
> Source Navigator: Code browsing and editing. The code browser handles 
> all the
> cross references etc so you can hop around your code easily.
>
> Command line make, ld etc  for building.
>
> I think of an IDE as a Swiss Army knife. It is basically a bad to 
> middling
> knife, a bad pair of scissors and a reasobnable corkscrew rolled into one
> easy to use tool. If you want a proper knife, scissors or corkscrew 
> you don't
> use a Swiss Army knife.
>
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