[erlang-questions] Time to update programming rules?

[Edwin Fine]

> You should not need a Gargantuan cycle-hogging "IDE" to paper over
> mistakes in a design.  Have you studied Meyer's LACE at all?
>
>
Now hold on a second :)

Firstly, unless you are running X on a PDP-11/44 or NT on a 286, an IDE like
Eclipse is not that much of a big deal. These days there are plenty of spare
cycles and memory addresses to hog on a modern development workstation.

Secondly, although I agree that ideally one should not need an IDE to
compensate for design errors in a programming language, IDEs are peerless
when it comes to supporting computer-aided processes like refactoring.
Machines are far better at cross-checking fiddly things like inter- and
intra-module references than are humans. And besides, I know of no
significant (i.e. those I have heard of ;) programming languages that lack
design errors. Although I must admit, I probably only know of a fraction of
the scores or hundreds that you know about.

As an aside, I think it would be rather indelicate to study Meyer's LACE,
even if Meyer wasn't wearing it.

Regards,
Edwin Fine
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