[erlang-questions] Erlide packageability (was Re: "Erlang as a First Language" -- crazy? or juststupid?)

[Garrett Smith]

On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 11:46 PM, Michael Turner <leap@REDACTED> wrote:
>
> On 12/20/2009, "egarrulo" <egarrulo@REDACTED> wrote:
>>Erlang is not suitable for beginners. The language is simple enough, however tool support and API documentation aren't.....

-snip-

> Of course, I could tell my target audience "Just use your favorite
> editor".  But you know what?  Most mere mortals wouldn't know what I
> meant.  Mortals use word processors, PowerPoint (and sometimes graphics
> and page layout).  And as egarrulo implies, people tend to like having
> One Good Window for what they're focusing on.  Tabbed browsers show
> that's what they want even when they have ADD.
>
> So I'm wondering: Could Erlide be put together on a one-click install
> CD?  Or even better: a one-click over-the-web install?

If you just want to teach the language, any editor that supports
syntax highlighting for Erlang should be fine. You are talking about a
full featured functional language - anyone using Erlang really should
be more than capable of figuring out how to use a text editor. Sheesh
:)

> Of course, this issue also invokes a recursion in my initial question:
>
>  "Eclipse as a First IDE" - pure madness? or just unadulterated idiocy?

If you were teaching Java, Eclipse would almost certainly be the right
tool. I haven't played around with ErlIDE for a while, but I hear it's
making rapid progress - so Eclipse could be a win for early Erlang
developers.

Were it me, I'd probably just pick a simple editor (e.g. on Windows,
Programmers Notepad - http://www.pnotepad.org) and offer that as an
option for anyone tempted to use Word ;) Simple "make" batch files for
builds will work fine for student projects.

Garrett