Programming Tools

[[deleted user]]

While this chapter provides a nice overview of the tool landscape, it doesn't address the huge issue for me, which is the tool learning curve. I don't write enough code, and consistently in the same language/environment, to justify really digging in and learning most of the deep features in a full-blown development environment tool like Eclipse or Xcode. A lot of the code I write is still done using vi!

I agree with the "our programming tool will generate your code, so you don't need programmers anymore" commentary. Programmers will be here to stay for a very, very long time.

I wish that this book (in this chapter or the one on version control) would expand on the different versioning tool operation and process philosophies (such as Subversion vs. Git).

[Erik]

Eventhough it makes sense, I was suprised to see libraries and other open source items in this chapter under the "build vs buy" section. Then I realized all of the tools in this chapter could be under the "build vs buy" category.

As you mentioned, the buy option comes with a learning curve.

[Aleksander]

I wish author included a list of recommendations for each type of tools both commercial and open source. Nevertheless , this chapter provides with different tool types that I've never used before and really want to try. After I read Code Tuning chapter, I found a few profilers. AMD Codeanalyst profiler after installation easily integrated in Visual Studio 2010, I was impressed with level of details it provided. The other one, Very Sleepy, ran as standalone application, a little simpler, but still very nice. I hope to find other useful tools listed in Debugging and Testing sections in this chapter.

Git vs Subversion. Some time ago the following presentation forced me to try git:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKH...