I’m always impressed if someone codes like it’s all he or she has ever done, without IDE and still n-times faster than anyone with an IDE.
During the past few years I’ve done a lot of Java coding. I’ve used Eclipse most of the time, but until now I didn’t realize how little I really know about Java1—my skills largely depended on my IDE of choice.
Most of the time I don’t have a clue where (in which package) a specific class lies, as well as I don’t know (even roughly) what exceptions are thrown. For these tasks I asked my IDE to generate the code I needed (import, try/catch or throws statements).
The last few days I used ANTLR to generate a parser. I didn’t use an IDE (there is none for ANTLR 2 available for free), which meant I had to refer to the Java API to check whether my imports are right, how this or that method is named exactly and which arguments it’ll take (what Eclipse has done so far. It is to be blamed that I only know approximately the first three characters of a method name2).
If we are coding for productivity, in our day job or where time matters more than sharpening our skills, it’s fine (and sometimes crucial) to use an IDE. But if we want to learn something and get better (smarter) at our tasks it actually does harm: we’ll end up thinking man that’s easy I must know pretty much everything about this or that5... where in fact we only know how to use our IDE and don’t know s##t about the language itself3.
Another dangerous thing with code generators is, that it seems pretty easy to get up and running with a mid-sized application. We write a bit, generate a lot and we’re ready to go, isn’t that so? No, only at the beginning! If we (or someone else) need to change something in that code, maybe weeks or months later we have to understand every bit of the generated code (Ben has written about that too), now we’re screwed. If the code looks messy why should anyone bother to do his/her best to make clean changes?
If it’s easy to copy and generate lots of code why should one bother and think about abstraction, generalization and stuff? If I had to write getters and setters by hand, I would do anything to avoid it. Maybe (just maybe…) I’d just start designing my programs, making a real O-O design (or write a generator to write them for me, but that’s another story).
The previous problem can easily be avoided by hiding the generating the code. In Lisp one writes macros to generate code at compile time, xDoclet generates code as it’s own step, EJB 3 generates code at compile time too.
Now, what’s the point? Use a plain text-editor4 for educational purposes and avoid generating too much code with your IDE on your day job.
1 Java in terms of packages structure, method names etc. Meta-concepts like algorithms, techniques, patterns etc. are out of question.
2 That’s a great example for a quote out of Donald Normans book The Design of Everyday Things Knowledge in the head, and in the world: Precise behavior can emerge from imprecise knowledge, and, of course his Things that make us Smart book. None of these things make us an expert… merely an user.
3 You can be a pretty smart programmer, but don’t know a lot about the used programming language. To be a true expert you have to dive into the language itself and don’t rely on an IDE.
4 There are many high quality editors out there. I like TextMate most, but Emacs, Vim and JEdit are quite good too (and free, but keep the learning curve in mind).
5 See Unskilled and Unaware of it (PDF, 500kb). Somewhat related: Being a specialist (PDF, 164kb).
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The Brain: Pinky, are you pondering what I’m pondering?
Pinky: I think so Brain, but if you replace the P with an O, my name would be Oinky, wouldn’t it?
