Wed 25 Jun 2008
Piling on to Colin’s post:
If you knew what I needed to do already why didn’t you just do it? Just popping up the dialog that I now have to go searching for would have been somewhat passable. Besides Jython is not even usable right now so just assume I want my system python. That is just plain laziness and the reason why I keep trying eclipse and then thinking better of it a couple of minutes later.
To be fair I hear it is a great app but I can’t get past the UI. It gets in my way. The run dialog alone has forever traumatized me. Let’s see if the bugzilla plugin will allow me to file this bug or I will be back with another ranty update. I’m going to try to give eclipse a longer benefit of the doubt but if I run into much more of this it’s going to take a lot of people telling me it has since gotten better, before I try again.
[read this post in: ar de es fr it ja ko pt ru zh-CN ]
June 25th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
i’m a php developer and My IDE of choice (zend studio) switched to becoming a commercial eclipse plugin a few months ago, while at first the amount of features that got added by this where great. But the fact that it has a LOT of bugs sucks mayor.
Especially since the remote folder functionality is highly unreliable. Which sucks since most of my development is done on a development server instead of local.
I know eclipse is a big project and all, but its also been 7 years now.
(ironicly while typing this my zend studio starting “building” my project again and freezed)
June 25th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
Someone should create a blog dontaskmedoit.org that finds instances of this user interaction mistake in open source projects. I’ve seen this elsewhere, and it’s always a mistake.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
Err, doitforme.org
June 26th, 2008 at 9:17 am
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=242011
Also, PyDev != Eclipse. That’s like saying GNOME sucks ’cause one of the GNOME apps has poor UI.
June 26th, 2008 at 11:38 am
I understand this is a PyDev issue Andrew but the whole Eclipse infrastructure contributes to this and this has just been the latest of UI issues that Eclipse is not dealing with. BTW it would be fair to say that GNOME sucks because XYZ app’s UI sucks which is why we started focusing on consistent UI and ease of use in the GNOME 2.0 time frame. As far as UI goes GNOME has been pretty good and where it isn’t we’ve flamed ourselves (take a look at Colin’s post that I linked to).
In any case the point wasn’t to say Eclipse sucks but really I’ve heard it is such a great platform but that is like saying emacs and vi are great platforms. The insiders who got passed the learning curve think its great but it just keeps getting in the way of a new user. It has seemed to get slightly better over the years but is really in need of a UI designer’s love most of which is just getting sane defaults.
I hope I didn’t offend the Eclipse team and having touched IDEs before I know how hard of a task it is to balance the needs of novices with the needs of experts. I’m going to try and use it, I bet there are some parts where the UI is amazing. I’ve heard refactoring is a major reason why some people put up with the annoyances and the git stuff looks reasonable once I found out how to enable it. I might even start developing ontop of eclipse for some of the management tools I need to write. In any case keep up the hard work and hopefully we will see some usability improvements in the future.
June 26th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
J5: you didn’t insult anyone
I agree that there’s a tonne of UI work to be done everywhere in Eclipse projects. The nature of the eclipse.org ecosystem (providing frameworks for commercial productization) doesn’t really help matters. Check out this bug, for example:
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=108313
I think about this issue all the time. Tom Fitzsimmons and I were discussing it the other day and one approach we bounced around was having multiple entries in the Programming menu for the various language-specific IDEs (C, C++, Python, Java). We could probably strip out a lot of the UI and leave only stuff specific to that language/environment. Nokia does this with their Carbide IDE AFAIK.
I don’t doubt you’ll run into a million issues if you start using eclipse more. I hope you let me know so I can forward them to the right people and/or fix them! I’ve always wanted to hire an interaction designer for Eclipse stuff but you know how hiring goes …
June 26th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
I’ve heard people raving about Eclipse but every now again the odd complaint slips out. Uber programmer Steve Yegge seems to have a bug in his bonnet about the speed of Eclipse.
June 26th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Andrew, that is an excellent idea. It seems you already have the framework in terms of workspaces and perspectives. It then becomes a matter of getting those implementation details out of the main interface (could be in a customize eclipse mode) and have it switch based on project or even file type. You would have to be careful of moving things around too much when context switches but with the right balance it would be a net win. Since advanced users are going to want to customize no matter what you give them, starting from the simplified interface wouldn’t be that much of an issue.
June 26th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
I’ve tried the same thing … that is giving Eclipse a shot every 6 months or so. I always come to the same conclusion that it’s better than it was before, but other than Java programming it gets in the way every chance it gets. Maybe I’m not old to appreciate the nostalgia for IDE’s … but they generally slow down my working ability.
June 28th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
KDevelop also does the “multiple entries in the Programming menu” trick.
June 29th, 2008 at 6:46 am
Hello John,
The dialog you see was written by me many many years ago (2004?). I provided a small subset of patches for Fabio (PyDev’s author) to have new project and new file wizards. Before that there wasn’t such a feature.
For the technical reasons, you need to have Python interpreters configured before the project is created (due to question for the interpreter on the following screen and initial PYTHONPATH configuration). Since I was on the limited time budget, the logic for closing the new project wizard and opening the current settings page would have needed some extra effort and I didn’t create them.
The correct solution would be to have welcome wizard in PyDev which scans for installed interpreters automatically.
Also, the new Python file dialog is horrible and should be revamped. I am not using it, but doing “New -> File” instead.
PyDev itself is much voluntary driven effort. It does not have IBM workforce backing it up, so you cannot really expect the same quality level from it as there is in Eclipse core. The development focus has been in good code insight/autocomplete features and the user interface might not be easy enough for Python newcomers. Many things could be done easier. However, I still believe that PyDev is the best Python IDE effort out there, because it’s being built on massive and polished Eclipse code base (undo, version control integration, diff, tabs and windows, etc.) and we need to reinvent the wheel only for Python specific parts.
Also, if you are willing to throw in some bucks, I can get someone to fix these nuisances for you. Personally I don’t have time to do PyDev development anymore
Cheers,
Mikko Ohtamaa
Oulu, Finland
June 29th, 2008 at 10:06 am
Did you bother to raise a bug or post a message on the Pydev forum? Fabio is very responsive to bug reports and suggestions.
If you have not bothered to help out by doing either of these things then I don’t think that you are being at all fair.
Pydev is a one man project.
July 1st, 2008 at 5:26 am
Crikey!
Dude, why should it point out where I have jython for me? I might have several versions installed. On different hard drives even.
PyDev is a great plugin, but I don’t expect it to wipe my ass for me!
July 1st, 2008 at 10:38 am
Great, it works for you. That is a supremely supportable solution and awesome buisness model.
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:14 am
I’m wondering what the hell you’re expecting from free software exactly? As for me Jython helps me get stuff done rapidly. Eclipse with PyDev is a great IDE to use. In fact, better so, in my experience, than many proprietary software tools I have used. A little bit of configuration at the start is well worth the pain.
July 2nd, 2008 at 11:14 am
Free Software should be as good as proprietary software, if not better. There is no reason why the two are different and in fact since the source is open and we can fix issues it should get better over time. My reason for pointing out the issues is in hope that someone may go and fix them. I may go and fix them myself but if you don’t already know I spend most of my time writing and fixing Free Software and it isn’t on the top of my list.
I even spend my time criticizing my own software. It is the only way to get things fixed if you honestly look at a piece of software and not instantly say it is gorgeous because I use it. It’s like babies - all mothers think theirs is cute. I can’t stand when people use the “works for me” argument to say there is nothing wrong with an app (it was for too long used as an excuse for not pouring development into X and the desktop because the CLI “works for me, why do I need windows and icons”). I may have been harsh criticizing eclipse but call it the cynicism of many years working directly on GUIs and usability issues (GNOME, OLPC and now WebUI’s). Seeing that dialogue in light of the other post I linked to just brought me back to the stone ages of UI design.
And yes Eclipse is pretty good at a couple of things. I have been using it for the past week and can appreciate some of its features. I also appreciate that Mikko put a lot of work into the PyDev effort and understand his lack of time. I am for one a proponent of widening the appeal of Free Software and Open Source so people can get paid for the useful work they do.