What type of programming environment do you prefer?

I like it when I can track the contents of a variable on the fly.

I'm just now starting to use vi.

Cobol, Fortran and CLEO (that's Clear Language for Expressing orders for those not born when the LEO (Lyons Electronic Office, that's right, the cake company) computers were built in the UK.

oh yes, also, machine language when it was software. That's the stuff that's now hardware/firmware.

gnu-emacs, Unix-style shell, web browser - though I will use msdev or dbx/gdb/xdb for debugging.

bleh

I have recently been spoiled by GUI/IDE systems, but I also find they like to do things their way... and sometimes they make assumptions about what I want to do without asking me first. Or worse, they don't give me the ability to do things because they think no sane person would want to do them.

Also, different languages have different IDE's, forcing me to learn more. So in the long run I prefer a simple text editor and compiler.

I do not write programs

mandy, best way to be, you will stay normal.

bill, you make me happy with the decision I made twenty years ago to leave the world of programming. Your comment is utter gobbledygook to me.

I didn't at all like the first GUI builder I used and I've avoided them (and other things that want to write my code for me) since then. It wouldn't let you save anything if it wouldn't compile... so when leaving for the day we usually ended up commenting everything out just to save it. Ick.

Rosco SuperSats

miykal, I'm happy with your decision as well.

bill: no fair hitting below the belt.

bill : you rock

Multi-person development efforts demand makefiles. If the GUI-based dev suite makes scripts that can be put in a makefile, I'll use it. If it doesn't, then vi vi vi.

phi: that sounds pretty narrow. why are makefiles demanded by multi-person efforts? what if the gui-based dev suite created scripts that had all the same features of a makefile? what features are you looking for?

I'm a VB guy, which means I really don't know how to program. But my stuff works anyway!