Re: IDE

[John Wiegley]

>>>>> Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:

>> >> To reiterate: I think Emacs becomes more of an IDE when it provides
>> >> the backbone of an IDE, and not when it looks like one.
>> >
>> > I don't think this will fly.  In effect, you are telling Emacs users
>> > they will have to code their own IDE by using the infrastructure
>> > (a.k.a. "backbone") that we provide.
>> 
>> I don't see that.  He is telling Emacs developers they'll be able to
>> rely on common infrastructure for creating an IDE catered to some
>> particular language/system.

> OK, but IMO we should aim for more than that.  What John wrote sounded
> like providing the infrastructure _is_ the goal.  Apologies if I
> misunderstood.

Ah, I should have been clearer, Eli. What I wrote was addressed to Emacs
developers. I think we have succeeded *towards* having an IDE when we have the
right backbone in place.

Next comes the package contributors, who will build out functionality on top
of this backbone. If we do it right, it will mostly mean porting the backends
of existing libraries that already do a superb job, like company and helm.

Finally comes knitting it all together into a good user experience. This takes
some art, but we have a few examples where this has been done right already.

At the end of that road, we'd have an excellent IDE environment that a
non-Emacs user could intuitively appreciate, the way so many do with Org or
Spacemacs (each of which has won new Emacs users on its own, before those
users understood what Emacs was really about).

John