Weekly Edition
Return to the Press page
| |||||||||||||
What Developers Want (O'ReillyNet)
O'ReillyNet takes
a look at what developers want. "Irrespective of the language
programmers choose for expressing solutions, their wants and needs are
similar. They need to be productive and efficient, with technologies that
do not get in the way but rather help them produce high-quality
software. In this article, we share our top ten list of programmers' common
wants and needs."
(Log in to post comments)
What Developers Want (O'ReillyNet) Posted Jun 24, 2005 21:54 UTC (Fri) by pjs (guest, #10927) [Link] More than any other factor, what I want from any development tool is avoidance in making difficult tasks even harder or even impossible.
Sure, it's nice when the tools make relatively easy tasks less tedious. But all too often, these conveniences come at the expense of greater frustration doing difficult tasks.
Sadly, this consideration doesn't float to the top of surveys for new feature requests.
What Developers Want - says who? Posted Jun 25, 2005 4:22 UTC (Sat) by skybrian (subscriber, #365) [Link] Not a bad wishlist, but I'm annoyed with the title. Unless they've actually done a survey or arereporting on their conversations with other people, the authors should speak for themselves and not presume to speak for other developers.
What Developers Want - says who? Posted Jun 25, 2005 10:05 UTC (Sat) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] I completly agree. They use 'developers' to mean a subset of web apps developers. This is discriminatory toward other software developers.
What Developers Want (O'ReillyNet) Posted Jun 25, 2005 13:00 UTC (Sat) by dan_b (subscriber, #22105) [Link] A comprehensive functional module is an end-to-end, integrated, self-contained horizontal framework (such as a portal or content management system) instantiated with the right configurations and settings for immediate usage. Application developers like to have usage-specific (for instance, a portal framework targeted for an employee portal versus a supplier portal), comprehensive functional modules that are ready to use within their given ecosystems.What this programmer wants is greater use of plain English.
What Developers Want (O'ReillyNet) Posted Jun 25, 2005 18:29 UTC (Sat) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link] Indeed. After I decoded that, I realized what they're really asking for is someone else to do all the hard work for them. :) Not that I can fault them for that, but it's hardly the makings of a "top 10" list.
What Developers Want (O'ReillyNet) Posted Jun 25, 2005 22:28 UTC (Sat) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] I am a developer, and I have exactly what I want:
What Developers Want (O'ReillyNet) Posted Jul 5, 2005 20:08 UTC (Tue) by roelofs (guest, #2599) [Link] I am a developer, and I have exactly what I want:Amen to that. I would add just two more to the list:
I realize most people lump GNU libc together with the GCC, but technically they're quite different. (Maybe "GNU-based toolchain," which also includes binutils, would have been a better way to list the two items.) I'm tempted to add bullets for all of the excellent Free and Open Source libraries out there--especially the compression- and encryption-related ones--and for the (searchable) Web as the world's greatest reference library, but I'll content myself with just giving them honorable mentions for now. Greg
What Developers Want (O'ReillyNet) Posted Jun 26, 2005 1:22 UTC (Sun) by ccchips (guest, #3222) [Link] Prediction:
"Stays out of the way and lets you get your work done" is about to become more common in big-corp, big-print ads for developer tools.
When Windows 3.1 came on the scene, I liked the fact that I could get all my work done without ever touching a mouse, even when I was in their GUI. No more.
And I've *never* been able to avoid using a mouse in X.
I remember my college days..."Just keep studying over there--we won't get in your way." Ha ha.
That's more difficult since the advent of the web browser Posted Jun 26, 2005 3:33 UTC (Sun) by leonbrooks (guest, #1494) [Link] Pages tend to have bulk links on them, not arranged in any sensible order, which makes keyboard navigation difficult. Otherwise, it's easy. I read my email and news using almost entirely keyboard (and could easily do it 100% keyboard if clicking weren't sometimes more appropriate), wordprocess likewise (OpenOffice) and the same applies pretty much across the board (I do not, however, do stuff like defining selection boundaries in The GIMP using a keyboard!).What I like most about typical X11 GUIs is that you have the choice of keyboard or mouse, you're not facing a choice of constantly using both or wading through menus. A copy-paste is swipe, move mouse, middle-click on X11. On MS-Windows, it's swipe, Ctrl-C (or right-click-and-hold-move-carefully-to-Copy-then-release), move mouse, click, Ctrl-V (or right-click-and-hold-move-carefully-to-Paste-then-release) to do the same thing.
That's more difficult since the advent of the web browser Posted Jun 27, 2005 2:27 UTC (Mon) by Mithrandir (subscriber, #3031) [Link] "Pages tend to have bulk links on them, not arranged in any sensible order, which makes keyboard navigation difficult." I browse using mostly keyboard by using the search links feature of Firefox. It's also present in Mozilla, though in a slightly different form. To use it, type a ' character, then the text of the link you want to follow. Ctrl-g to search again. Then hit enter to follow the link. Ctrl-enter to open in a new tab. Ctrl-pgup and ctrl-pgdown to switch tabs. Ctrl-W to close tabs. / followed by text to search in a page. That's most of what I need. Nothing annoys me more than a web form with a nonintuitive tab order. ;)
|
|||||||||||||