But when I’ve played with Java, using IntelliJ IDEA was an amazing experience: it flagged syntax errors like a spellcheck so you didn’t waste time compiling, had seamless integration with documentation and object model browsers, and the code-completion (that hardcore geeks seem to really dislike) is actually a useful supplement to documentation – for simple tasks, it’s as good as having a code snippet example. Refactoring support was brilliant too. In short, the IDE had powerful language aware features, it didn’t just give you fancy wizards to build pretty GUIs with.

Though I couldn’t quite find it in me to fork out the money for the license and went back to Vim when my trial expired, I’d thoroughly recommend giving a modern refactoring-aware browser a try.

I develop web applications in ASP and ASP.NET, using (aat the moment) Visual Studio .NET. While such tools as the debugger are invaluable (both for server-side and client-side code), I am constantly driven up the wall by the assorted “tidying” VS.NET imposes on my code, and thus turn it all off (to the extent one can). As for the creation of projects or project components, once the IDE has done its work of creating the HTML and so forth, I go through it and rip the whole lot out, then replace it with standards-compliant code. I’d say that on average, I waste about 20 minutes on every single component of an application just tidying up; for code, there is a similar overhead in just establishing basics (database connection and so forth) using the .NET API. The only justification I have for this timewasting is that the debugger usually saves me much more time in the long run.

I think the problem is that the .NET framework is massively over-engineered for many of the things we do with web applications; it may be great to have that level of framework support for an enterprise-scale application running across multiple servers, but when you’re just getting a few bits of information from a database and displaying them on the page, which probably comprises about 80% of web apps work, it’s overkill.

The analogy that springs to mind is those people that use a 4 by 4 (SUV for the Americans among us) to go down to the shops to buy a pound of carrots. There’s an enormous amount of power and amazing capabilities that just remain unused in the majority of instances. We’d all be better off if these people used a small runabout, and that’s just what ASP is.

Nick – nice analogy; agreed.

I have never really used an IDE for this very reason – too much bulk. GVim has been providing for my needs for a while :)

In my defense, I was replying to your email when I checked your site and saw the ‘snarky’ post at which point I decided to respond in kind.

The answer is a resounding “4. something else” as you’ll see on my post. It’s funny you thought of my observations as “unreasonable” when Bob thought it was spot on (and he should know).

Maybe we should have an Aq v. Schwuk debate at LRL…

You are dead right about Visual Studio .NET – I use it for it’s code completion, debugging, and solutions. Once I start editing an ASP.NET page in VS.NET switch into the HTML view and never go back to Designer unless I can possibly help it – especially if I’m working with standards compliant code.

If you make that many changes to the standard templates, you should look into creating your own.

I’m actually experimenting with ignoring .aspx pages and using HttpHandlers instead. Some (Aq) may say “why bother using Mono/.NET then?” but I’m simply ignoring one facet of a very powerful framework.

Hence my mea culpa. I was wrong :)