Re: IDE

[John Wiegley <johnw@newartisans.com>]

>>>>> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> I'm quite sure CEDET has collected and expressed in code a lot of experience
> and solutions to many problems that arise in the context of building an IDE.
> It's OK to discard that, if we sure that's the proverbial 1st variant
> everyone throws away, but we need first to be sure we know what we are
> discarding.

I'm not suggesting we discard experiences. What I'm saying is: it doesn't make
sense to proceed by looking at CEDET, and then asking what should be changed.

CEDET is like a hammer. When it was made, the problem looked like nail.

Today, the problem might be a screw (is it? do we know?). We're not going to
arrive at the best answer by asking ourselves how a hammer can be changed to
meet the needs of a screw. It deserves looking at the problem anew.

It doesn't mean we throw out the hammer. Maybe we do have a nail, maybe we
don't. The point is: If we make technical assumptions before learning what we
want to end up with, we're going to arrive at something shaped more by those
assumptions than by our needs.

So unless there are other features I should bear in mind, I'm going to turn my
attention away from CEDET now and back to the IDE vision I'd like everyone's
help with, once there is more to say.

John