Integrated Development Environments and Lightweight Languages.

[Matthew Estes <address@hidden>]

	What is currently the state of the art in "integrated development 
environments"? I realize that SmallTalk has its own environment, which I 
have seen but never used, and I know many people swear Emacs is the one 
true path, but I was wondering what ELSE there is. Particularly something 
that is language neutral, but even if its not, something with an innovative 
to creating programs.  	I know graphical languages get a bad rap, but I 
think it is neat how the Altera MAX VHDL environment lets you mix 
schematics and raw VHDL, and even LabView's graphical programming language 
is interesting(although I personally hated using it for one of my classes 
in the Spring).
	A while back someone mentioned Source Code in Database, but I've also seen 
some other interesting stuff like Doxygen's generated HTML, and the way 
Source Navigator lets you view call graphs. I even like how the newer 
Visual Studio will do a little popup with the prototype of a function in it.
	I guess I was wanting to know what's out there. I mean, syntax 
highlighting can't be the only way to make an editor more efficient to a 
programmer. Is there some GUI IDE that could be useful for a lightweight 
language designer, or is there some body of work that gives some of the 
most useful ways to help the programmer out in the editor. I know one time 
I thought an editor that "rolled up" loops or scopes that were nested a few 
levels deeper than the current one would be cool to help jump through a 
large source file, or heck, even something that automatically split a 
source file into separate windows for each definition and function but then 
stitched them all back together again before saving.
	Its sad to admit this, but I saw several nice things in MicroSoft's 
QuickBASIC compiler for DOS a LONG time ago. And then when I later moved 
on, I found myself missing some of those nice features, which only worked 
themselves into other things years later. I realize that they were probably 
not original to the QuickBASIC IDE, but I know there's GOT to be more out 
there. If not, I guess its a sad state.
	I'm not protesting the tyranny of ASCII really, but I do like IDE's, and I 
can't help but think they could so much better.

						Matt Estes