> On Sat, 2005-02-05 at 06:36, Ernesto Posse wrote:
>
>>   Recently I started a small project, and I wanted to develop it in
>> O'Caml, but after a while I gave up, and did it in Java. My first
>> concern was choosing an IDE.
>
> Why do you need that stuff? What's wrong with a plain
> old text editor and couple of batch files to build
> the code?

  There is nothing wrong with a plain old editor, but for many projects an
IDE can improve development time significantly.


> Seems to me you wasted a heap of time trying to build
> something (an IDE) that you didn't need in the first place.

  Of course I wasted time! That is precisely the point: I shouldn't have
had to look for such tools. My point is not about my personal project.
That was just to illustrate the general point: to attract more
programmers, there is a need for more development tools, in particular
user-friendly, and dare I say, Windows-based tools. There is a need for
such tools, specially if one wants to attract two key players:
first-time programmers, and managers of software development projects.
Without them, there is not much chance to make the O'Caml community grow
significantly.


-- 
Ernesto Posse
Modelling, Simulation and Design Lab - School of Computer Science
McGill University - Montreal, Quebec, Canada
url: http://moncs.cs.mcgill.ca/people/eposse