SHAVA@ISIS.MIT.EDU (02/09/88)
... A very long time ago (as such things run...) Mark Chilenskas (then of Computer Corp of America) and I (then of Varian) published a DECUS paper called "Tailoring EDT for the Structured Languages Programmer" (St Louis. Anyone remember when that was...? 1981 or somesuch). Mark and I had both used EMACS (thank you, Richard Stallman!), and wanted to be able to do SOME of the nifty EMACS like things in EDT. What began as a editor hack-swap of EDTINI tricks turned into a paper and a call to arms. Our presentation was relegated to a small meeting room, and the presentation--and it's overflow session--were both over capacity for the room. Six months later, the LSE project started. I was supposed to go talk ABOUT edt for the editor wars session, but (I confess) I slept through the time of the session (I had a cold over DECUS). However, I did not go there to praise EDT, nor quite to bury it. I think EDT is a great text processor, but a much less useful software development tool than LSE/TPU or EMACS. EDT is easy to learn and to understand, and is a great first text processor to teach operator-trainees. It even has a decent, if flawed, computer aided instruction course, if you want to pay extra for it. Much as I would recommend standardizing on a MAKE-like tool for any kind of large-ish software product (or even MMS/CMS if you have money and can figure them out...), I would also recommend "investing" in getting your programmers standardized on other software tools INCLUDING an editor. On VMS, I would probably make that a TPU produced editor. This is probably going to earn me flames from the "oppose fascism in project management" types, but whereas I agree with them in my heart, my experience indicates that people work together better when they use and can hack on the same tools--of which the editor is the last of which to be standardized, generally (and deservedly?). Shava Nerad MIT VAX Resource Center Shava@isis.mit.edu Shava@athena.mit.edu 617/253-7438 --the opinions expressed above have nothing to do with MIT, and may not-- --even jive with what I tell you if you ask me the same thing tomorrow.--