How long to "get used to" a new development tool/IDE?

dalecosp

How many times in your "programming life" have you switched to a new tool or toolset to do the major portion of your work?

Does it take you very long to learn a new IDE / Editor / system?

I became convinced of my need for something a little better when tracking down a nasty little bug in a fairly good-sized project I'm working on. I'd been developing mostly in terminal; at some point while going back and inserting some new functionality I broke something that had been working previously. It took me about 4 days (not full days; we're too busy to let me sit in an ivory tower with the same code all day, it seems) to find the bug, and I did it by opening the file in question in Notepad++ and hovering over curly braces until I figured out that the looping structure was no longer stacked up as designed (I really would've thought that breaking that would've caused parse errors, but it didn't...).

So I'm looking at some of the bigger IDE's (have actually d'led NetBeans) and it's rather discomfitting how much slower I seem to be using it. I think I'm getting rather old and "stuck in my ways" :eek:

Derokorian

Well in 3 years, I've used TextPad, then moved to Notepad++ then to Komodo Edit, now as a .NET programmer I use Visual Studio, and more recently for PHP I've switched to Zend Studio (since I got it for $30). I've never had a problem with switching, sometimes it takes a bit to figure out where things are, reprogram key binds, etc. but all in all never had a problem moving forward.

Conversely when I go to someone else's work station and they have textpad or notepad++ open I find I have a hard time sometimes.

Edit: With regards to NetBeans... I did D/L it sometime back and tried to use it, but I just plain didn't like it. It got removed. I think its a personal preference thing, but it just wasn't something I decided I wanted to try to learn.

Bonesnap

I was using Dreamweaver for about six years for web work (even back when it was owned by Macromedia, remember them?). I'm very resistant to change but figured I should branch out and explore my horizons; surely there was something better out there.

My biggest hitch though was I wanted to be able to control the syntax highlighting. While I was looking for a newer/better/whatever IDE/editor, I had gotten very used to the way Dreamweaver coloured its syntax. I tried the following editors/IDEs:

Notepad++
InType
Notepad2
Aptana
Eclipse
Geany
Komodo Edit

A tried Notepad++ because I heard a lot about it and I knew a friend who used it to write some C code, but really I thought it was pretty subpar. It randomly highlighted certain functions but others it didn't. You could add them but who really wants to sit there and add functions/identifiers? Plus there was no difference in the colours between identifiers and something like language constructs.

The others were decent (except Notepad2, just wasn't for me) but didn't work for me in one category or another, except Komodo Edit. It did everything I wanted plus had a ton of other features that have proven to be very useful over the last 6 months or so (I forget exactly when I switched). I was convinced in 15 minutes. I've wanted to try phpDesigner but just haven't gotten around to it.

To answer the question I was "converted" within a few days. There were a few things I had to get used to but now I don't even remember the way Dreamweaver did them.

laserlight

If it is something I like, I'll get used to it within hours or even minutes. If it is something I don't like, a few days may not be enough (or may be too much torture).

NogDog

laserlight;11020233 wrote:
If it is something I like, I'll get used to it within hours or even minutes. If it is something I don't like, a few days may not be enough (or may be too much torture).

Probably a good summation.

I think my current path was Eclipse (liked a lot of it, was a bit of a pain to set up, and was just too darned slow -- at least back then), then Apatana (not bad, not too hard to get used to), then PHPDesigner (had a lot of nice features, but was missing a couple that I really needed), then NetBeans (reminded me a lot of Apatana, and as such pretty easy to learn), and now am using Komodo Edit and thinking about buying Komodo IDE to get the built in debugger. I think that in general I found most of them fairly equal in learning curve, and similar enough that once you've used a couple of them, the learning of new IDEs gets faster.

traq

I'm with laserlight. If I'm going to be happy with an editor/IDE, I know it within a few hours, and I've more-or-less adjusted to it within a few days. (I use Komodo currently.)

dalecosp

NogDog;11020243 wrote:
once you've used a couple of them, the learning of new IDEs gets faster.

That, at the very least, is hopeful information. 🙂

cretaceous

I'm old and find it really difficult when I try new IDEs - last time was about a year ago - I needed multiline find and replace and I began to like the new IDE (can't remember which it was now - it's on my other machine).. but after a day I just went back to my old one for that warm security blanket feeling. BAAD! I should have persevered.

When it comes to new versions of Windows I am pathologically resistant to any change - my W7 looks like XP - and what I hate is that it can take so many hours to get a PC just right on a new install. Sounds like obsessive behaviour.. hmm.

NogDog

cretaceous;11020447 wrote:
...I needed multiline find and replace and I began to like the new IDE (can't remember which it was now - it's on my other machine)...

That's the main reason I gave up on PHPDesigner -- have to have multi-line search/replace. 🙂

Derokorian

Agreed, if it doesn't have multi-line search/replace or it doesn't have regex search/replace then its not something I will use.