When is it ever ok to write your own development tools? (editor into IDE)
- by mario
So I'm foremost using a text editor for coding. It's a very bare bones editor; provides mostly just syntax highlighting. But on rare occasions I also need to debug something. And that's when I have to resort to an IDE (mostly Netbeans, but got fiddly Eclipse/Aptana working as second fallback).
For general use however IDEs feel not workable to me. It's a visual thing, being used to console UIs etc. And switching back and forth between a text editor and an IDE is slightly cumbersome too. That's why I'm considering extending the editor, not really into a full-fledged IDE - but at the very least integrate a debug feature.
Since I'm working on PHP, it seems not that much effort. The DBGp allows to externalize a debug handler from the editor, so it's just minor integration work and figuring out how to shoehorn a breakpoint feature into the editor (joe btw).
And while I've also got time to do that, I'm wondering if this is really worthwhile.
In this case it's not a needed development tool. It's just for convenience.
And the cause for doing it is basically just not liking the existing solution.
While over time I might extend and adapt this debugger thing, it initially will be as circumstantial as Eclipse. It inevitably starts out as poor development tool.
Furthermore there is likely not much reuse. (Okay, this is not an important point. Most such software exists sans much of a use case. And also obviously, similar extensions already exist for emacs and vim, so it cannot be completely pointless.)
But what's a general guideline on attempting to conoct custom development tools, particularily if they are not really needed but satisfy personal preferences? (Usability enhancement not certain.)
