use Perl

• Editor Choice does matter (Score:3, Insightful)

  by hossman (2110) on 2002.04.25 15:40 (#7546)

  First and formost, choice of editor should be based on individual comfort/style, not how well it's integrated with a particular language. I like emacs commands, I like most of the emacs default key-bindings, I like the overall feel of emacs -- so I use emacs. Other people can say the same thing about vim, or Komodo, or Kwrite, or TextPad or whatever you want -- that's the first step towards narrowing down your seletion, make sure you like the editor as a basic editor.

  Odds are, if an editor is good enough to pass that first test, it's ging to offer customizations, it's going to offer support for particular programming languages, then go look at those and decided if you want to use them. If you want syntax highlighting, turn it on; If you want auto indenting, turn it on; If you want code completion, turn it on. Personally, I hate code ompletion, but I love auto-tabbing and syntax highlighting. They help me see typos faster.

  Personally, I use perl-mode, and the only problems I've ever had with it not highlighting the way I think it should is when I put funky characters like '#' or '"' inside qq() or qw(). The only time it doesn't auto-indent in a way that makes sense is when it sees something it thinkgs is code in here docs. I don't mind either of these, because it shows me places where other people would probably be confused by my code at first glance as well.

  Again, any editor worth using is going to be customizable, if you don't like the default tabing depth in perl-mode, tweak it; if you don't like the colours used or comments, tweak it. But those aren't reasons NOT to use an editor, or not to use the language speciffic support in an editor.

  Reply to This