How do *REAL* programmers work?

[Dan Coutu]

Ted Roche wrote:

>In a Former Development Environment That Need Not Be Named, I would use UML
>design tools, CASE and Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD) tools to design
>this app, and GUI project management, source code control, and a rich-client
>GUI IDE with immediate windows, color-coded editor with macro capabilities,
>compiler, object browser and integrated documentation. 
>  
>
This is where the key difference is. If you're doing FOSS then chances 
are you can't afford
things like Rational Rose and such. So it requires doing things 'the old 
way'. More time goes
into process and methods because you don't have those labor-saving tools 
to help you
along. As a result of writing code for over 20 years I find that the GUI 
type tools with
graphic representations (such as UML) don't always make a lot of sense. 
This is due to
lots of years where textual descriptions of the requirements, 
specifications, and design are
all we had to work with. Those methods happen to work wonderfully in the 
FOSS world
because they're cheap and mostly dependent on my brain rather than some 
external thing
that costs beaucoup bucks..

Emacs is still one of my most heavily used tools. I've taken to liking 
Cervisia more than the
command line CVS interface because it lets me do more from one place. 
For Java development
I find that Oracle's JDeveloper is pretty nice. I hear that Eclipse 
might be better so it is on my
list of things to check out. For things like database work I still rely 
on a command line
interface that processes plain old SQL. While ER diagrams are really 
useful for reverse
engineering and explaining a design to someone else I find that they 
always leave out
important design details about the database that just can't be captured 
in an ER diagram.

Well that should provide at least a glimpse into things in my world for 
you. Hope it helps.

Dan