How do *REAL* programmers work?

[Ted Roche]

Dan Coutu wrote: 

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'. <

When I started working with Linux a couple of years ago, that was the
impression I had, too. Great programming books like "Pragmatic Programmer"
and esr's "The Art of UNIX Programming" describe the power and capability of
the text-based world, and it has created the worlds' best operating system,
no doubt. However, the drive for "The Year of the Linux Desktop" and the
vast improvements in window managers has made a lot of pretty powerful tools
available in the FOSS world, too. The latest "Software Development" magazine
features 27 "must have" open source projects include ArgoUML
(http://argouml.tigris.org/), Bugzilla, Eclipse, and other tools. I'll be
interested in seeing what effect they have on journeyman programming.

There's no doubt that, ultimately, typing text in an editor is how coding
gets done, and the graphical eye candy can be an interference. I know my
writing suffered as I went from text editors to word processing, and I
suspect there are analogues in programming. On the other hand, sometimes
that picture really is worth a thousand words. I hope there's a happy
medium.

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

Thank you much for sharing your insights. I hope we get to see some meetings
focused on application development. I'll gladly share what I'm learning.

Ted