How hard can programming be?

Summary: I was bemoaning the lack of a polished GUI text editor for Linux.orI was waxing lyrical about the elegantly finished open source GUI text editors on Windows, such as Notepad++ and Notepad2, and Smultron on the Mac.

I was bemoaning the lack of a polished GUI text editor for Linux.

or

I was waxing lyrical about the elegantly finished open source GUI text editors on Windows, such as Notepad++ and Notepad2, and Smultron on the Mac.

So, I thought, how hard could it possibly be to choose an open source Linux text editor, learn the requisite programming language and dig in to help out? Bluefish is my text editor of choice on Linux. And I really appreciate the amount of work that has gone into it (a big thank you to Olivier Sessink et al). But I want more… (column select, easily editable syntax highlighting, customisable shortcut keys, joining lines, stripping blank lines, probably a plug-in architecture).

I’ll find out how hard it is and let you know ;)

Topic: Software Development

Jake Rayson

About Jake Rayson

A web designer since the 20th century, I am a pragmatic advocate of Free Software and I use proprietary software when appropriate. I made the full-time switch to Linux back in 2007, and my desktop tools of choice are Linux Mint, Inkscape, GIMP and Sublime Text.

As a Front End Developer, my core skills are HTML5, CSS3 and jQuery, and my working life reflects my commitment to open standards and accessible websites (ie accessible by everyone, regardless of browser, platform, ability or technology).

For web publishing platforms, I use WordPress for ease of use and Drupal for more complex solutions.

I am also learning about Ruby, Rails, Sinatra and CoffeeScript. I like the minimalist Ruby Way. To this end, my personal portfolio website is built with NestaCMS.

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  • How hard can programming be?

    Good Luck. I use Bluefish also. It certainly beats gedit!

    You want to know how hard programming can get?

    Try programming in any language using a model 19 keypunch with IBM/Hollerith cards. You're program gets turned into a stack of 80 column cards, one line of code per card. I sometimes wake up from a keypunching nightmare. Hasn't happened in awhile though. Visual Studio (any version), Eclipse or gcc beats keypunching your code ANY day!

    Xwindowsjunkie-e92c6
  • How hard can programming be?

    Ahh, keypunching, sounds like a barrel of laughs, I'll be sure to stick to those new fangled methods ;)
    Jake Rayson