I think it depends on what language you're using at the time. If I'm using a static language I'll give an IDE a try. Otherwise I use Emacs.

" As a code editor, it lacks support for even basic semantic analysis"

Not strictly speaking true: http://cedet.sourceforge.net/semantic.shtml

The flip side of this is: Emacs was invented around the time I was born, and could be used to edit the languages that were available at the time. It can still be used to edit those languages, as well as the hundreds (thousands?) of languages that exist today. I won't be surprised if it's around in 10 or 20 years more, and still able to edit every language under the sun at that point.

Emacs may have a shallower understanding of languages than an IDE, but the breadth of languages it understands is pretty amazing.

Sure, but when you're working on a project that uses only a few languages, specialised tools are always going to be much more effective, and you just update the tools as you update your choice of language(s). Jack of all trades is master of none, as the saying goes.

In many ways I'd love the luxury of writing code in just a few languages. The reality is though, at justin.tv, I've needed to write code in (at least) 7 different languages over the past 2.5 years. I would not have liked to learn 7 different IDEs on top of learning new languages. (We don't tend to gratuitously start using new languages - it's just often a requirement as a project gets more ambitious and wants to do more things and reach more targets).

I sympathise with you on the polylingual tendencies. I'm currently working on something for one client that uses several different programming languages plus the usual web-related stuff all on the same project (and with perfectly legitimate reasons, not just because of historical baggage).

Still, I think this raises an interesting question: is it more beneficial to choose exactly the right language for each project in isolation, or to adopt a "good enough" general purpose language that can be learned in more depth by the development team, and used together with comprehensive library support and a strong and familiar IDE?

They're not. Most of your time is still spent editing text. Or if it isn't, you're not getting enough done. Any deficiencies in semantic understanding (that's what your brain is for, remember?) are made up for by the sheer speed a proficient user (and fast typist) can get out of a good editor. And while you only use one environment at a time, you probably use several over your career. I've used the same environment quite effectively across 4 platform changes. Can the IDE people say that?

Eclipse is a step in the right direction in terms of openness and universality. But the editing experience still sucks. And it's harder to extend and customize than it should be.

There may come a day when there's an IDE that a) has a great editing experience b) is fast, flexible, and universal, and c) offer not just crutches and marginal improvements, but radical, order-of-magnitude improvements to the way we interact with software. It's not today. But the linked research project actually has some promise.

> Most of your time is still spent editing text. Or if it isn't, you're not getting enough done.

Are you sure? I would expect that the process of physically typing in the changes you want to make takes only a fairly small amount of time, certainly much less than understanding the code that will be changed or designing the new part.

However, the typing is just mechanical grunt-work that tends to distract from other areas. If it can be automated with good refactoring tools and the like and so minimize the distraction to the developer's thought process then so much the better.

That is my biggest problem with vim/emacs - they can edit the code well, but they have no real notion of syntax. You can do refactoring based on their lexers and a lot of regex, but it's just not what you really want.

I would really like to see Yi step up at some point and solve the problem here. It's already got proper incremental parsing with a proper syntax tree. When people add advanced language-specific modes to it, it might be the first "proper" refactoring vim/emacs like text-only IDE.

You are right, my comment about mousing referred to the bubbles in the movie, which seems to be all about clicking and dragging. There's no reason any IDE can't put in keyboard shortcuts, but it's going to be hard with the bubbles.