Re: Quanta Digest, Vol 104, Issue 13

Hi guys. I've never participated in this list before, but I've
sometimes followed it over the years.

I'm sad to see quanta go.

On the topic of useful editors, when it comes to the editors listed in
this conversation, I don't think any of them fill the gap that quanta
used to fill my workflow.

I currently use a very heavily customized version of emacs. The
learning curve has been steep. It has some excellent features for web
development. But there are some things that it just can't do, or can't
do as quickly as quanta. When I was able to run quanta, I often
switched from emacs to quanta.

Over the years, I've checked in with some of the editor mentioned on
this list. I always went back to quanta. (and eventually emacs, when
quanta support began to fade)


> 1. http://netbeans.org/

Every time I've installed it, it's been really ugly. I don't know if
it's just my choice of OS's. But it always seems to look pig ugly on
ubuntu and every other linux I've tried. It was a heavy memory
footprint. It takes a long time to learn.

It has some cool features. Like the database explorer.

It seems to be really made for java development, and it has a lot of
features that I don't ever use.

Compared to quanta, it's very clunky.

> Aptana Studio 3

Every so often I check in with Aptana. It's huge in many ways. Its a
full IDE, with features that I will never use. It takes ages to figure
out how to get to the features you need for simple things. You are
forced to use it's setup for project management. You really have to
live in it for ages to learn how to do even some simple things.

The showstopper for me every time was the lack of the feature that
quanta has  that no other editor has: the ability to select a section
of code between tag pairs.

I requested this feature from the developers. They responded about 18
months later, and put it it. But they got it wrong: selections didn't
include the parent tags.

I've tried to like aptana. But doing html/js/php/mysql with it is like
driving a giant bulldozer around narrow city streets.

In summary, these tools can be useful. But they don't replace Quanta's
light weight, speed and simplicity.

Comments on the other tools mentioned:

> Modx Revolution 2.2.4

Modx revo is great. You can set up simple sites really fast. The way
it's set up encourages seperation of concerns. It runs on most shared
hosts. It's under constant development. It has a great community.

It's a lot harder to learn then other CMS's. It doesn't have the same
wealth of plugins as wordpress does. No up-to-date ecommerce plugin:
you are expected to code you own.

It's very easy to pick up quickly, but once you get to a certain
point, the learning curve becomes incredibly steep.



-- 
Sunil Williams
Mt Eden, Auckland

022 602 4309
skype ID: mantispalm