Does a strong editor improve language adoption?

Question

Does having an IDE for a new language matter? Does it help with language adoption? Do you bother investing in a language that doesn't have a Language Server Protocol ( LSP ) or mode for your favorite editor? Does a tightly coupled set of tools help elevate a new language above others? Should a language "win" even though it doesn't have these tools but just because it is "good"?

smt88 · Accepted Answer

You&rsquo;re basically asking if usability matters for a language, and of course the answer is yes. Lots of languages have useful and verbose type systems that would be painful without IDEs. With them, they make refactoring and autocompletion look close to magical.

PaulHoule · Answer

I started coding Java in a text editor while Java was still in beta. There were good IDEs for C, Pascal, assembly, etc.
It was clear that a great Java IDE was possible, but it took a decade to get there.
Java IDEs compensate for the pain of Java being wordy. The debuggers work, even when you are debugging a process with both Jdb and gdb at the same time.

auslegung · Answer

I did Haskell for a while in nvim with basically no features (there are several, I just didn't set them up). I simply had ghcid running in one tab, nvim in the other, and did what the compiler told me to do.So that didn't matter to me because the compiler is great and ghcid is very fast and sufficient.

proxybop · Answer

I sure hope so. As a developer for a language, we&rsquo;re planning on creating a language server and debugger to make it easier for people to use our language.

Does a strong editor improve language adoption?

You’re basically asking if usability matters for a language, and of course the answer is yes. Lots of languages have useful and verbose type systems that would be painful without IDEs. With them, they make refactoring and autocompletion look close to magical.

I sure hope so. As a developer for a language, we’re planning on creating a language server and debugger to make it easier for people to use our language.