I love the JS automation API… but I am also very, very frustrated. The console is not a place to do web development and the OG console has about 1/3 the functionality of the console in even the crappiest browser tool sets these days. No insight, no completion, minimal color coding… plain string output, no collapse, no object features.
Or am I completely missing something? Browser JS has breakpoints, watch vars, complete syntax highlighting, autocomplete… will there be OG or OO syntax modules for SublimeText or VS Code? Or something the community could possibly wire up to connect VS Code to the OA interpreter?
I want to make more use of this platform but when you neglect your tooling you neglect the USABILITY of the platform… I refer to the success of Objective-C and Swift for the very well-done Xcode and their insanely complete, professional-quality toolsets.
So I guess… much as I hate to commit more time to yet another project… what can I do to help move this thing along to a state of pro-level usability?
I guess I’m old school, but these things aren’t nearly as important to me as a richer API—like full clipboard and HTTP POST support.
Sure, maybe this helps, and I know how popular IDE tools are, however I’d personally be very upset if it had a sexy IDE support/integration and still didn’t expose the core APIs for interoperability in and out of the environment.
My “IDE” for OmniJS is Terminal, command-line git, vim, OG and the Finder solely to reload the plugins.
Yes, it’s the same basic set-up since I’ve been using since 1991 on NeXTstep, SunOS, Solaris, AIX, Linux, OpenBSD, OS/2 and even when I had to write VBA integration on Windows for a scanning project.
Going a little slower and having only log messages and pop ups for debugging
may seem like a pain, but it also might make you think through what you’re trying to do a bit more deeply and improve the outcome.
Great tools help for sure, but great tools don’t make great software.
Omni, please focus on core api enhancements instead.
Great languages and core improvements are useless without the tools to access them. It takes both. You are right, core enhancements are important. But so is tooling, even if it’s lightweight tooling that rides the backs of other toolsets.
There’s a happy medium here. I’m not asking for Xcode, I was just holding that up as an example. Getting adoption is critical for a feature to be maintained… every minute spent enriching it costs money and if it doesn’t see wide adoption it will eventually be dropped. REASONABLE levels of tooling are CRITICAL to drive that adoption.
I’m really happy you’re satisfied with your tools, but you lost me at VIM. There’s no adoption going to happen if that’s the attitude toward developers. I don’t have time for that crap and rigging something up with tools as versatile as VS Code (which is itself a JS app wrapped up in a platform bundle) is just best practice.
All I’m really asking for is a plugin for Code that will let me build productively with things like a plugin template, an Action template, a quick wizard to punch out a plugin fast and a syntax plugin for the already existing JS machinery available in Code… it’s not rocket science. And I’m willing to help… I don’t think that’s too much to ask if they’re actually trying to build an ecosystem and drive adoption which drives sales.
