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IDE 2.0: Lessons from History


IDE 2.0: The Integrated Delivery Environment

Enter the IDE 2.0. A proper IDE these days needs to be a fully integrated solution that handles all of a project's data from the UI to the data side, and be ultra sensitive to runtime requirements. Without this type of management ability, developers will find themselves spending too much time debugging and error-searching, and less time delivering. The old, siloed, trial-and-error methods of develop, deploy, and debug are becoming less and less economical as the layers of technology get more and more extensive. In short, we have seen a drastic change from seeing code as an "art form" to the desire to "get the job done."

Additionally, in the competitive global marketplace, we can see that skillfully-composed, handwritten source code is not all that is needed in today's projects. Hand-writing, packing, deploying, and testing all of the code necessary takes far too much time and maintenance for developers, and is most likely frowned upon by global executives. Today's developer needs a fully stable, packaged, out-of-the-box solution that allows them to code, test, debug, manage, and play with technology in a single environment with cross-layer management ability, speed, accuracy, and confidence.

"But wait," you might say. "I like having control of my code. I can do it myself and don't need the management features. Plus, when something auto-completes, I don't know what's in it and it may not be the way that I would code it."

It is understandably easy to turn this type of conversation into a "black box versus build-it-from-scratch" conversation as though they must be mutually exclusive options. But this would cause us to lose sight of the forest for the trees. In an IDE 2.0 world, that conversation should not be a debate because the tool should let you "get it done" first, then anguish over the details, rather than debate over the "art" of what it should be at the expense of delivery.

Consequentially, today's developers demand an IDE that truly integrates the developer into their technologies and helps them along the way. Discerning developers need the next generation of developer environments using today's best, ever-improving technologies.

What are the consequences of ignoring this IDE 2.0 phenomenon?

China at one point passed on the power of emerging, fast, behavior-changing technologies in favor of a simpler, more artful existence. That was a choice they made, and a very deliberate and noble one. The art forms they created are still admired to this day as some of the greatest in the world, and their culture is inarguably among the richest in history. However, the Renaissance economies of Europe and the New World that emerged as a result of the printing press' mass adoption and evolution changed the global marketplace forever and set new standards for technology and commerce that are still felt to this day.

Will today's software developer be marketable tomorrow by choosing art or productivity? We will see.


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