| Why can't it "just work"? [message #1711984] |
Tue, 20 October 2015 10:40  |
Eclipse User |
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My son began his CS education writing Java with Eclipse. I've actively followed his progress, in part to update my own programming knowledge.
Now he (we) have moved on to C++, and after installing the CDT, Eclipse's ease of setup and use seem to have ended in a morass of confusing options and obscure (and apparently wrong) settings that prevent writing and running the simplest of programs without hours of often fruitless research trying to figure out what needs to be changed ("The symbol cout could not be resolved"? Really? What, please, is a "toolchain"? Could we get a more helpful error message than "syntax error"?)
All these options and settings might be valuable to very senior programmers who appreciate such fine-grained control of their IDE, but it seems to me there is a great need for a Mac student-level C++ package that "just works" without all the drama. (I actually don't know if other OS versions of Eclipse have the same problems, but I suspect they may.)
Is there any possibility that Eclipse's developers will take pity on beginning C++ programmers?
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| Re: Why can't it "just work"? [message #1712091 is a reply to message #1711984] |
Wed, 21 October 2015 05:38  |
| Eclipse User |
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C++ is a very very different beast to Java (as you have discovered). It was designed in the 70's when IDE's just did not exist. All of these things, you are going to have to learn - it may be painful now, but it will reap benefits down the line.
A 'toolchain' is the compiler, assembler, linker (and normally) debugger. Perhaps the most common toolchain is known as GCC, although on Mac, this is being (has been?) replaced by LLVM.
Eclipse does its best to 'wrap' the toolchain into an IDE. Unlike Java, where the compiler is (sort of) built-in to the IDE, with C++you must explicitly compile your code to get detailed error messages - Eclipse has a built-in parser (which is issuing the Syntax Error' message) but it is a long way from being as sophisticated as a compiler. To make it even more complicated (for the beginner) you must explicitly direct the linker to include libraries that resolve your missing symbols - unfortunately, I know if no C++ (or C) IDE on any platform that will just do this for you - that is the nature of the language.
In reality, C++ is a professional programmers language, and consequently, you get tools aimed at those professionals.
I am sure that there are some 'teaching' tools out there, but if they hide stuff from you, then that will not help you when you move out of that learning mode...
Perhaps this isn't what you wanted to hear, but that is the way it is. Sorry.
BTW: I have nothing to do with the development if CDT for Eclipse. I am a user of it (an other IDE's too).
[Updated on: Wed, 21 October 2015 05:40] by Moderator |
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