Re: Wolfram Workbench user experiences
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg88445] Re: Wolfram Workbench user experiences
- From: Art <grenander at gmail.com>
- Date: Mon, 5 May 2008 06:16:05 -0400 (EDT)
- References: <fvhe66$416$1@smc.vnet.net>
On May 3, 3:18 am, Bill Rowe <readn... at sbcglobal.net> wrote: > On 5/2/08 at 3:43 AM, dave at Remove_Thisdbailey.co.uk (David Bailey) > wrote: > > >I would be very interested in other people's experiences with the > >Wolfram Workbench. I must admit that I prefer to use the frontend as > >my 'IDE', and the workbench seemed fairly alien when I tried it. > > I briefly played with Wolfram Workbench. But I didn't see any > significant advantage it had over using the frontend to develop > code. So, like you, I stuck with using the frontend. I would have to disagree with some of these statements. I am a relatively new mathematica user and I find Workbench indispensable. It is especially useful for working on a set of nested packages, particularly with the automatic package reload feature. It catches errors in syntax and has good syntax highlighting. It works nicely in tandem with a source-code repository, writing and debugging C or java mathlink programs. It seems to have been designed with some care. For example, cutting and pasting text from a notebook works seemlessly and inserts spaces in appropriate places. The debugger has a stack trace so it is an easy way to learn what mathematica is actually doing. Setting breakpoints on messages is very useful. For example, if you have problems aborting some buggy code, set a breakpoint on all messages, it breaks on the first message, abort in the frontend, and then run, and the kernel immediately aborts. And it can automatically update itself. But the debugger is buggy and slow for me. Also, Workbench is built around a slightly older version of eclipse which makes it hard to use with other eclipse addons (like the C++ one). It's not natively 64- bit, I think. And it has a critical bug in the console window that causes it to crash on messages that include Short versions of numerical lists (I think the console tries to print the whole list or something). It is also a relative memory hog. And the package editor from the front-end is more 'literate programming' friendly.