[dorkbotpdx-blabber] Building an IDE (that doesn't suck)

[Paul Stoffregen]

> who are the target users going to be?

Opps, I didn't really express that, did I?

It's mostly hobbyists & artists, very much like most of us at dorkbot, and also students.  Many will likely have little or no previous experience.  Some will have substantial programming background but not much experience with hardware, but others will not even have much coding experience at all.  Many will be students who barely passed a couple introductory programming classes and now have to make hardware work within a 9-week course or 3-month project (that they've likely procrastinated to the last few weeks).

Very few will be professional developers.  Most well funded teams will pay big bucks for IAR Embedded Workbench, Keil uVision, or even Rowley CrossWorks, rather than use free software.

So easy-to-learn for a complete novice is extremely important.  But after initial learning, it needs to "not suck" for substantial usage.  I'm less concerned about packing in lots of bells and whistles, but rather making something that's highly usable.


-Paul