Bugs n Minuses in C/AL Editor rant

Kisu

First of all, if you delete more than 1 line, you cant undo it with ctrl+z.
This is realy frustrating when doing lots of code and deleting it.

Cant even undo paste ctrl+v.

It even hazzles it more cause when you do delete lots of lines same time your cursor stays still and the top part of the code goes down. Unlike in other programming enviroment, it feels more clean to edit the code in notepad than in C/AL.

Thing that I dont like either, the C/AL cant handle more than 132 chars in one line, you have to cut them in pieces :P sigh. why cant it be atleast 250? o.o

Feels like, when you are coding with C/AL you are coding HardCore!

And what, there is more, no line numbers. Try fixing 10000 line codeunits with it ^^

Aand you cant say good things about that right scroll bar either. Its like when you roll a little down, it goes normal, then you turn to run up, omg the scrollbar jumps upside down?
And that bottom scrollbar is unusefull, its so tiny that its hard to pick up and scroll it, but why borther there is only 132 char limit sideways even *g*

Also whats with the intendation?
If you tab its always 2 characters, seems fine but when you shift tab its only 1? why does it have to be same as using backspace, tab should jump on the intends. Well its not word but its sure is ms product now

And if this is a Microsoft product and semin OOC enviroment why it doesn't have Intellisense?

I wonder if alot peopple complain about these things to Microsoft.

The C/AL is just a joke for development enviroment.

Feel free to add your favourite bad thing about C/AL

Belias

If you tab its always 2 characters, seems fine but when you shift tab its only 1? why does it have to be same as using backspace, tab should jump on the intends.

someone likes indenting by 3 spaces(it's not my case), so he can do tab,tab,shift+tab

Kisu

Belias wrote:

If you tab its always 2 characters, seems fine but when you shift tab its only 1? why does it have to be same as using backspace, tab should jump on the intends.

someone likes indenting by 3 spaces(it's not my case), so he can do tab,tab,shift+tab

Yes, but there is more even. when you like to tab up to 4, the next line tab doesn't go straight to the 4 but the usual 2.

Also you cant select multiple lines and tab forward or back.

Belias

Also you cant select multiple lines and tab forward or back.

yes! you can!...in nav>=5.0
anyway, ctrl+z is a thing that everyone want... ](*,) ](*,)
you can use it...but not after the "validation" of the code line...

IBS

There are lot of topics on this.
I just can't wait till they get rid of the classic client.

I just want to point out that the New client for 2009 will hopefully replace the classic client totally and that Navision will create a new development environment.

Bgestel

Kisu wrote:

Feels like, when you are coding with C/AL you are coding HardCore!

8) M3 !s |_33TH Na\/ |)3v 8)

kriki

Remember that Navision was created with the idea to keep hardcore programmers like you (and me) away!

They wanted the functionals to add some code and that was it.
That is the main reason we have such a bad editor.

DenSter

Kisu wrote:

Feel free to add your favourite bad thing about C/AL

I LOVE the C/AL editor . I know exactly what it can do and I can always do exactly what I want to do. What's more, I can do most things in C/AL in about 10% of the time that it would take a C# developer in Visual Studio, and it is much easier to deploy too.

Complaining about it is a pointless waste of my time.

David_Singleton

Kisu wrote:

First of all, if you delete more than 1 line, you cant undo it with ctrl+z.
This is realy frustrating when doing lots of code and deleting it.

Cant even undo paste ctrl+v.

etc etc etc

Yep been hearing the same thing by new bees for 15 years. Once you learn it you will realize how much better it is. As Denster says, you can do thing in NAV 10 times faster than you can in most other development environments.

Unfortunately like most New Bees, you look at how long it takes to do one task, and forget how much time you save over the project.

do you think a customer cares that you spent 60 seconds on one little task in NAV that you could do in VB, or that you spent 20 hours in NAV doing a project that would take 50 hours in VB, and then another 50 hours debugging.

DenSter

I'm sure we could identify the typical stages of a NAV developer (denial, anger, negotiating, etc.), that could be a good wiki article

bbrown

Before coming to Navision I worked with a Visual Studio based system (shall remain unnamed). The sales order screen was 600+ lines of code (not counting the graphical stuff). That was the screen logic and data handling. Comparably Navision is wonderful to work with. Yes, you do sometimes find things that are qwerky, but I've learned to work with it and things do go together quicker.

kriki

DenSter wrote:

I'm sure we could identify the typical stages of a NAV developer (denial, anger, negotiating, etc.), that could be a good wiki article

David



And if the editor is not good enough, we have a (Mibuso-)award winning software to help you : CodeGenius Studio 2007

Bgestel

Please keep complaining about the editor.

And just to keep this discussion going, i'm not a newbie and my opinion is that the editor @!#$@!## bigtime. I do love c/al.

please somebody give me one feature that makes the c/al editor better then the visual studio editor. I'm not talking languages here, i'm talking editors.

Sorry david but i disagrea with you on this one

Unfortunately like most New Bees, you look at how long it takes to do one task, and forget how much time you save over the project

You are correct when you state this reffering to nav as a RAD environment, but a good visual studio style editor combined with the c/al language would actualy increase developer performance.

David_Singleton

Bgestel wrote:

...Sorry david but i disagrea with you on this one

Unfortunately like most New Bees, you look at how long it takes to do one task, and forget how much time you save over the project

You are correct when you state this reffering to nav as a RAD environment, but a good visual studio style editor combined with the c/al language would actualy increase developer performance.

It actually wouldn't. Believe me this topic has been discussed many many times. And when/if the C/AL development environment goes or moves to Visual Studio, the cost of development in NAV will MORE than double in cost to the end user.

Let me sort out some time and I will write a blog about this. (Actually I have a Blog that I started on theis over a year ago, but never finished). :oops:

Bgestel

amaze me

kriki

David Singleton wrote:

Let me sort out some time and I will write a blog about this. (Actually I have a Blog that I started on theis over a year ago, but never finished). :oops:

[-X

That blog would make our (the ones who love the C/AL editor) life a lot easier!

einsTeIn.NET

The C/AL Editor is easy, fast and it matches with database logic. However there are some things you can't do, some things you shouldn't do and some things you have to do to become happy with it. Just figure out these things and will love it.

davmac1

I have been in this business since the IBM 360 days, so I have seen some truly bad editors (and no editors - punched cards and paper tape).
My only beef with the C/AL editor is that you cannot see all the code in forms and reports without exporting them to text. When you are trying to find where a previous developer has "hidden" some code, having a complete view (like tables and codeunits) saves a lot of time.

ara3n

I believe NAV realized this and with xmlports and pages you see all the code when you go to the editor.

Savatage

davmac1 wrote:

I have been in this business since the IBM 360 days, so I have seen some truly bad editors (and no editors - punched cards and paper tape).

I remember puch cards & paper tape :-$
Junior High School & Machine Language...
Good Times, Good Times

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/e ... 64.faa.jpg

Even the PET computer with the cassette tapes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_PET
Groundbreaking at the time \:D/

bbrown

Savatage wrote:

I remember puch cards & paper tape :-$
Junior High School & Machine Language...
Good Times, Good Times

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/e ... 64.faa.jpg

Then there was the technological breakthru - 8 inch floppies.