TOOLS

Last week I visited the Computer Science Museum in Mountain View. I was surprised by the machines that were invited many years ago. So I am curious how these people can make it and I found that taking good advantage of the tools is the one of the most important reasons.

We must first sharpen our tools before we are going to start. A good tool to make the work more efficiently. Taking full advantage of tools is what I want to do in my study. For example, if I have a program to implement. At first, I have to design all classes in the program and figure out the relationship between them. So I will use a tool to draw the Class diagram and Use Case. After that, I can use a tool like UMLStar to draw the sequence diagram. The goal of doing these is to make me clear about the program before I start the code part. Then I implement the program by using the Eclipse. In one word, I can't do noting without tools.

I discovered some tools this semester like IntelliJ IDEA, Criterion, SWL, SWL-Prolog and UMLStar. IntelliJ IDEA is a Java IDE by JetBrains, available as an Apache 2 Licensed community edition and commercial edition.[1] Criterion is a essay writing evaluation tool. SWL is a Scheme IDE. SWL-Prolog is for Prolog programming.

My favorite tool is Eclipse, because it is very convenient to write code. There are some features that I often use. Formatting: ctrl+shift+f. Format source file (set up your formatting style in Window | preferences | java | code style | formatter). ctrl+shift+o: Organise imports. Generated code
alt+s,r to generate getters and setters and alt+s,v to insert method signatures for overidden methods from superclass or interface.[2] The tool I like least is SWL. SWL is a very clear IDE without any good user interface. Sometimes I feel boring when I use it.

Tools are changing very fast. They are becoming smarter than we can imagine, also the tools look more beautiful than before. There is no doubt that development of tools is very important to the industry. A good tool can save a lot of time for the developers and therefore the developers can spend more time to think about how to make the program better instead of figure out how to implement the programs. As a result, the IT industry will develop faster and faster. In this way, more and more people will begin study in CS area and enter the IT industry. So it is a cycle that can make a more stable and sustainable development model.

References:
[1] Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IntelliJ_IDEA
[2] Stackoverflow.com
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20529/useful-eclipse-features