Cool Beans

If you ask a random programmer what the best development environment is, you're likely to get a different answer each time. You simply don't mess with one's development tools. It's like converting someone to a different religion or telling them what car or wife is best for them.

I mention this because I've experienced a vendor workshop recently (won't name names), and they have their well-integrated development solution that's supposed to be awesome with all things and all platforms^*. I asked someone about this and he said, "If you try a visual IDE, you will never go back." He cited tab-completion, intelli-sensing of object methods, syntax highlighting, debugging, and all the other bells and whistles of a truly "integrated" development environment.

But really, such general statements are really that, very general. You cannot claim any tool or IDE is the best without knowledge of the platform or domain for which the apps are being written.

Even with a common development environment, people will pick the tools that they are good at. And if you try to force a different tool, you are not capitalizing on the strengths of your individual team members. It's just not practical to make a person work outside of their talents.

In the past, I've been tasked to determine standarized development for the teams I've been in. One thing I've found is you will go a long way to try to accommodate a programmer's fave development tools (not preaching to them from the get-go). Address the things people don't need to think about: Outline the procedures, coding conventions, release management processes, separation of duties.  If the coder is proficient and used to a set of tools, don't think the whizbang compiling "user-friendly" new IDE's will wow them into submission.

This argument applies with all other "crafts". You're not wanting to tell a Canon user that a Nikon camera is better (although many idiots attempt this). You're not asking a painter to switch to charcoal because it's "more expressive". You definitely don't want to mess with a coder's tools.