One Possible Advantage to an IDE – C++ Namespace Rename
This morning I've come across a real possible good use for a C++ IDE - renaming a namespace in all the places it exists. I realized that when I had the namespace AppKit in another project and wanted to use it in the greek engine project, I couldn't have eng::AppKit because the compiler couldn't tell what to do with:
AppKit::Message msg;
Is that AppKit on it's own, or in the context of the eng namespace? I knew which one it was, but there wasn't any way I could fine to make the compiler understand that fact.
Also, I knew that the namespace was badly named. I just didn't understand how widely these things would be used. My fault. So I tore into the code with Vim. There's lots to like there, but doing a massive change like this is just not all that easy. It's not hard, it just takes time.
If an IDE could do that, I might have reached for it. But I didn't know one, so I toughed it out.