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Some languages should, some should not. Probably a language like Rust should. Asking that of Smalltalk may be too much. But every language can benefit from tooling, even if it doesn't need it. For instance, do you know of any language more 15 years old that still has no debugger, let alone syntax highlighting?



ReSharper and a debugger a completely different pair of shoes. I agree that you need a debugger (and Rust has one, gdb), but I don't agree that it needs refactoring tools.


Good IDE support is the difference between constantly hunting through (or thoroughly memorizing) documentation and having a program help you with it. It's also great for merging the edit and compile steps so that you can correct errors in realtime. Refactoring tools are nice but are not the strongest selling point for IDEs.

I recall reading old Rust design considerations where they decided to stick with the `foo.bar` syntax because they like the way IDEs can autocomplete with documentation after typing the dot.


I think a good refactring tool is one of the best ways to improve productivity for a developer. When you have a strongly statically typed language it should be possible to create really good refactoring tools. They don't have to exist at the same time 1.0 is released but I think they should be created as soon as possible after that point.




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