Just to finish pointing out this topic for me (I'll stop then), let me say I know "Auto-save" is good and widely used, but it's at least a bit unclear to many, including me, with 30 years of IT experience, starting from DOS with Clipper, up to C# with Visual Studio.
I don't argue about your decade experience with arduino, but IMO the "auto-save" should be fired only when compiling, not on any code change and absolutely not when closing the IDE (in this case should be called kinda "Auto-save on exit").
Take Visual Studio, Eclipse, and many other IDEs for referrence: I don't know anyone of them that won't warn you have changed the code (and asking if you want to save or discard the changes) when closing the IDE. IMO Arduino IDE should do the same, reasonable behavior, even if you haven't got lots of reports about that, just because it isn't logic behaviour, creating potential problems to the users.
Not me. I fully understand the OP. When I have a existing sketch, I might want to try a different approach, if it doesn’t work I’ll exit without saving as to keep the original. The original being gone is frustrating.
And when I want to create a new sketch and I click the icon on my dashboard, I need to wait for any sketch to be loaded before I can click FILE > NEW SKETCH. Also frustrating.
Totally agree regarding that, but I suspect there is much background processing happening.
I understand the concept you speak of, but in almost all of my days using an IDE I wrapped the IDE exec in a batch file to do an archive so any update intentional or not could be recovered. HOWEVER in many PCs today, some sort of cloud be it Microsoft or Mac gets in the way.
There is no one answer, but I suspect the majority are leaving it enabled. I'm not sure it would be without a lot of pushback if it was changed now.
I see it simple: if want an existing sketch, I can open that file. If I want a new one, I open the application itself. This works with Word, Exel etc.
After I bought my Arduino, I had to study the datasheet (no problem), learn the Arduino language (trying to follow other people’s brainwaves), learn C++ (extensive, but wanted to do more). Now I have to dig into Windows? Am I gonna live long enough to understand that?
Actually as I see It there is no longer a problem as it has been explained how to change to your preference. I prefer it to stay the way it is. Imagine all the confusion as users update and start loosing data.
Abe had this to say "You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time."
True, but I think it should be made clear that this only occurs when updating from Arduino IDE 1.x to 2.x. The preference setting will not be affected by updating from one version of Arduino IDE 2.x to another.
Thanks for the clarification but I am still firmly of the opinion that Autosave on should not be the default
IDE 2.x does post installation processing and it would be good if that included warning the user and/or opening the Preferences page so that they can be confirmed
