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Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?

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Re: Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?

#141

Post by devjab »

thwarted wrote: post #128
tmountain wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did it this way for about 20 years and recently moved to VSCode with its integrated terminal. It makes me feel pretty lazy and like I’m “cheating”, but there are some productivity benefits (LSP), and I’m less of a purist than I used to be. I maintained a blog about vim for 3-4 years, so I was pretty committed to that workflow back in the day.

I know about VSCode's terminal, and the few times I've used it seems like an afterthought, bolted on, to the primary function of the program as an editor and file navigator . I don't live in the editor. I live in the shell. The editor is a sub function of living in the shell.

I actually think the VSC terminal is one of the few saving graces it has. Maybe not so much on *nix. It works well enough on Mac, but it really shines on Windows where you’ll have a much easier time running powershell, GitShell and WSL terminals within VSC than outside of it. It also has really good integration with the various Azure CLI tools.

I don’t think VSC is a very good IDE though. I have no idea why a Vim user would use it instead of upgrading to Neovim, and obviously doom emacs is the best choice but I do think the terminal is actually pretty good in VSC. At least on Windows.

Re: Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?

#142

Post by dijksterhuis »

mckn1ght wrote: post #120
daltonpinto wrote: post #99

This question reminds me of the first time I met a blind programmer. I asked him how he managed to code, and he replied with something that stayed with me: a good programmer should organize software in such a way that every piece of code has a clear and logical place. The organization should be so intuitive that anyone could build a mental model of the structure and navigate it easily, even without seeing it. It felt…

Of course I agree that code should be organized logically, but I wonder if you could expand on what you mean. Do you drill down into finer and finer directories of detail, code units, classes and functions? I work with someone that navigates the tree structure of all our directories every time they need to look for something. It is painfully slow to watch and if you ask me, they produce fairly spaghetti architecture.…

> Of course I agree that code should be organized logically, but I wonder if you could expand on what you mean. Do you drill down into finer and finer directories of detail, code units, classes and functions?

from the parent (i am not the parent)

> I try to follow the logic and structure of the project in a way that feels natural and easy to follow later.

in my own experience it applies to everything in a codebase.

what the end state looks like completely depends on the problem domain at hand, and the tools used to solve the problem.

how to make a codebase “intuitive” is learned, not taught. understand the problem domain, understand the tools in use, then refactor, refactor, refactor, refactor until it makes sense.

> I work with someone that navigates the tree structure of all our directories every time they need to look for something

sounds like they have yet to learn how the code modules are organised.

possibly because the modules are not intuitively organised, possibly because there’s a lot of code, possibly because they just don’t care and don’t mind the mental break of mindlessly looking for the right module.

Re: Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?

#143

Post by [deleted] »

xlii wrote: post #127
mckn1ght wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course I agree that code should be organized logically, but I wonder if you could expand on what you mean. Do you drill down into finer and finer directories of detail, code units, classes and functions? I work with someone that navigates the tree structure of all our directories every time they need to look for something. It is painfully slow to watch and if you ask me, they produce fairly spaghetti architecture.…

> I work with someone that navigates the tree structure of all our directories every time they need to look for something Counter example: I’m working with LSP dragging codebase where basic code lint takes 45s. My colleague takes a break after each change so that their code navigation starts working again. Inefficient people are inefficient. Not using LSPs isn’t guarantee of efficiency just as using LSP isn’t one. Di…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?

#144

Post by dotancohen »

Just about a decade ago I switched from VIM to an IDE with auto complete. For me personally, typing it all out made me far more intimate with the code, but more importantly it forced me to be very intimate with the language.

Today, at the other extreme of having an LLM actually write entire methods or sometimes classes for me, I do feel that I have less of a mental model of how my software is designed. Ostensibly I still "wrote" all of it, but it's just not in my mental cache.

Or, that's just age ))

Re: Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?

#145

Post by PittleyDunkin »

RodgerTheGreat wrote: post #49

Most of these tools are distractions. I don't want suggestions or needling warnings sliding around on my screen while I compose and examine programs; I want a quiet space to write and think. Focus is essential. I organize notes and action items in a paper notebook in front of me or a text file in another editor pane. I read the code. I search and diff with standard POSIX utilities that are available in every environm…

If you prefer not to, that's fine; we all have our preferences. But I'd ask the person who pairs with you how much the productivity is actually impacted. In my experience engineers are very prone to romanticizing arbitrary stuff (languages, editors, tools, window paradigms, processes, debuggers, event fonts and colors or whatever). Your coworkers will see right through it, though, and won't hesitate to be honest.

Re: Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?

#146

Post by powersnail »

hamandcheese wrote: post #69
csomar wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure if we are speaking about the same thing. LSP can give you type hints. What I am doing is that I am opening a "window" in my editor that has the full docs. You can browse through it freely. The issue with "non-Rust" languages is that the docs will be on a website. On most Rust projects (90%+), the libraries will use the Docs system which makes the docs fully available on LSP.

I believe the distinction is that if you have to manually browse the docs and navigate to the method of interest, you might see something else interesting along the way. Whereas if your editor takes you directly to the method in question, you miss that opportunity.

If I want to read through the doc, I'll just do that, and I frequently do it with all dependencies that I'm directly interacting with. As fun and informative as it is, personally I don't want to do this exercise every time I need a peek at the documentation of a class or function, in the same way I don't take a detour into the mountain every time I get out of my house, as much as I enjoy hiking.

Re: Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?

#148

Post by papichulo2023 »

bdcravens wrote: post #9

Earlier in my career, I would often turn those features off. It was the late 1990s, and computers were much slower, and as a result, I didn't like the lag that some of those features would cause. As such, I learned to work without them. These days of course computers have no issues. However, I've moved to a completely Docker Compose driven workflow, but for various reasons, I've run into issues getting LSPs etc worki…

Just FYI: in some languages (like Go iirc) you need to add the subfolder of your monorepo to the workplace in order to LSP to work properly, at least on VSCode.

Re: Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?

#149

Post by PittleyDunkin »

dijksterhuis wrote: post #135
PittleyDunkin wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it never really occurs to us to use them, just like it never occurs to you to not use them. This doesn't really make sense, either. How do you not consider the right tool for the job? Do you just use whatever you learned to code and never really bothered to consider that you might be more or less productive with different tools? LSPs don't always offer a productivity increase in all contexts—they seem to be mostly…

i avoid using autocomplete because it forces me to think about every single thing i’m doing. every line of code is a liability. every line of code needs to be thought about. every line of code is precious. spamming autocomplete means i’m not thinking about what i’m doing, even the simple stuff like writing a for loop statement.

I don't use autocomplete, either. Most of what an LSP gives you is more data to scan semantics faster.

> every line of code is a liability. every line of code needs to be thought about. every line of code is precious.

I personally think this is ridiculous. It's code. It's just formal instructions. You process them and move on. It's not describing the face of god. If you need to think so much write less clever code.

Re: Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?

#150

Post by devjab »

MrLeap wrote: post #138
devjab wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious as how it lets you rely less on documentation. If you don’t know what you’re looking for then how will you know you chose the right thing? The classic example of getting this wrong is probably C# developers using IEnumerable when they should’ve used IQueryable.

Can you elaborate on this? I'm one of C# developers who operate predominately in the Unity3d slums. This isn't familiar to me. The closest thing coming to mind to me is mixing up IEnumerable and IEnumerator when trying to define a coroutine.

IQuerable Inherits IEnumerable and extends it with functionality to lessen the memory loaded when querying a collection (typically when reading from a database). Using IEnumerable can increase memory usage significantly compared to IQuerable.

Not every C# developer knows the difference, in my region of the world it’s an infamous mistake and is often the first thing you look for when tasked with improving bottlenecks in C# backends. On the flip-side, using IQuerable isn’t very efficient if what you wanted was to work on in memory collections.

There is an equally infamous somewhat related issue in Python with list vs generators. Especially common when non Python developers work with Python.

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