161–170 of 652 posts
I think I just learn the code base and build a mental model of where everything is and it works for me. I spend more time thinking about how to organize my code well than to actually type it in my editor anyway. It probably helps that I'm working on Rails apps so there are strong conventions about how to do things that makes this easier.
I learned and worked for decades before these tools were available. If they still weren’t available today, you would find that you too could program without them.
Sure, but isn’t this just “why don’t you use the backup camera that all cars have had for a decade or more” / “I learned to drive without one, and you could too”?
I still have most of the python standard library and many of the interfaces I use often in my brain, so autocomplete saves me almost no time. I can type working code into notepad about as fast as I can type it in VS code.
I learned and worked for decades before these tools were available. If they still weren’t available today, you would find that you too could program without them.
Sure, but isn’t this just “why don’t you use the backup camera that all cars have had for a decade or more” / “I learned to drive without one, and you could too”?
I can back up without a camera, and I can "drive stick" as Americans call it. But a teenager learning to drive today should maybe not bother.
But that's not the same question as "why aren't you installing a backup camera?". Because it wouldn't change my ability or speed of backing up. And I can drive stick. Why not replace my car with an automatic? Because it wouldn't improve anything.
In fact I dislike automatics, since they'll suddenly and jerkily decide that another gear is best, ever though my foot didn't move, and inclination didn't change. But in a couple of decades it'll all be electric and this problem will go away. The deliberate engine braking is in electric cars just the brake pedal.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
When it comes to autocomplete specifically I initially turned it off because I was mainly a C++ programmer and C++ autocomplete has just never been good enough and a half-working autocomplete is just worse than nothing at all because you end up stalling and waiting for the prompt. But eventually I just grew to hate it for all languages because it interrupts flow and "pipelining".
The shell is my development environment. I open up new terminals and shells willy nilly. I find cli tools like find/fd/grep/rg are useful because I rarely need to find only the definition of a function, but rather other call sites too, to find out how it is being used. I think being surrounded by the code and being able to slice and dice it leads to a certain kind of familiarity that a tool that takes you right there…
And find/grep are very bad and limited tools for this compared to what an IDE will give you
The shell is my development environment. I open up new terminals and shells willy nilly. I find cli tools like find/fd/grep/rg are useful because I rarely need to find only the definition of a function, but rather other call sites too, to find out how it is being used. I think being surrounded by the code and being able to slice and dice it leads to a certain kind of familiarity that a tool that takes you right there…
Good point re: using error messages. If I call a function incorrectly, the call stack will helpfully point out the file and line number of the location the error was thrown from, just a few keystrokes in vim will get you there.
Or Cmd+Click/Ctrl+Click in an IDE
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the point they are making is that you only read what is shown you instead of seeing the full docs and being encouraged to follow rabbit holes and browse nearby info. Speaking for myself, this has been one of the largest boosters in my own career: visits to a docs page that led to me basically reading the whole docs.
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.
We have tooling for offline docs of course. See dash (macOS) or zeal (win/linux)
I have code completion in vim and I try it every few years and sure it can save a few key strokes but the habit of using it never stays with me. I think I just learn the code base and build a mental model of where everything is and it works for me. I spend more time thinking about how to organize my code well than to actually type it in my editor anyway. It probably helps that I'm working on Rails apps so there are s…
But I DO use jump-to-definition in Vim and other editors. IMO LSP has been an amazing productivity boost just by that one feature.