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Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?
41–50 of 652 posts
Re: Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?
#42I’ve been doing this a looooooong time. And that’s really about it.
Every time a popup or tooltip covers code around my cursor I groan in agony.
I’d probably use it if the tool tips just updated in the bottom right of my screen while I typed or something.
Re: Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?
#43I find myself going back and forth about whether I want all of that stuff. Not having to look up a function template is handy. On the other hand, having my code bouncing all around, and obscured by random pop-ups, is distracting and eyestrain inducing. None of it is touch-screen friendly, though I admit that it's reasonably well designed for keyboard shortcuts.
I'm on the fence about copilot. It's like today's story of Julius, an assistant who is beloved by management, but whose work demands attention and must be corrected. Doing a Google search for something is less "efficient" but I need to take frequent little mental and physical breaks anyway.
Re: Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?
#44I've learned two languages using just a text editor (VI or Notepad) and found that it really helped me spot typos and syntax issues early on. I keep a browser open with tabs loaded for referencing language/package docs and referencing examples. Compiler errors literally tell you where your mistakes are, which is great for learning a new language.
I definitely recommend IDEs for navigating large codebases at work, but I feel like autocomplete has gotten much worse over the past ten years, as it tends to be slower and less concise.
Re: Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?
#45Alt + Backslash , YAS, etc. Emacs
Re: Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?
#46Before switching to neovim, I used a split terminal with vim in one split and the other split for running `rg`, `make`, tests, etc. It's amazing what you can achieve with grep especially if you use something like ctrl+p in vim which can use ripgrep for fuzzy finding.
Re: Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?
#47> What do you do if you need to look up the definition/implementation of some function which is in some other file?
Code search (ripgrep, GitHub search, Sourcegraph, git grep, or even just plain grep). You can use VS Code search but I prefer CLI tools so I can filter the output of my search with more searches—VS Code makes it hard to post-process/filter project-wide search results.
Filename search (fzf, fd, or just find).
There are cases where LSP-powered Go to Def is faster, but there are also cases where it’s less accurate. I’m talking:
- Untyped code in a graduate typed language
- References of a method name in a YAML file pulled out with reflection
- References of that method in a comment of some other method, where that method is actually the method I’m looking for.
- A one-to-one mapping of method names with some enum somewhere else, but lowercase in one spot, and all caps in the other spot.
So yes, sometimes go to def will be faster, but you’ll lose out on so many other possible references.
Another case: repos where the codebase is so large that the editor tooling is slow. Repos where I’m brand new to it, because I just need to check why some code in a third-party library is going haywire.
Grep (code search) is just so powerful.
I have a post about how to do large-scale code migrations/codemods. Everyone assumes the post is going to be about how to use high-powered, language-aware AST-based static analysis tooling. But half the post is talking about the unreasonable effectiveness of regular expressions.
Re: Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?
#48You should try turning off those features yourself for at least a month and see what happens ;) You’ll learn the answers yourself, much better than us trying to explain them. You’ll learn where all the reference docs live for your language, libraries, and frameworks, and along the way you’ll learn more by actually reading the docs. You’ll learn the value of good project organization and file naming, and explicit impo…
I use Rust, so explicit imports are required. However, I fail to understand this point > You’ll learn where all the reference docs live for your language, libraries, and frameworks, and along the way you’ll learn more by actually reading the docs. With neovim/LSP, I have a key binding (Kg) that opens a small window within the editor with the rustdocs. Not only this is faster than going to the browser, typing the type…
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Re: Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?
#49Most 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 environment. In the languages which support it, I try ideas and answer my own questions in a REPL.
Practice leaning on tooling all day and living without it will feel unthinkable. Practice doing without, and you'll find you need very little.
Re: Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?
#50I've never used an IDE, perhaps it doesn't matter because I don't write Java. I actually find auto complete annoying in places where it can't be turned off like Google Apps Script or the BigQuery console.
Over the past few years I rarely write code anyway I just use ChatGPT and then edit the code.
I tried using the new canvas/project features last night and I think it slowed me down versus a copy/paste workflow. I think those formats could be good but they're not fast and polished enough and I've gotten used to tricks and hacks for working in chat style.
I've never used a LLM that has actual access to the codebase, so I kind of take chunks of code and put them where they need to be. Even if I have like 6 lines of code and I want to change the logic I past that into ChatGPT and say "change this to do XYZ". Even though that sounds dumb I actually gain massive advantage in concurrency. I can be working on lots of tasks at once because ChatGPT kind of toils away and I'll then jump over to something else and come back 90 seconds later and the code is there, I read it over, maybe diff it from a previous version, then I run that to test it and maybe while that's running I go to a different chat and issue another instruction.
Before LLMs I used vim. When I want to find a function definition I ctrl+z find . -name ".whatever" | xargs grep "function whateverThisIs" and things like that.
grep -d skip "thing"
I copy and paste a lot if I'm using function names, I use a clipboard manager I guess as a sort of pseudo auto complete.
"Then why don't you just use an IDE?" I hear you ask!
It's because I write lots of what you might call "glue code" or "microservices". Lots of snippets of SQL and JavaScript functions that are executed on a queue, and API calls to integrate with things and code that runs on different platforms.
I'm almost never working on what you would call "an app" these days, so that's probably why I've never gravitated towards an IDE. Even when I was working on more monolithic web apps I never used anything other than vim with "set nocompatible" turned on so it wouldn't try to do anything IDE like.
I think what I liked about it then was that I could be just as productive using putty from an internet cafe as I could be on my own computer. Like a doomsdray prepper version of coding.