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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?

#441

Post by modernerd »

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #431
modernerd wrote: post #222

I work with two types of LSP/LLM-averse programmers: 1. The HLSP user This group does use an LSP, it turns out, only via you as the conduit: you are their Human Language Server Protocol. They'll ask, ‘can we pair today?’. From that point, navigating code, looking up method names and signatures, and flagging syntax errors before runtime or compile time is your job. How they find their way around when you're not there…

It's weird to me that you group LLMs in with code analysis based LSP autocompleters. Normal autocomplete is basically a context-aware AST browser. It lets you navigate the program semantically instead of file-based. LLMs are token predictors.

The parent did the same, but of course they're different. The spirit of the question seemed to bundle LSP/autocomplete/LLMs under tooling that some do without.

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

#442

Post by hklijlyh »

dsego wrote: post #291
modernerd wrote: post #222

I work with two types of LSP/LLM-averse programmers: 1. The HLSP user This group does use an LSP, it turns out, only via you as the conduit: you are their Human Language Server Protocol. They'll ask, ‘can we pair today?’. From that point, navigating code, looking up method names and signatures, and flagging syntax errors before runtime or compile time is your job. How they find their way around when you're not there…

> This group does use an LSP, it turns out, only via you as the conduit Oh man, it makes my blood boil when someone asks in which file the function lives, and I know they have a "go to symbol" in their editor of choice, but somehow they never want to learn some features of their tools. I did notice that how you use your tools changes how the project is structured. Neatly organized files and directories are a must if…

[dead]

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

#443

Post by trevor-e »

jherico wrote: post #421
trevor-e wrote: post #405

This thread is certainly eye opening. It reminds me of a post I saw somewhere, maybe on Reddit, where someone was describing their experience working as an intern at an old-school tech shop. All of the developers there were hardcore Vim/Emacs users with 20+ years of experience. The intern was tasked with a large-scale refactoring of some modules which the senior devs estimated would take months of work to complete. A…

The intern didn't make them "look bad". They were bad. I mean, I'm sure that they were great developers in some sense, but refusing to ever update your toolkit because you've always gotten along just fine with what you already use is a great way to get sped past by the next generation who start from a better baseline.

Yea, that's the exact point I'm trying to make. And I'm getting very similar vibes in this post with folks refusing to use LSP.

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

#444

Post by nox101 »

aguaviva wrote: post #229
brabel wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To think that some people are still writing code like in the 70's. Not using productivity tools is just hurting you. I don't know what sort of misplaced sensation of superiority doing things the hard way may bring to you, but please don't give bad advice like this to young people. If they want to experience writing code without the help of modern tools, they can just use one of the so many languages whose tooling suc…

To think that some people are still writing code like in the 70s . This is a muddled hyperbolization. These features barely existed (in terms of widespread use) even 10 years ago, but everyone got along just fine, even founded FAANG-scale companies without them, and so on. Yet you're making it sound like if you aren't using them, then you're basically still writing COBOL. Not using productivity tools is just hurting…

Autocompletion has been common for at least 29 years since MS added it to Visual Studio.

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

#445

Post by hereonout2 »

nox101 wrote: post #429
hereonout2 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be in group 2, rely heavily on command line tools and vim to do what vscode and a load of plugins provides younger programmers. My answer to the fairly common question of "how do you do it" is always the same though. I always relay that it's taken an evolving 20 year career to learn all that voodoo, I never imply it's simple to gain that knowledge nor do I encourage others to change their working patterns to…

I've been coding since the 70s . using a modern IDE or VSCode has nothing to do with age

No that's not my point. Becoming very proficient at vim or knowing you way in depth around the command line takes time, years in my experience.

Maybe with 50+ years there's a limited amount left to learn, but with my 25 I'm still picking things up regularly.

So it's usually more junior and less experienced developers who ask "how do you do that" - sometimes with wonder, sometimes genuine confusion.

My answer is never "it's simple" or "it's just" but always something along the lines of "it's a culmination of using the same tools consistently for many years", usually followed by "hey have you seen this trick too".

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

#446

Post by drivers99 »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #123
cjohnson318 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing more annoying than putting my cursor on text, and then having a pop-up block that text.

Why does it block it and not the adjacent area?

Similarly, I find in vscode, if I'm writing something on a line based on the line(s) above it, the popups block what I'm trying to look at. It makes sense that you'd mostly be looking at the lines above, not below right? I have to type a few characters, hit esc, type, esc, type, esc. Also, I often have to hit esc before pressing return. Deleting brackets that it added where I didn't want it; I'm probably supposed to highlight the part I want to enclose and then type the opening bracket though; I run into that when I intentionally want to replace some text with one bracket and it encloses it instead. I disabled IntelliSense but I still get the other automatic behaviors. I really like the auto-indent though. That alone makes me put up with the rest, and I'm used to all the ways it gets in the way now. Kind of like how you get used to hitting esc to get out of insert mode in vi.

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

#448

Post by withinboredom »

scarface_74 wrote: post #426
iamwil wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is the very real possibility that automation masks complexity, not reduce it. And that’s what he’s saying.

I used this as an example before, the AWS SDK https://boto3.amazonaws.com/v1/documentation/api/latest/inde... It’s the same in every supported language since it is autogenerated from service definition files. I chose the Python version because it is all on one page. Would you rather memorize thousands of functions across hundreds of classes? Should AWS “reduce complexity” by getting rid of services and functionality?…

yes to all of that. In other words, we need both. We need the low-level stuff to do things nobody has ever done before, and the high-level stuff for the things we do every day.

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

#449

Post by yodsanklai »

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…

> a good programmer should organize software in such a way that every piece of code has a clear and logical place

How many programmers have the luxury to organize the code in the way that exactly suit them? most of the time, I work on code I didn't write myself. In the past, I used to try to refactor but I grew tired of having to justify why it's useful. Nowadays, I just deal with the code the best I can, and LSP is a big help.

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

#450

Post by scarface_74 »

withinboredom wrote: post #448
scarface_74 wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used this as an example before, the AWS SDK https://boto3.amazonaws.com/v1/documentation/api/latest/inde... It’s the same in every supported language since it is autogenerated from service definition files. I chose the Python version because it is all on one page. Would you rather memorize thousands of functions across hundreds of classes? Should AWS “reduce complexity” by getting rid of services and functionality?…

yes to all of that. In other words, we need both. We need the low-level stuff to do things nobody has ever done before, and the high-level stuff for the things we do every day.

And even assemblers had macros in the late 80s and shortcuts to make assembly easier.

There is no reason to purposefully make your life harder and not use the tools available.

The parent poster doesn’t use IDEs because it hides complexity. There is a such thing as necessarily complex.

About a decade ago I was working at a company that created a SaaS product for railroad car repair billing.

These are the main requirements not including a dozen addendums

https://public.railinc.com/sites/default/files/documents/CRB...

The parent commenter would say that we shouldn’t use an IDE to navigate through the massive code base to make sure records submitted from the railroad yards were in compliance. What alternative would you suggest?

Intellisense for Visual Studio has been out since the mid 90a

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