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Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?
561–570 of 652 posts
Re: Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?
#562Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 requirem…
I remember when it came out. It changed my life. Libraries without docs were suddenly discoverable. I didn’t have to memorize things, I just had to remember the gist of things. It let me focus on the important stuff. Still, today, before picking up a library, I will read over the whole thing so I know what is possible; but I don’t need to memorize it.
Re: Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?
#563Earlier quoted context omitted.
"the whole point of your job is automation?" Automation is not the point of programming. Think hard about this. It's the most important point. Code/build/hack to create more work for people to do, not less. It's thanatos. People need to unlearn "programming==automation" before it's too late. Everything we do as programmers should be done with "create more work" as a mantra.
I see where you're going but for me "create more work" doesn't quite capture it. In my mind there's a pretty clear distinction between computer work and human work. Computers are good at fast, precise calculations and following complex procedures repetitively without variation. Humans are good at lateral thinking, constructing narrative and drawing non-obvious connections. Coincidentally, humans are generally really…
I think everything could be summed up even better to just say that the goal should be to increase productivity.
Re: Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?
#564Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I've never heard Python or Ruby referred to as untyped Well, now you have! Here are some examples: https://0xda.de/blog/2024/03/untyped-python-sucks/ https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2023/12/1/the-python-that-was/ In fairness I think it is a fairly recent linguistic shift, probably because there's no debate between weakly typed and strongly typed - strongly typed is oblivious the right answer. Instead the debate is between…
Of course it's Python people who come up with this nonsense...
Do you have a better name suggestion?
Re: Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?
#565Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Not only do I avoid using LSP features, but I’m also opposed to their use. While they can help with navigation, they may prevent developers from experiencing and addressing the underlying structural issues in their code. LSP by itself will not prevent anything. LSP (using the terminology from OP, but any IDE really) is just a tool like any other which allows you to do things faster. It doesn't matter how organized…
I find the more plugins I add to vscode to do all of the automation, keypresses become more and more sluggish. It seems like it wouldn’t be noticeable — we’re talking about milliseconds. But I find there to be a world of difference between every keypress being processed as I touch the key versus slightly after it. With enough experience on a given language you just of internalize a lot of the common linter rules. I u…
> vscode to do all of the automation, keypresses become more and more sluggish
The problem is VS Code then. Try IntelliJ, they spent ridiculous amounts of engineering to make typing as fast as Vim.
> I find when it pops up automatically to be maddening.
Me too, the first thing I do in my IDE is disable that. I love autocompletion, but I want it only when I need it. Now, that's completely different from just saying I don't need autocompletion at all.
> though it’s a real mixed bag between seeming magical and guessing the completely wrong thing.
Agree completely. Sometimes I am totally amazed at how it knew exactly what I wanted to write. But sometimes it misses the mark for sure. This tech is just going to get better though, so I like being able to use it while it improves and notice the difference with every new model.
Re: Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?
#566Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Not only do I avoid using LSP features, but I’m also opposed to their use. While they can help with navigation, they may prevent developers from experiencing and addressing the underlying structural issues in their code. LSP by itself will not prevent anything. LSP (using the terminology from OP, but any IDE really) is just a tool like any other which allows you to do things faster. It doesn't matter how organized…
Is it inefficient? Possibly. But I would argue trying to get me to use an IDE and all of the other new fancy tools is more inefficient. My flow works for me, I can navigate through projects and find exactly what I'm looking for pretty quickly, to the point where people who watch me do it comment on how it just looks like a blaze of text to them. And I've found that trying to use IDEs and other tools doesn't make me m…
> And I've found that trying to use IDEs and other tools doesn't make me more efficient, it just slows me down.
I am sorry to insist on this, but you're clearly mistaken: it's literally impossible for your grep workflow to be faster than hitting `Cmd+b` (IntelliJ MacOS shortcut to go to definition if you're on a symbol, or to see usages if you're on a definition).
> when I try to use tab completion
You don't use tab-completion even on the terminal?
> and popups and tab-complete break that flow for me.
It's very easy to turn off popups and make auto-complete only show up when you explicitly request it. In fact, that's the first thing I do on my IDEs. I highly recommend spending some time changing the IDE settings so that you're happy with how much "automatic" stuff it does. The amount of help an IDE gives is just immeasurable. I do sometimes have to write code without one and it feels like walking on glass. Even running a particular test, for example, is difficult, while in the IDE you just, again, hit a shortcut while your cursor is on the test. I know approximately how to do that from the terminal, but ffs that's useless knowledge to have when I just don't have to write code without an IDE at all, and using the terminal would take minutes (even if you're super fluent in it, as you're forced to come up with a regex for the particular test you want to run or just type the entire name, without assistance) rather than a fraction of a second, while distracting me from what I was even trying to do. This is one example, I could give hundreds more.
Re: Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?
#567Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Uhhh that would involve a precision action with a tool specifically designed for precision actions" ;)
I can definitely hit my Return key with more precision than I can drag a cursor over a 40x400px target but go off :P (I use a Superior Technologies trackball because it's the only mouse I could find manufactured in the USA and it's really not very precise, it's kind of a self handicap to nudge me towards keyboard shortcuts, muscle memory gains just have a steeper curve on keyboard than mouse)
You still need several key strokes to get there ;) So it's not as precise as an actual precision pointing device
Re: Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?
#568Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Text search will also find commented out usage, docu, changelog, and my .org file with refactoring ideas from last month Yes, when searching across the entire project for text an instant fuzzy search is an invaluable tool. > It will also show when a class with the same method names exists elsewhere Oh, this is a great example when a code -aware tool is better. I also ave a rant-ish about LSP at the end. So, let's s…
You seem weirdly angry that some other people like to work in a different way than you like to work. People like different things. You still get to like your thing.
There's nothing weird with being annoyed at people who not only have no idea about the tools available to them, but also make no effort to learn about them while patting themselves on the back for it and feeling superior
Re: Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?
#569Earlier quoted context omitted.
You seem weirdly angry that some other people like to work in a different way than you like to work. People like different things. You still get to like your thing.
There's nothing weird with being annoyed at people who not only have no idea about the tools available to them, but also make no effort to learn about them while patting themselves on the back for it and feeling superior
Isn't that you feeling superior because of your tool preference?
It's quite possible to know about a tool and still not like it. Some people liked microsoft's Clippy, and some other people didn't and it's hard to say that either of them were wrong in what made them moste productive, respectively.
Re: Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?
#570The 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.
Remarkable. With an ide you just press the hot key for next error and bam, it takes you to the exact line. (No you don’t need a mouse for this.)
In fact, with lsp you wouldn’t even write the error in the first place, saving you a big context switch to the terminal, running the compiler, reading the error, reading the file name, swapping back to edit, focus on the file again.