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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?

#631

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

motorest wrote: post #556
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs can instantly review changes and suggest ways to improve it, which would require either reading up on the topic or asking a fellow engineer on payroll to spend their time doing the same job. If we train ourselves out of being able to do these tasks, won't we find it harder to recognise when the AI makes mistakes?

> If we train ourselves out of being able to do these tasks, won't we find it harder to recognise when the AI makes mistakes? We are not skipping these tasks. We are using tools to help us avoid doing drudge work that can be automated away. Code linters eliminate the need to prettify code. Do developers find it harder to recognize indentation inconsistencies? Syntax highlighters simplify picking up code constructs. D…

I think those first two are not like the third. I think it's highly likely that developers who rely on AI to write code for them find it harder to write a function themselves, yes.

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

#632

Post by troupo »

chikere232 wrote: post #569
troupo wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It's quite possible to know about a tool and still not like it.

My experience with people bashing IDEs has universally been: they've never tried them, or tried for at most a few days. You can immediately see in their comments.

Could be I was exposed to too many such programmers :)

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

#634

Post by ThinkBeat »

Back in the before time my computer science exams¹ that lasted around 6h-7h We had to write the code requested with pen and paper and no reference sources or anything else.

and yes the code were to be written with the expectation that whoever graded the paper could run it and it would work. (I dont think anyone every tried typing it in)., and none of the questinos requred short answers.

(Well the ones where programming was a bit part of it. Others were math, where again you hand wrote it and you had no access to any reference books)

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

#635

Post by TheCapeGreek »

CrLf wrote: post #206
TheCapeGreek wrote: post #203

PSA: No matter how good you are, please don't do this if you're working in a tech stack you are not familiar with, in a team with people who are experts and are using fully fledged IDEs. There will be inevitable ultra-basic mistakes, especially if you're also not familiar with testing the code you're actually writing. I say this as a specialist using an IDE and having had PRs sent to me that weren't even syntacticall…

Maybe submitting PRs with code that wasn't even run is the problem, not IDE features?

...and if you're new to the language, it's easy to trip up, especially if you also have habits of not always testing even "simple" code.

It's not the sole cause to not use IDE tooling, but it is a significant contributor.

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

#636

Post by TheCapeGreek »

akritid wrote: post #205
TheCapeGreek wrote: post #203

PSA: No matter how good you are, please don't do this if you're working in a tech stack you are not familiar with, in a team with people who are experts and are using fully fledged IDEs. There will be inevitable ultra-basic mistakes, especially if you're also not familiar with testing the code you're actually writing. I say this as a specialist using an IDE and having had PRs sent to me that weren't even syntacticall…

Not using LSP does not mean not compiling/running. Using an LSP should not qualify you to commit without compiling or running either!

If you're new to the language or stack and make absurdly basic syntax mistakes, yes I consider using an LSP-capable editor of some kind a qualifier.

Don't do your job worse just because of your tooling preference. Do what you want when you know you can do the job well and not waste reviewer time.

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

#637

Post by TheCapeGreek »

yxhuvud wrote: post #394
TheCapeGreek wrote: post #203

PSA: No matter how good you are, please don't do this if you're working in a tech stack you are not familiar with, in a team with people who are experts and are using fully fledged IDEs. There will be inevitable ultra-basic mistakes, especially if you're also not familiar with testing the code you're actually writing. I say this as a specialist using an IDE and having had PRs sent to me that weren't even syntacticall…

This happen with IDE people too, and even more often with LSP people. Too many people take what the tooling say as gospel instead of taking the time to get an understanding of what they are doing.

Making mistakes within code logic can happen with any degree of tool, yes.

Using an LSP will at least clearly highlight when you're making the most basic syntax mistake.

Don't do your job worse in tech you don't know when you're expected to perform at a certain professional level.

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

#638

Post by ern0 »

1. A friend of mine told me that he was writing a program, then he needed a function, which he just wrote. At compilation, turned out that the same funcion already exists with the same name. He created it a hour before.

2. I remember all my variable names. In a module. For a while.

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

#639

Post by crabbone »

throwaway81523 wrote: post #614
crabbone wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For years now Emacs had integration with LSP. The experience isn't quite the same as VSCode (I think, there are some proprietary extensions to LSP protocol, or some such, but don't quote me on this). But it's good enough to work in most cases (this is how I write in Ada and Rust, for instance). So, if you use Emacs: https://github.com/joaotavora/eglot I believe this is the most popular implementation.

I had thought LSP was basically an editor-independent way to implement language editing modes. Since I mostly use languages Emacs already has modes for, I haven't pursued LSP, but I figure that it's there if I need it. Thanks. PS, I would be interested in seeing a serious Ada vs Rust comparison by an actual fluent user of both.

Well, I'm not there yet :) My knowledge of both languages is quite superficial. And, unfortunately, it tends to stay that way, unless I work on a commercial project in a particular language. I sort of worked on a Rust project, but I barely touched the Rust code (mostly the automation around it). With Ada, I don't expect to ever find a job that requires it...

As for the "proprietary" part, this is my understanding, which might be totally wrong, and maybe some VSCode users will correct me (I don't use VSCode):

Some LSP servers are proprietary (even though the protocol itself is open-source). Furthermore, some VSCode extensions (which is what LSP servers usually are) are both closed-source and have a license that only allows them to be used with VSCode. So, other tools that can interface using LSP won't necessarily have as good of a support as VSCode. LSP being a complex interface means that it can be implemented to a lesser degree by any individual server.

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

#640

Post by lelanthran »

vbezhenar wrote: post #472
jasonpeacock wrote: post #12

You 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…

Here's my take. One of my hidden superpower that I often see others are missing is navigating library code. Especially in new language. I don't like reading docs. Very rarely docs are good. Usually docs are incomplete or outright wrong. So I never read them unless absolutely required. I just navigate library, skimming through its source code. Whether it's standard library or third-party library. I failed this approac…

> Another failure with this approach is C/C++. For reasons that I kind of understand but don't approve, its standard library either hidden (so I can't just navigate to malloc implementation) or obfuscated with endless underscores (header template libraries), which makes it unreadable.

That's a complaint with C++, not with C.

You can very easily do development in C without much of what you rely on when using Java, C#, C++, etc.

The one thing, in C, that I do lean on a lot is compilation errors I get shown while developing: C is simple enough that a build of the current project's changed files takes 20ms or so. In practice, it builds faster than I can type.

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