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

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

#1

Post by zackoverflow »

I am totally fascinated by programmers who don't use many of the IDE features I take for granted today: autocomplete, language servers, and recently copilot

So to the devs who don't use these tools, how do you do it? Do you just remember every type and field in a codebase? What does your flow look like?

One example is that I cannot live without the language server go-to-definition feature. What do you do if you need to look up the definition/implementation of some function which is in some other file?

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

#3

Post by gregjor »

I use vim with ctags. vim has good autocomplete but I don't use it much -- I rely on memory and looking things up in the docs. With ctags I can jump to definition/implementation of a function.

ctags has worked since the early 1990s.

Check out this video: How to do 90% of what plugins do with just vim.

https://youtu.be/XA2WjJbmmoM

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

#5

Post by RadiozRadioz »

I've found that regular non-language-aware autocomplete is sufficient for me, plus recursive greps through repos. Referencing my app's data structures in another editor window is useful too.

I use JavaScript and Python. Because they are dynamically typed, I never had full confidence in IDE-like tools in my text editors. I see those languages as flimsy foundations to add IDE tooling to, I would always experience situations where the editor had no idea what type something was. So I stopped bothering entirely.

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

#7

Post by Jugurtha »

I don't use any of these out of ignorance first, laziness second, and incompetence third.

I didn't know about them, and I had spent a lot of time with the documentation and code of everything I touched (language, dependencies, etc). Looking things up reinforces this. The value of a feature such as autocomplete is marginal to me as a function of the effort I have to make to learn how to use it properly, the frustration of using it improperly, and the added steps to fix a blunder, so I just don't bother with it.

I also have a habit of having the documentation/book/code of a dependency open nearby and doing my look-ups there.

A lot of time is spent refining existing code, debugging, optimizing, refactoring, etc...

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

#8

Post by hn30000 »

CS department at my alma mater was very, very theoretical and we were encouraged to just write code in text editors. After that I got into programming for CAD software which had rudimentary editors as well. Basically I just memorized a bunch of stuff and always had a second monitor with the docs open. These days I use autocomplete but I still largely code the same way, and for better or worse I’m set in my ways — at least when I’m using libraries I’m familiar with. If I’m messing around with something completely new then sure, I’ll make extensive use of autocomplete.

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

#9

Post by bdcravens »

Earlier in my career, I would often turn those features off. It was the late 1990s, and computers were much slower, and as a result, I didn't like the lag that some of those features would cause. As such, I learned to work without them.

These days of course computers have no issues. However, I've moved to a completely Docker Compose driven workflow, but for various reasons, I've run into issues getting LSPs etc working correctly. From time to time I'll take a stab at getting it working again, with some success, but rarely do I have that kind of free time (I typically work on small teams)

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

#10

Post by patchymcnoodles »

For me it is actually a disturbance, especially autocomplete. So yes, I need to remember stuff, but if I cannot or just don't know the codebase, I look it up very quickly and then can learn more from looking at the specific code.

At the start of learning rust I used a bit more help from the IDE, but now not anymore.

For me it is just easier to have a much deeper knowledge instead of "only" have knowledge about the tools. A good example was when I used SVN back in the days, I only used a GUI and always struggled if something does not work out. I had basically no idea, what is really going on. So when Git became the new normal I forced myself to use the command line only and because of that I can always help myself (with Git atleast :D).

Certainly not something for everyone, but it works for me :).

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