What I would do differently if I was learning to program again

I can't get the features of VIM in an IDE. I CAN get IDE features in VIM.

I get syntax highlighting, Automatic Checks, Navigation based on Language structures. I even can integrate my shell and debuggers into VIM, but I don't use do that. I use those usually just as a stand alone tool.

VIM and Emacs also have the absolute best git integration I have ever seen. Magit for emacs and Fugitive for Vim are absolutely fantastic. Certainly beats any IDE I have ever used.

I can't think of anything that I would like to have from any IDE.

MY vim is a much better tool for me then any of the IDEs that I have used in the last 10 Years. I started out with IDEs, because that is what my teachers and mentors used, but once I learned vim the IDEs just seem painfully slow and limited.

It is also not the case that I just don't know better. I certainly have used many IDEs in the past. For example I used Visual Studio (Not "VS Code", the proper enterprise VS) for 2 Years.

Interesting.

If I had to work with a pair or a team, as an introvert, I would find myself subtly withdrawing from active participation. I like live-coding, and I like active-listening (the latter is absorbing, hoping to understand and the former is testing/verifying/correcting/practicing your understanding, but I like absorbing or total-immersion personal practice. Group exercises get in the way of that (for me - again - I'm probably weird).

So, (and I'm thinking about this as I type), I think that I am active, but in my own particular ways. Because I grew up in odd remote/rural circumstances, maybe these habits were habituated because I did not get socialized with normal folk well until my mid-to-late- teens. But, maybe it's genetic? I notice one of my two sons has the same tendencies, and he's lived in an urban/public environment his whole life.

What I'm pondering is (beyond the scope of your Scala classes), is whether there are ways to actively engage multiple "types" of people? I'm not just talking about what they call "visual learners" vs "audio learners" (which has largely been debunked?), but ... IDK. I'm trying to assemble a platform for programs that get people to/through their GED, as various states put work requirements on government benefit recipients, and a major hiring block is simply not having a high-school degree. I'd like to make everything as warm and fuzzy and low-friction for everyone as I can - but I don't know how - because (obviously) not everyone is me! :-)

I run Emacs, in GUI mode. If the language tool have a debugger and/or an interpreter, there is the IDE. In the rare case that there is not a ready made comint implementation for a language, it's easy to do. Completion, well M-/ is good enough. If I don't know a function's name, I need to read the manual to find it and to learn what it does anyways. If I need snippets, it's easy to define them, even without an Emacs minor mode for snippets. Every part of the system is extensible, every keybinding redefinable, and almost every functionality composable. And almost any programming language with more than ten users has an Emacs major mode already made for it. If I really want semantic completion or on-the-fly error reporting and linting (I don't use these out of preference), it's dead simple to integrate and enable.

Not only, but I can use the same thing to read my mail, maintain my agenda and create and edit documents.

With an IDE, I need another IDE for every language I use. Then I still need a text editor for editing text anyways. Each editor has it's unique method of customisation, and its conventions, its own keybindings, its own behaviour &c, and its own way to store customisations, which are hard to version control, if possible. And substantial customisation that requires custom code is either impossible or very hard to do.

Emacs is an IDE for Emacs Lisp. But it's so naturally extensible that it's become an application platform, basically. If all you do for all your career is to write in one language or two, then go with an IDE, I guess. But I'm glad I can use the same program to edit Perl, Python, Ruby, any sort of text, HTML, C, Assembly, Ada, Cobol, JavaScript, CoffeScript, Clojure, ClojureScript, Java, Kotlin, Scala, Haskel, and so on; and do way more with it than editing source code.

Except 11 out of 10 such tools come as a command line tool that has to be integrated to your IDE, often by someone else.

Evil is a Vim implementation in Elisp, basically.