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Why don’t we have good code editors?

kristofer.reykjal.in

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Re: Why don’t we have good code editors?

#11

Post by WilliamEdward »

bauerd wrote: post #3

>a terminal does not a pleasant user experience make Author doesn't establish this, just takes it as a given. I wonder what features terminal emulators/editor programs would lack that are afforded by GUIs? I consider the terminal text editing experience far more efficient

Usually? File handling. It's convenient on large projects to have a list of files in view next to the code.

Re: Why don’t we have good code editors?

#12

Post by coldcode »

Because no one can agree on what is "good". It's entirely subjective to each person. One loves vim, one loves Notepad, one loves VSCode, one loves Intellij, maybe someone loves hammer and chisel on stones. Like virtually everything in the programming world, it's all about what gives you the ability to do what you need to do with the least extra effort. Like any tool you need what you need, not what someone else says you need. Arguing about what is better is pointless but common.

Re: Why don’t we have good code editors?

#13

Post by sword_smith »

I like that the author has high standards for an editor. He should have. In my opinion VSCode and VS live up to his requirements about out of the box intellisense, inline definition peeking, and extensions that are easy to install (VS Code being better than VS in this regard). They probably don't live up to his model requirement, though, but I think the author could have done a better job of explaining exactly what he wants from this editing mode.

Re: Why don’t we have good code editors?

#15

Post by bipinu »

bauerd wrote: post #3

>a terminal does not a pleasant user experience make Author doesn't establish this, just takes it as a given. I wonder what features terminal emulators/editor programs would lack that are afforded by GUIs? I consider the terminal text editing experience far more efficient

Efficient is not necessarily a pleasant user experience though, is it? I am not downplaying anyone's preference of one over the other. However, a better UX would mean that the initial learning curve to start with something should be low, which isn't usually with terminals.

Re: Why don’t we have good code editors?

#16

Post by johannes1234321 »

tlackemann wrote: post #6

> In all seriousness though, a terminal does not a pleasant user experience make. Yes, yes it does. At my fingertips I have access to every single tool and program without needing to clumsily navigate through folders or Finder, whatever it is. Moving my hand away from my keyboard to my mouse to check TS typings is biggest waste of time when I know how to get to any line in any file with less than 3 keystrokes. > The…

I love using the terminal. And I mostly use vim and for raw editing hardly anything can beat it.

But there are things which a terminal can't to. The article mentionedd the ability of IntelliJ (and derived IDEs) to show the code of functions in a mouse over tooltip. A proper tree to show hierarchy of code. The ability to click and browse and so on. They are really useful things when exploring a code base.

Re: Why don’t we have good code editors?

#17

Post by overthemoon »

tlackemann wrote: post #6

> In all seriousness though, a terminal does not a pleasant user experience make. Yes, yes it does. At my fingertips I have access to every single tool and program without needing to clumsily navigate through folders or Finder, whatever it is. Moving my hand away from my keyboard to my mouse to check TS typings is biggest waste of time when I know how to get to any line in any file with less than 3 keystrokes. > The…

I guess we can't all be 10x geniuses who have their codebase memorized. It's really not crazy to want to take advantage of modern UI, and the idea that you simply don't need to see a file tree is nonsense.

Re: Why don’t we have good code editors?

#18

Post by _4ziu »

tlackemann wrote: post #6

> In all seriousness though, a terminal does not a pleasant user experience make. Yes, yes it does. At my fingertips I have access to every single tool and program without needing to clumsily navigate through folders or Finder, whatever it is. Moving my hand away from my keyboard to my mouse to check TS typings is biggest waste of time when I know how to get to any line in any file with less than 3 keystrokes. > The…

> Terminal editors don't suck. They require learning and discipline, something that some might argue is becoming a lost art in this field. In the days of "gluing modules together", maybe vim isn't for you, but it's for me and this fluff piece contributed nothing.

I mean, I use vim too. Any project that is sufficiently large benefits greatly from a file handler, there is nothing to be proud about for remembering each and every subfile. Why not just put it right there in view? You can't possibly argue it somehow rots the brain; i mean we aren't even talking about writing code here, it's just accessing files.

Re: Why don’t we have good code editors?

#20

Post by roryrjb »

I disagree. Terminal is modern it's just different to GUIs, of course they were a precursor but I don't think anyone can say that GUIs are supposed to be a replacement, as in, I don't think they can say this in retrospect. It's just a different interface, which to me is much more convenient and intuitive. I can pick up a command line application that I have never used before and get up to speed very quickly. Obviously this does depend on the usage of conventions, such as environment variables, arguments, man pages and so on but because of its perceived "limitation" it probably means that applications in this domain are more alike to each other at least in terms of their interfaces. I am biased of course, I live inside tmux and vim and I would happily just use the framebuffer (and use cmus, newsboat, irssi, mplayer, et al) but I have to use a browser for work so yeah. Vim is a very good user experience, you either have to learn it a lot to be productive, or use a few plugins that gloss over this somewhat, but I don't think it has such a massive learning curve considering its vibrant ecosystem. Emacs on the other hand, and I really like the keybindings (using a subset in the shell) just makes my head hurt.
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