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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?

#21

Post by tlackemann »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #16
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.

NERDTree will give you file hierarchy, CoC will give you insane-levels of autocomplete that rival or beat intellisense and you can use keybindings to navigate directly to method definitions, typings, anything.

Claiming the terminal doesn't do these things demonstrates the lack of time invested time to learn or discover what's available. Again to each their own, but it seems to be the author claims there are no good editors when they simply are just too eager to "open up vscode".

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

#22

Post by nika1975 »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #8

I am kind of excited for Emacs in Rust. I would love something Emacs like that looks modern and easier to manage like VS' ability to easily drag and drop components wherever you need them, and is very fast to boot, think of ST3, CudaText, and co. Then all the bloatware is optional plugins. I would say VS Code is a good goal, it has everything you need to have an IDE, and yet you don't feel forced to use it.

The main reason for Emacs existence is the ability to customize it as you want. That's made possible by Lisp. It is on a whole different level than a VSCode plugin. How does Rust enhance this experience?

I do not get the requirement to be "very fast to boot". My Emacs instance is always running and I use emacsclient as an entrance point for external tools. This is the typical workflow for Emacs users.

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

#23

Post by netfl0 »

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 prefer the terminal as well. Maybe he should just take the time to make a proper vimrc file and stop hyperventilating.

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

#24

Post by tlackemann »

overthemoon wrote: post #17
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.

I never said memorized. I do believe if you truly understand your code however (and ours spans 500k+) then you don't need a file browser to know that components live in the "components" folder.

I agree with taking advantage of a modern UI, all programs could benefit from advancements. I find the article was written with little research or thought put into what is available on the terminal.

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

#25

Post by GordonS »

Erm, we do have good editors? VSCode, Visual Studio, Rider, to name but a few.

I'm not really sure what the OP's beef is here. They begin by bemoaning anything that isn't vim, then move on to say they want a graphical UI, support for plugins, and a bunch of other things that pretty much any IDE has these days.

I think what they really want is a vim extension for VSCode, customised just for them?

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

#26

Post by johannes1234321 »

tlackemann wrote: post #21
johannes1234321 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

NERDTree will give you file hierarchy, CoC will give you insane-levels of autocomplete that rival or beat intellisense and you can use keybindings to navigate directly to method definitions, typings, anything. Claiming the terminal doesn't do these things demonstrates the lack of time invested time to learn or discover what's available. Again to each their own, but it seems to be the author claims there are no good e…

Oh, I have vim with tons of plugins and use gvim for simpler discovery of some features I les softne use, thus know that vim isn't strictly bound to the terminal.

But there is a massive difference while browsing code between the IntelliJ style editor and all the vim plugins in the world.

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

#28

Post by shawnz »

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…

The mouse is not a "clumsy" input and there are plenty of situations in which the mouse allows more efficient usage than the keyboard like when navigating through 2D space. For example it is clearly more efficient to place your cursor at a certain arbitrary point in the document using the mouse than to navigate there using keyboard commands.

I'm also not really convinced about the "hands on the keyboard" argument... What percentage of the time that you work are your hands actually on the keyboard and ready to input? Are they on the keyboard right now? Because that seems like an uncomfortable way to sit at a workstation. I also don't think it takes very much time to switch between the input devices unless maybe you don't have practice with that workflow.

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

#29

Post by mattlondon »

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 know how to get to any line in any file with less than 3 keystrokes

FWIW it is 2 key strokes in VSCode (ctrl-g, then the line number or -n to index back from the end of the file) out of the box. Ctrl-p takes you to any fuzzy-matched file in your workspace.

My point is that VSCode has a lot of shortcuts too - you don't need to use the mouse if you really do need those extra couple of seconds time savings in your 8 hour work day in order to meet your deadlines. But on the plus side you can use they keyboard or the mouse as you see fit - best of both worlds.

If you really are working in such a sweatshop where saving a couple of seconds a day is something you need to think about, then you have my pitty and condolences! At least for me, not every single waking second of my work day is spent hammering out code - I am probably only actively typing in new code perhaps 20-25% of the time max with the rest going on reading existing code, stepping through a debugger, dealing with tickets/bugs, running tests, doing emails, meetings etc etc.

For me, something like VSCode offers some nice visual benefits, e.g. the minimap is super useful, subtle indentation lines, line-length rulers, intellisense popups near where I am actually looking, spelling squigglies etc. I would not be surprised to learn that vi/Emacs can do the same, but if you are adding all that to a text mode editor, why bother and not just use a modern visual editor and just be done with it? Just muscle memory?

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