Benefits of Not Using an IDE • Hacker News Board

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#11

Post by mankyd » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:20 PM UTC

Rd6n6 wrote: post #4

A good ide is all about auto completion and refactoring tools. The autocompletion means you don’t have to spend as much time memorizing apis, so you can focus more on simplifying your design and minimizing coupling. In something like unreal engine, the intellisense really sets ides apart. The refactoring means you can quickly and easily make large changes to make the code easier to work in. You can just work signific…

Refactoring is where it's at for me. The ability to rename functions and variables across not just a local file, but all references in the code base is huge.

Relatedly, the ability to find all usages of a symbol and navigate between them is indispensable for me at this point.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#12

Post by mattgreenrocks » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:21 PM UTC

Maybe I’m weird, but at some point I stopped fixating on which tools to use and just settled on a personal workflow:

* terminal open at root of project used for source control

* one or more tabs for ssh/VMs etc

* IDE/VSCode/vim for editing

Any of those is fine. And sometimes I switch between them depending on my mood. If I’m out and about it can be nice to conserve battery and focus by going full terminal mode. If I have AC power and a full screen then I don’t mind an IDE as much.

One thing I insist on is doing as much work with git from the CLI. IDEs often do things like staging new files automatically that I’m not a fan of.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#13

Post by clircle » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:21 PM UTC

The difference between an IDE and a souped-up vim or emacs configuration is ... very little. Your average fancy pants vim config has auto-completion, debuggers, etc.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#14

Post by Kaze404 » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:21 PM UTC

adamnemecek wrote: post #3

I don’t get why these articles get written. They are so predictable and just…overdone. What’s next “the unreasonable effectiveness of the vim text editor”? You are literally verbatim repeating the a thing that has been written one million times.

Couldn't the same be said about your comment?

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#15

Post by sxldier » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:22 PM UTC

nerdbaggy wrote: post #8

He bashes VS Code at the end but that seems exactly what he wants. VS Code is more of a text editor then an IDE, and you can turn off all the “issues” he complains about.

He's referring to Visual Studio.

https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#16

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:22 PM UTC

nerdbaggy wrote: post #8

He bashes VS Code at the end but that seems exactly what he wants. VS Code is more of a text editor then an IDE, and you can turn off all the “issues” he complains about.

[deleted]

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#17

Post by bootlooped » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:23 PM UTC

shreddit wrote: post #2

I think that’s why VSCode is so popular. It’s a very powerful text editor, not a light version of an IDE. On the other side, I’d never use vsc to edit a normal text file…

Everybody I know that uses VIM and VS Code uses them with a bunch of plugins to make them more IDE-like. The result will still probably be more performant than a true IDE, but the downside is there is additional setup time and brittleness. The JetBrains IDEs, at least the ones I've used, just work.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#18

Post by matt2000 » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

None of these feel particularly true to me, but in particular "less code is more readable" is just so clearly not true. If this was the case we'd all still be using Perl.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#19

Post by wyager » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:25 PM UTC

I write very different code when not using an IDE.

If I’m not using an IDE, my code has to be contextually simpler for me to remember it (because I can’t just jump to definition) which makes my code ultimately better organized. However, I assume this comes at some speed penalty, at least in the short term.

For personal projects I don’t use an IDE, but for work because everyone else writes IDE-style code, I also need to use an IDE to wrangle it.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#20

Post by bootlooped » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:25 PM UTC

throw3849 wrote: post #7

I feel most of those points are obsolete with Idea. It takes seconds to start and so on. Only benefit I see is remote development over terminal.

The JetBrains IDE family is half way there. You can run your code on remote targets now, but I think the code itself still has to actually be on your machine.

https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2021/01/run-targets-run-and-...