Benefits of Not Using an IDE • Hacker News Board

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#31

Post by voidhorse » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:27 PM UTC

I've used vanilla vim more or less without plugins and with a few keymap tweaks for the majority of my software development work. Every now and then I have to use an IDE to match some upstream requirements, and I much prefer using a near featureless text editor. Sure the auto-suggest, tab completion, etc. are nice, but I feel like the downsides aren't worth it. I also find it's easy to get lazy when using an IDE and produce sloppier code on the whole.

In most cases I feel that using an IDE nets you short-term, micro-productivity gains and also nets you long-term rot/maintenance headaches. imo it's typically not worth it.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#32

Post by OJFord » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:27 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.

> You are literally verbatim repeating the a thing that has been written one million times.

I highly doubt that.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#33

Post by schipplock » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:28 PM UTC

> Some Projects with 40000+ files might take >5 minutes to load.

I would buy a more powerful computer. I have a project with 34908 files and IntelliJ doesn't care. Not quite 40_000+ files but still a lot :).

Also with IntelliJ I make fewer mistakes. This "thing" is just more intelligent than I am. Add "SonarLint" to the game and I sometimes don't even know _why_ I am wrong :P.

Also I think "Avoid IDE lock-in of your project" is the wrong subtitle for the following paragraph. You would have the same problems by using just a text editor.

Rd6n6 mentioned refactoring. Do that in an editor and you will go crazy after a while :).

I love and hate my IDE :).

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#34

Post by wokwokwok » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:28 PM UTC

Listen, long story short: just say no to nonsense like this.

Given the choice of a) tooling, or b) no tooling, you’re not being smart, cool or clever by choosing b.

Obviously, what tools you pick are important and heavy IDEs like IntelliJ are a trade off between speed and functionality, and yeah, more nimble tools do exist, and it’s definitely worth trying different development tools to see what makes you most productive.

…but “no IDE” is just rejecting everything because you didn’t like one thing; it’s just being lazy.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#35

Post by codewithcheese » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:29 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…

I'm surprised how many of my colleagues don't use the debugging features of their IDE. Being able to step through code line by line and see all the variables states at any time and evaluate arbitrary expressions given those states seems far superior to print/console based guesstimation. However, somehow my colleagues still do great work!

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#36

Post by bootlooped » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:29 PM UTC

There is a common perception with electric bicycles that the rider will pedal less hard to go the same speed. But there is an alternative: they could pedal the same amount and go faster.

I kind of view IDEs like that. You can use it as a crutch, or you can take the energy you would have used thinking about the things the IDE is now doing for you and focus it elsewhere.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#37

Post by cgh » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:29 PM UTC

For context, the author is a student with little real-world work experience producing software for a paycheque. To put it mildly, there’s a lot more to writing software in a modern work environment than your choice of editor or whatever.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#38

Post by spapas82 » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:29 PM UTC

I was developing python/django for a couple of years in notepad++. I had a very slow computer this time and using anything else seemed way too slow. The featured I missed most from notepad++ was not being able to quickly open files for editing (ie like using ctrl+p in vscode).

Beyond that, it was a great experience. Of course, using python contributed to that great experience since most things can be easily remembered and the autocompletes are not so useful due to the dynamic nature of the language. When I needed to do Java/spring development I always fired up eclipse even if though I knew it would take 5 minutes to start and a couple of seconds for each suggestion to appear. However, trying to develop in Java without an IDE by having the javadocs open and copying and pasting all the package and class names all the time and missing everything static typing offers your is a nightmare!

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#39

Post by GiorgioG » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

ThePadawan wrote: post #25

sxldier wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's referring to Visual Studio. https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/

Man, I've been going back to full-fat VS after working in VS Code for a while, and boy, does VS just chug even opening a "Hello World" C# project. (I used VS at work regularly and the performance on a million-SLoC solution was quite bad, but I didn't expect it to be much better given the size of the solution)

Have you tried VS 2022 (beta)? It's 64-bit finally. It's way faster in my experience, but I don't have a million-SLoC solution laying around to test.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#40

Post by fartcannon » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

In Linux, it often feels like the whole OS is the IDE. In the same shell, you can edit source files, compile, debug, execute, rename, search, create and execute scripts to do literally anything with any language, use git, surf the web, update, reboot, launch a game, etc, etc.

An IDE on top of that always felt restricting to me. Like why limit yourself? But maybe that's a windows/Mac thing.