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Benefits of Not Using an IDE

alexander-hansen.dev

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Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#131

Post by noidesto »

yoz-y wrote: post #106
clircle wrote: post #13

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.

I find that spinning up QtCreator on a new machine is orders of magnitude faster than transporting a vim configuration.

1. Optional: do install of neovim 2. git pull dotfiles 3. cd dotfiles 4. install.sh 5. Profit $$$

Sure, there's some initial setup time but I'm not seeing how its orders of magnitude faster unless your vim config is super bloated and/or has a lot of external dependencies.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#132

Post by noidesto »

ngai_aku wrote: post #102
nwatson wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With JetBrains PyCharm or the PyCharm plugin in IntelliJ, you can treat all python3 as statically typed ... use the type-annotations and then linter will catch your mistakes.

You can also do this using emacs with lsp (specifically with pyright as the backend)

This.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#133

Post by chrismorgan »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #65
bootlooped wrote: post #36

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.

> they could pedal the same amount and go faster Nitpicking, but in the world of regulations, electric assist tapers off until around 25-30 km/h, at which point you start carrying the entire bike anyway, plus the dead weight of the battery and the motor. I wonder if this simile could be extended to programming. Being hindered by not being able to choose your own tools?

Not everywhere. Australia supports both the European pedelec classification of 250W with a 25km/h cutout and a local one of 200W with no speed limit (which can be hand-throttle in some states but must be pedal-assist in others). New Zealand just has a flat 300W with no speed limit.

I live out in the country in Australia. I’m planning a velomobile with an auxiliary motor for both touring and local use, and with this combination I expect and hope to attain an average speed of over 50km/h for the ~39km trip to the nearest town for church and groceries on Sundays. (I currently tend to average 22–24km/h on my recumbent tricycle with no motor, the trip typically taking 1h35–1h50m, with an estimated average power output of 120W. 200W is quite a lot to add!)

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#134

Post by dolni »

oneplane wrote: post #59

None of this matters in the slightest as soon as you have to work with other people on stuff. At that point common tooling is more important than specific personalised tooling. If everyone is using IntelliJ and you're using Atom, it's going to be problematic. Not because of either of those tools, but because you now have a discrepancy that is not relevant to the work you're doing yet it's creating problems for the wo…

Enforcing an IDE across a team for consistency is a real stinky smell.

You don't have CI/CD? You sure as hell aren't going to run an IDE in CircleCI or Jenkins to do your builds.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#135

Post by Mikeb85 »

wokwokwok wrote: post #34

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 produc…

Dunno, I kind of like no IDE. If you use an IDE, it's basically editor + a bunch of command line tools being invoked from the IDE's interface. You can also just use an editor + those command line tools from a terminal. It's the same functionality with a slightly different workflow and IMO not worse.

I disagree with the author's dislike of code completion tools but somewhat agree with the other points. In particular how some IDEs create their own project structure.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#136

Post by drunkpotato »

wokwokwok wrote: post #34

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 produc…

The best developers I've found are the ones who know how to work without an IDE, even if their preference is to use one.

Contrastingly, the worst, slowest developers I've worked with rely on their IDE without understanding what it's doing for them, and are helpless in new/unsupported situations. They also, 100% of the time, screw up their git repositories on a regular basis, and need someone who knows what they're doing to help them out, costing their colleagues time and frustration helping them when they won't help themselves.

Some people from the first group find they prefer not using an IDE. It's rather the opposite of laziness, it's choosing the workflow they find most productive, even if it differs from your preferred workflow.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#137

Post by jakear »

throwaway09223 wrote: post #117
Waterluvian wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Power drills have batteries or cords and motors that wear down and they’re more expensive and complex and can break more easily and it’s just smarter to bring hand crank tools to the worksite.” - Nobody

I think you've hit upon an important distinction, because while construction workers won't be bringing hand tools "to the worksite," there are in fact many people who do use hand tools for fine woodworking in their woodshops. People work with wood for different reasons and people write software for different reasons. All of these tools and approaches can be valid. Some may be interested in rapid and low cost large sc…

Exactly. When I’m tinkering around in Scheme crafting cutesy little interpreters a simple text editor is great, and having an IDE would feel like having someone standing over my shoulder whispering to me every rule of a game I already know by heart.

On the other hand, when I’m working on a new area in a several thousand file project with dozens of contributors, or any number of its side-projects that I may have never seen before in my life, it’s more like having talented counsel at my shoulder informing me of all the various contracts I’d be expected to observe for any possible plan of action I might consider taking.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#138

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

wokwokwok wrote: post #34

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 produc…

There’s only one place I can disagree.

Some examples of Teaching/learning.

The US Navy is teaches C without an IDE. This makes sense for them. If they had institutional knowledge going back to the 1970s, it all still pretty much applies and looks the same as it did 50 years ago, or another 50 years from now.

Yes. You should use a good tooling if your goal is to make something.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#139

Post by thinkharderdev »

enriquto wrote: post #107

Using an IDE is like playing the piano and putting stickers with the name of each note. There's no objective downside to doing this, but it's not really going to help you play better music once you go beyond the very basic stuff. It may give some people a false sense of security, but it won't make a difference to a professional programmer. Some of those programmers (but not all, and that is OK) will become annoyed at…

I'm not sure the piano analogy is really apt. A piano has 88 keys (and really it's just the same keys repeated across multiple octaves) so any competent player will of course quickly memorize the keys and playing the piano would be impossible by actually reading the labels on the key anyway.

Doing software development means using a variety of different standard APIs which many combinations of methods/parameters/etc as well as any number of custom, project-specific APIs. Sure, if you work on the same project using the same codebase for years on end then you can probably effectively memorize all the relevant APIs, but few developers are in that situation. You move from project to project and have to drop in to large, existing codebases with their own conventions and abstractions.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#140

Post by noidesto »

voidhorse wrote: post #31

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…

I share the same sentiment after using IntelliJ w/ Pycharm for a little over a year.
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