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Benefits of Not Using an IDE

alexander-hansen.dev

161–170 of 389 posts

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

veering off-topic, that's one of the problems I have with electric bikes - they stop being bicycles and become another kind of vehicle - a faster vehicle that needs longer stopping distances and now has a highe r fatality rate when colliding with a pedestrian. We see this in London cycle lanes. Some cycles are doing a commute, some are trying out for the olympics, some people are doing 25 on a electric scooter and th…

Motorcyling channel Fortnine did a video in depth on this topic: https://youtu.be/wM8Xli2KTzI (They've also done some more motorized cycle and electric content lately. A recent video showed how to rebuild an old motorcycle's frame into an electric motorcycle using a kit.)

An e-bike that goes 60kph seems a bit out of the ordinary. Most are limited to 25kph or 45kph. But even 45 is still fast with only a bicycle helmet though

I see, your own peddling can make them go faster. Ok these things should be illegal!

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#162

> 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…

You need an IDE for Java. That language is built for IDE.

The requirement is a little bit less for some other popular languages.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 do…

> 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. The best swimmers can stay afloat with pounds and pounds of weight dragging the down; the worst swimmers will drown. Doesn't mean weighing you down makes you a better swimmer.

Ironically, it would make you a better swimmer - it will help you build up strength, stamina, and technique.

An excellent choice in analogies.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#164

The author seems to use IDE for one purpose only: to auto-generate boilerplate code. But this is far from the only benefits of IDEs! I rarely use IDEs for code generation, I don't even like autocomplete. For this stuff I use code snippets; I develop collections of those for any language I use. You don't need an IDE for it; any good text editor has such features. For me really important features of a good IDE are: - N…

> - Error highlighting. this so much. it's priceless to just type a line and have some warnings such as "hey, you're moving this value but using the variable afterwards, take care" or "hey, it looks like you are only using this argument as a reference, consider not passing it by value" just pop up next to the offending line ; when compared to an IDE-less workflow I pretty much divide the amount of hitting "build" I n…

I get those exact same warnings in Vim :)

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#165

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 do…

The thing I hate most about IDEs is when they insinuate themselves into a project's development workflow so deeply that you can't make do without them.

Do I have to spin up a whole session of the IDE just to run my test suite? Do I have to dig through eleven nested GUI settings dialogues to find out what the command to build the damn project is, just so I can tweak a build parameter? Is there so much boilerplate or XML or whatever within the frameworks we're using that writing or changing code is impossible without automation? These are bad things.

An IDE can be a powerful abstraction, but when the underlying layer it's abstracting over becomes inaccessible, then all it's doing is adding more complexity by obscuring concrete details.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

veering off-topic, that's one of the problems I have with electric bikes - they stop being bicycles and become another kind of vehicle - a faster vehicle that needs longer stopping distances and now has a highe r fatality rate when colliding with a pedestrian. We see this in London cycle lanes. Some cycles are doing a commute, some are trying out for the olympics, some people are doing 25 on a electric scooter and th…

What blows my mind is that in New York, we've decided to deal with this by requiring speed governors on pedal-assist bicycles to limit them to around 20mph... while they're required to share the street with cars that are free to travel at almost any speed.

Traffic rules basically give drivers a way to deal with other vehicles going different speeds. So a the driver of a scooter going 20 mph and the driver of a car going 40 mph can share the same road, just like a driver of a truck going 40 mph can share the road with the driver of a car going 60 mph.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot to add " for me ... ". You also implicitly defined IDEs as " the right tools ". After that you imply that those who do not use " the right tools " (in your definition of "right") are " severely restricted in the complexity of the programs [they] can create ". In other words, you state that your way is the right way while my way is wrong . Notice I did not state that my way is the right way for everyone? Wh…

It's one of those "the mouse is objectively faster than the keyboard, no matter how much it feels otherwise" things. So much of the taxing minutiae of programming is automated away by a good IDE that, unless you're working on a very small project, the time and effort saved is worth it.

That argument can easily be turned around by adding a short phrase:

As long as you're working on a fairly standard type of project much of the taxing minutiae of programming is automated away by a good IDE that, unless you're working on a very small project, the time and effort saved is worth it.

In other words, that IDE which may assist you while you're building yet another CRUD project gets in the way when you're, say, developing a driver for a sensor on an IP camera based on a reverse-engineered example.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#169
post #57

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.

What about refactoring tools? What about integrated debugging, stepping right into the code you're editing on your screen? What about hot reload? If Unixheads would stop pretending their stone-knives-and-bearskins development tools were equivalent to full-fledged IDEs, development would have advanced much more than it has decades ago.

I use both, one method is just less restrictive.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#170

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 do…

But you don't use git to write your code. Code autocompletion and cross referencing are pretty big productivity boosters that won't prevent you from learning command line git. Also I bet you don't use the command line for diffing files.

Also the problems is that most IDEs half ass their git client. When I was using Sourcetree, I rarely ever felt the need to go to the command line.

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