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Benefits of Not Using an IDE

alexander-hansen.dev

171–180 of 389 posts

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#171
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.

We have that to. We even have post Mortem debugging. Did you know you can load a core dump into gdb? To me it seems like a new generation of developers is reinventing the wheel because they don’t know about what tools are available.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#172
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.

> What about refactoring tools?

The old unix editors have had rename across project, find references, go to definition/implementation for several years at this point via lsps (the same way vscode gets its functionality).

> What about integrated debugging

Those are usually (slightly ecosystem dependent) wrappers around a terminal debugger.

> What about hot reload?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but these are also wrappers around cli functionality (once again, might be ecosystem dependent). And you're probably just saving yourself the trouble of writing/running a script.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#173
post #61

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.

Running an IDE doesn't stop me interacting with the shell, why would it?

In fact lots of IDEs have a nice little terminal baked in to use. Just depends which way you wanna go about using these tools, yah know?

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#174
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not being lazy. There is no need for me to use an Integrated Development Environment. Many of the most highly productive people use Separated Development Environments. The integration is most times not necessary. I have never had an IDE provide a feature that I needed and couldn't quickly create or obtain. People let you install your tools in your monolithic IDE package. Why are you so insistent on degrading peo…

It kind of depends on how we are defining IDE. Every developer I know who doesn't use an IDE uses either VS Code, vim or emacs with a bunch of plugins which approximate IDE functionality (but are much more customizable and configurable which I suspect is what they like about it). At the end of the day every IDE is just a text editor with plugins too. It really comes down to whether you want something that just works…

Yeah, that's true. For me, it'd be somewhat irritating to work without LSP features like "jump to definition," "hover to view doc string," or even tab completion. Arguably, these are IDE features. But when it comes to higher-level features like build tooling or even grepping, I'd much rather work from a command line.

Something like tab completion can't exist outside the editor, but as soon as features can exist as separate tools, bundling them together begins to feel like a limitation. Having separate tools means you can discard the ones you don't need, which is part of what leads to fully-featured IDEs feeling so bloated to me.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#175
post #98

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.

To extend that analogy, I choose a regular bicycle because I ride for fun and exercise, not speed. But if biking were a serious mode of transportation for me, I would get one that gave me the most assistance possible so I could go faster and farther. IDEs are similar. If you want to be as efficient as possible and get as much done as possible, you want an IDE. But if learning and exercising your mind is the goal, you…

There has been a great surge of ebikers among people working in food delivery services around Prague last year. Before that most of the guys used regular bikes.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#176

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.

The key difference is whether a motorcycle driver's license is required. The electric bicycle manufacturer can choose to forgo the speed governors and be subject to motorcycle safety/licensing/etc regulations.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#177
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…

Error detection is a big one too. My code in an interpreted language wouldn’t error until this corner case hit, but my IDE tells me the issue as soon as I write it. It’s a huge boost.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#178
post #30

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…

vim-fugitive is also a great way to interact with git since you use vim.

I use vim's stdin and stdout redirection to interact with git and can do things like staging or unstaging files or diff hunks and committing from within the editor.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#179
post #120

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…

I don’t quite get this as an argument for forcing a prescribed IDE on team members. You mention scaffolding tests, things like this can be left to external tools and then it works for all IDEs and all editors. Then you can let people use what they find most ergonomic.

Not OP. But having to sit for an hour watching some Vscode dev struggling to run tests or get auto complete on some random function is a waste of time. They spend more time faffing about fixing and fiddling with that than it would take to install a proper IDE and load up the same project and have it 100% work.

Like I get it, some people know their language inside and out and can fix it in a second because they know all the pitfalls and inner workings of the tool chain. But 99.5% of them don't, yet when they fix it they act like code ninja messiahs because they configured some random json config file after googling it and it worked. That's all I see Vscode users doing.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#180
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real men don't need IDEs, nor filthy GUI tools for kids. Shit was the defacto culture at the two Linux only shops I've worked at

real men use punchcards write bug free code from the get go

I've had some 20 year olds with such attitude.

Me: you realise always doing things the hard way does not improve your output, right?

Young jedi: nah, it's fine. GUI only slows me down, also Perl is the best

Me: alright then

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