Live data from Hacker News

Benefits of Not Using an IDE

alexander-hansen.dev

311–320 of 389 posts

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a very large difference between a very smart source code editor (e.g. Visual Studio Code) and a complete IDE. I consider the first essential and the second completely useless. I know VSCode is positioned this way in the market, probably to differentiate it from VS. And I switched to it from a much less “smart” editor (TextMate, which I still adore! No offense meant to TM creator/maintainers!). I’m having a…

The good editors for programmers, since ancient times, for example already in the BRIEF editor for MS-DOS, before 1990, provide means to attach arbitrary CLI commands or scripts to menus or keyboard shortcuts. Therefore, if you want you can invoke from inside the editor any commands needed for project management or for compiling/linking/running/debugging. So in the end you are right that a powerful editor can do what…

Have you published this makefile somewhere? I’d love to take a look at it.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#313
When I first started my career, I used vi (not even vim) on Solaris terminals to develop and learn Perl, which I still know and love 20+ years later. I believe that I never would have learned it so deeply if I had used an IDE with syntax highlighting, autocomplete and the other various nanny features. That said, my life would be a whole lot more difficult if not for modern IDEs (which I currently use for Java, TypeScript, Clojure, Ruby, etc.), and at this point in my career, I can’t see myself going back to bare-bones editors. However, I have started using VSCode more often (when it makes sense to do so) - this seems to be a good compromise between a full-fledged IDE and a plain text editor, although you could certainly configure VSCode in such a way that it is basically an IDE.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#314

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…

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.

Another git diff/diff user here. Being able to pipe my code changes is a huge win.

Maybe I'm old - my whole os/shell is my ide

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#315
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s still not the same as debugging within your IDE. Having to switch from the browser back to your IDE to find the files to make changes is just another context switch that slows you down. Plus, dealing with async loaded files can be a pain in the browser.

You can actually configure chrome to be able to edit your local files and save changes directly. Although admittedly it was a bit unreliable when I tried it.

Yeah but then you're editing code in, what is basically, notepad. Good luck finding the file you need to edit from the Chrome dev console.

Having the ability to do everything from your IDE allows you to leverage all of the tooling built into that IDE.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#316

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 Git tools built into IDEs are indeed very convenient, but I often warn junior (and even mid) developers to NOT use them unless you understand exactly what they’re doing.

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any statically typed language benefits greatly from an IDE, if only for the automatic refactoring. Dynamically typed languages can hardly be automatically refactored.

I don't like PyCharm, but it can certainly refactor Python programs. What are you talking about?

Not automatically. The absence of type annotations means a human needs to double check the refactoring.

https://www.beust.com/weblog/2021/06/20/refactoring-a-dynami...

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#318

If you're no using an IDE, you're not working in big enough codebases or are not required to move fast enough - either way, I'm not really interested what you have to say. After you work in this business for over a decade, you'll know dumb ideas just because you've seen them several times before. "No IDE" is just that. A dumb idea.

What is it about a large code base that requires an experienced developer to use an IDE?

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#319

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

This is probably a good time to mention Tim Ewald's talk, Programming With Hand Tools: https://youtu.be/ShEez0JkOFw

For those who want and abstract, the best I could find was this:

https://old.reddit.com/r/Clojure/comments/4j3ani/with_all_of...

Re: Benefits of Not Using an IDE

#320

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…

What? No, sorry, your comment is the nonsense. Not using an IDE doesn't mean 'no tooling', it just means 'different tooling we don't happen to call 'IDE''.

I think it's so blurry now as to be a pointless debate anyway - is VS Code an 'IDE'? Or is it an editor with a load of plug-ins available that give it equivalent functionality to an IDE? Because the latter definitely applies to vim and emacs and sublime too, and if it's the first, then... A lot of people don't use an IDE!

Post reply on HN