Ask HN: Recommendations for good editors/IDEs that will live for 30 years

#1

Post by distcs » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 10:24 AM UTC

The news today about archiving Atom project saddens me. I moved away from Atom to VScode a long time ago but what if VScode is archived someday. What if I was still tied to Atom? I can't imagine the disruption it is gonna cause in my development workflow.

As someone who days software programming day and night, I am looking for recommendations on good editors/IDEs that will live for another 30 years or more. I don't want to wake up one day and find out that my favorite editor is getting archived! Recommendations?

Re: Ask HN: Recommendations for good editors/IDEs that will live for 30 years

#2

Post by jstx1 » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 10:44 AM UTC

Logevity seems like a bad single parameter to optimise for. Pick the one you like the most and use it as long as it's available (and as long as you still like it).

> I don't want to wake up one day and find out that my favorite editor is getting archived!

The alternative is to never use your favourite editor in the first place, and I can't see how that's better. And it's not like there's a high switching cost, unless you're using something with an actual learning curve like emacs or vim, the transition to another editor/IDE is near instant.

Re: Ask HN: Recommendations for good editors/IDEs that will live for 30 years

#3

Post by distcs » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 10:54 AM UTC

jstx1 wrote: post #2

Logevity seems like a bad single parameter to optimise for. Pick the one you like the most and use it as long as it's available (and as long as you still like it). > I don't want to wake up one day and find out that my favorite editor is getting archived! The alternative is to never use your favourite editor in the first place, and I can't see how that's better. And it's not like there's a high switching cost, unless…

> And it's not like there's a high switching cost

I think there is a high price to switching. Once I pick an IDE, I need my fingers to relearn all the different shortcuts for code completion, refactor, find, find regex, find and replace, find and replace regex, code search in different scopes (file level, project level, all open files), start the debugger, debugger shortcuts, launching terminal. The list goes on and on.

So I also need to relearn the ecosystem of the editor/IDE. How to configure it? How to install plugins? How to configure the myriad of plugins? How do you codify the entire installation and configuration so that you can push it to Git to make it easier to recreate the same configuration on a new system?

Then I need to learn how to configure the editor/IDE for each programming language I'm going to work with. Space/tab conventions, linter configurations, spell checks. Another long list of configurations here.

I do find the cost of switching to be high. That's why I ask the questions I do on this Ask HN.

Re: Ask HN: Recommendations for good editors/IDEs that will live for 30 years

#4

Post by eric__cartman » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 4:43 PM UTC

distcs wrote: post #3

jstx1 wrote: post #2

Logevity seems like a bad single parameter to optimise for. Pick the one you like the most and use it as long as it's available (and as long as you still like it). > I don't want to wake up one day and find out that my favorite editor is getting archived! The alternative is to never use your favourite editor in the first place, and I can't see how that's better. And it's not like there's a high switching cost, unless…

> And it's not like there's a high switching cost I think there is a high price to switching. Once I pick an IDE, I need my fingers to relearn all the different shortcuts for code completion, refactor, find, find regex, find and replace, find and replace regex, code search in different scopes (file level, project level, all open files), start the debugger, debugger shortcuts, launching terminal. The list goes on and…

If you want to maximize for longevity, picking something that existed for 30 years like vi or emacs is probably your best bet.

Re: Ask HN: Recommendations for good editors/IDEs that will live for 30 years

#5

Post by lamarcke » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 4:07 AM UTC

I would recommend Vim/Neovim for you, but that can go both ways: learn Vim enough, develop the vim muscle memory, and you are stuck on Vim forever! Seriously, switching would from Vim is really hard, that's why so many people refuse to do it, even if they have to.

TL;DR: 30 years is a very, very long time, i don't even know if we will still be using code editors in 30 years, and the hardware will probably evolve in a way that lets you run big IDEs like Jetbrains' in low-end systems.