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Fine, I'll build my own text editor

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Re: Fine, I'll build my own text editor

#201

Post by NetMageSCW »

1718627440 wrote: post #70
anon291 wrote: post #3

I am being pushed to use vs code right now by my team, but we already have a fully programmable and scriptable editor called emacs that is 100000x better. I don't understand why everyone just switches to these random tools. Text editing is a solved problem. Most of the supposed advantages of these tools is just a configuration of vim or emacs.

I always wanted to learn emacs, but I never do, because while I don't know it using it doesn't pay off. I did the tutorial at some point (I mean great that it exists) and now I can move around and close the editor, but that's the same I can do in nano, so I keep using nano.

That’s how you start with emacs but as you need to do more complex actions emacs will be able to support you so your skills will grow if you keep using it.

Re: Fine, I'll build my own text editor

#202

Post by mjr00 »

sherburt3 wrote: post #178
dist-epoch wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He created Go because he believed that the average Google programmer is too stupid to program in C++, and he didn't like Java, the other language created to address this problem.

Kind of a bummer that 95% of software engineering is dedicated to creating a padded cell to make sure no one makes a whoopsie instead of doing creative and interesting things.

> Kind of a bummer that 95% of software engineering is dedicated to creating a padded cell to make sure no one makes a whoopsie instead of doing creative and interesting things.

s/software engineering/running a business.

I'd much prefer that the people building the bridges and planes I use, or the staff at the hospital I visit, have procedures in place to prevent them from "making a whoopsie" than the space to be creative or interesting. Even if they enjoy their job less.

The good news with software engineering is that unlike building a plane or running a hospital, nobody is stopping you from making your own projects and being creative and interesting as you want!

Re: Fine, I'll build my own text editor

#203

Post by chillpenguin »

dist-epoch wrote: post #107
socksy wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing just how many stories of Rob Pike seem to show him being both a dick and wrong

He created Go because he believed that the average Google programmer is too stupid to program in C++, and he didn't like Java, the other language created to address this problem.

When he said the average programmer is too stupid to program in a brilliant language, I don't think he was referring to C++. I think he was referring to non-mainstream languages that require totally different ways of thinking (there are many, and I don't know which ones he had in mind, so I won't list any examples). So he designed Go to be very familiar to average programmers, instead of embracing more powerful ideas (which average programmers would have a hard time with).

That was my understanding at least. If you have evidence that he was referring to C++, I'd love to see it! I'm open to being wrong, and it would totally change how I interpreted the situation if he was indeed referring to C++ as a brilliant language.

For those not familiar, here is the quote by Pike that is being referred to, where he infamously implied most programmers are too stupid to use a good language:

"The key point here is our programmers are Googlers, they’re not researchers. They’re typically, fairly young, fresh out of school, probably learned Java, maybe learned C or C++, probably learned Python. They’re not capable of understanding a brilliant language but we want to use them to build good software. So, the language that we give them has to be easy for them to understand and easy to adopt."

Re: Fine, I'll build my own text editor

#204

Post by transdev12 »

sherburt3 wrote: post #178
dist-epoch wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He created Go because he believed that the average Google programmer is too stupid to program in C++, and he didn't like Java, the other language created to address this problem.

Kind of a bummer that 95% of software engineering is dedicated to creating a padded cell to make sure no one makes a whoopsie instead of doing creative and interesting things.

[dead]

Re: Fine, I'll build my own text editor

#205

Post by cmrdporcupine »

ferguess_k wrote: post #188
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's also wrong; the average Google programmer was more than capable of producing good C++ and Google's C++ tooling and standardization was excellent. Source: worked there. That's not to say that C++ is a good or appropriate language or that the codebase wouldn't have been better served by another language. But "stupidity" was never the problem. And Go is not the "another language" I think fits the bill (and in fact…

Thanks for sharing. Do you mind to share a bit more about your observation and experience with C++ in Google? I'm just curious what kind of guidelines and practices produce better C++ code, because I have used C++ in my side projects, but I found it difficult to command -- it was always like handling a lot of dishes without breaking any -- that's why I talked about IQ. And when you said "before being given carte blan…

C++ at Google is highly restricted to fit to a very normative style guide. And there was strong leadership while I was there to help define what sane defaults might look like (Titus Winters FTW). And then there was a lot of efforts into build system and static analysis tools to help enforce that. And then on top of that a very strong foundational set of libraries on which things were built that were also built quite well.

Again, I have real problems with C++. And always have. These days I'm a Rust developer. (Which I have my own criticisms of...)

But two things: Google developers are actually better than average, which is why Pike's comment seems so offensive in context. And C++ is the tool that Google already had, so sensible engineering is at least partially investing in incrementally improvement, not rewrite the world.

As for the article you linked to: I don't disagree with all of the conclusions in there. But I disagree with the hubris of "we need a new language" for an organization at the scale at which Google operate(d).

And also I think it smells suspiciously like "I have a hammer and need a nail"; by which I mean some smart engineer who (rightfully and properly) enjoys programming language design (or some other neato CS thing) ... and is annoyed and bored by the actually-existing boring protobuf shuttling work at Google ... gets carte blanche to build A New Hammer [which usually looks almost exactly like the things they personally have built before] and then goes hunting for nails for it. Which is honestly I think backwards to a healthy engineering culture, and is also a phenomenon I saw too many times at Google (I think Dart and Flutter and Fuchsia had similar cultural problems).

The job of a software engineer is to solve the organization's problems. I don't rule out that neat new tools might be needed sometimes to do that. I sure as hell would love to build those tools. But I want to put the problem first, not the tool.

I also disagree strongly with many of the fundamental design choices that went into Go from day one. Most odiously: Its error handling, its naming scheme (touched on in that article), and its lack of parametrized types (since fixed). Other things (packaging, etc) in that document I strongly agree with but they're relatively uncontroversial.

Also, when I first looked at Go I was like "ok, you say you built a language specifically for Google's needs but it just looks like you reheated Limbo [his previous language]."

Re: Fine, I'll build my own text editor

#206

Post by pmkary »

bensyverson wrote: post #171
pmkary wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is exactly it. You know what an engineer you are making a system as complex as that? I don't know your codebase but I'm quite aware of TextKit and I can see what a hard and consuming job you must have done. I wish I could see your editor too.

Thanks—I might return to it and open source it soon… It was a pre-Claude Code project, and it was hard to feel any momentum. It's basically a note-taking tool for capturing quick one-off notes in Markdown, but it stores a lot of surrounding metadata (location, any current calendar events, device type, etc) in the YAML front matter. It feels like it would be even more relevant in this era, but there's a lot of work to…

I actually built a fully featured text editor with Codex last month for a GUI toolkit I was building from the scratch. It worked quite well. You should give it a try. Perhaps you can offload much of the refinements to the llms now

Re: Fine, I'll build my own text editor

#207

Post by marssaxman »

"Fine, I'll build my own text editor" is certainly a familiar sentence, one I've uttered several times, but it would never in a thousand years occur to me to take the next step in a web browser. Interesting to see such a different approach to the world: thank you for sharing.

Re: Fine, I'll build my own text editor

#208

Post by wazoox »

vintermann wrote: post #37

I still miss NEdit. Around 2001 when I started getting into Linux seriously, I was also reading a lot about cults - Scientology had recently, infamously, forced Slashdot to take down a comment about their secret practices. One of the things I read was that a common cult trick was to demand that people re-learn basic skills so that they do them the "right" way, like reading (Scientology did that), eating (chew X times…

Ah ah I'm also a NEdit fan. Still using XNEdit at times (the version that supports UTF-8, https://github.com/unixwork/xnedit ), because I've written so many small tools in its weird built-in language.

For several years I've even hosted the nedit.org website :)

Re: Fine, I'll build my own text editor

#209

Post by ryandrake »

mjr00 wrote: post #202
sherburt3 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of a bummer that 95% of software engineering is dedicated to creating a padded cell to make sure no one makes a whoopsie instead of doing creative and interesting things.

> Kind of a bummer that 95% of software engineering is dedicated to creating a padded cell to make sure no one makes a whoopsie instead of doing creative and interesting things. s/software engineering/running a business. I'd much prefer that the people building the bridges and planes I use, or the staff at the hospital I visit, have procedures in place to prevent them from "making a whoopsie" than the space to be cre…

Yea, it's too bad that "making whoopsies" has become such a common occurrence, treated so casually, in what is made out to be a serious engineering discipline.

Re: Fine, I'll build my own text editor

#210

Post by ithkuil »

IAmBroom wrote: post #189
ithkuil wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a correlation between having strong opinions and sounding like a dick. But also between having strong opinions and having impact. Luckily there are also people who manage to have impact while giving out a different vibe

There is also a correlation between having strong opinions and just being a dick. Imagining yourself the next Richard Dawkins is a fulltime occupation for a lot of smart kids.

Sounding and being are not the same thing. I don't want to insult Mr. Pike and claim he is a dick just because how some of his quotes sound.
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