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I want a text editor that is a pain in the ass

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Re: I want a text editor that is a pain in the ass

#2
I can only agree with this, having spent my first 6 months of C#/.Net programming with only a highlighting text editor and the command-line compiler. And a browser window open to read the official .Net reference.

Now that I have been using Visual Studio with Resharper for much longer, I understand how unbelievable that setup was to those who followed the Visual Studio path. But if it were my own dime, and still constrained by having to use C#/.Net, I would go back to the text editor + command-line compiler.

Re: I want a text editor that is a pain in the ass

#3
Try it on Java and say you still want a dumb editor. It's like saying you want to do rocket science while doing all the math by hand. Why drive a car. Why not walk to grocery so you could reflect carefully on what you want to buy and feel your muscle twitching after carrying 30 pounds of grocery back. Tools are there to help out with the labor and free up your mind for the more important. There is nothing wrong with understanding all the details, but there is no point repeating it all the time once you do.

Edit: That post also mentioned the fear of exploding complexity. The whole point of abstraction is to manage complexity. The fact that you have a function being called at a hundred places and you don't keep track of them all in your mind is not something to fear, if you do the abstraction right. The fact that the previous fact makes you feel unsettling, should make you feel doubly unsettling.

Re: I want a text editor that is a pain in the ass

#5

If you write bad code because your editor makes it easy for you to write code fast, then it is not your editor that is at fault.

Can't agree more. I have yet seen a good programmer who complained about their tool making them write fast. When you write shitty code you don't blame it on the good IDE.

Re: I want a text editor that is a pain in the ass

#7
post #3

Try it on Java and say you still want a dumb editor. It's like saying you want to do rocket science while doing all the math by hand. Why drive a car. Why not walk to grocery so you could reflect carefully on what you want to buy and feel your muscle twitching after carrying 30 pounds of grocery back. Tools are there to help out with the labor and free up your mind for the more important. There is nothing wrong with…

I use emacs or sublime for java coding 90% of the time. Of course it is vital to have large screen real estate/extra monitors so I can keep the various docs open for reference. I prefer this approach because I learn more about the particular apis I'm using rather than just autocomplete and go.

That said, I have occasionally needed an IDE for java projects but in hindsight that seems to be because those projects were so needlessly large and convoluted that it didn't make sense to try to understand to the entire project in my head. That sounds bad, but that's how I see it. Some projects aren't worth understanding fully, and a good IDE is required for them.

Long story short, I can see the need for a java ide sometimes, but I won't call it a necessity.

Re: I want a text editor that is a pain in the ass

#8
Interesting points, but I'd argue my IDE should make refactoring so easy I do it all the time. Since, I don't write perfect software the first time, I have to iterate. That iterative process shouldn't be a punishment.

Also I don't want to have to think about code formatting. It's a necessary piece of writing but it only gets in the way of logic flow.

Re: I want a text editor that is a pain in the ass

#9
I disagree with pretty much every assertion in this article's rant. Advanced visual editors like Visual Studio make the syntax irrelevant and the architecture easy to focus on. Now I can keep my brain focused on separation of concerns with relative ease. Re factoring is also ALMOST irrelevant if you are adhering to a good MVC or MVVM pattern. Granted, if you are a genuine hacker and not interested in building mainstream web apps, then what the author is saying may be true. I wouldn't know.

Re: I want a text editor that is a pain in the ass

#10
post #7
post #3

Try it on Java and say you still want a dumb editor. It's like saying you want to do rocket science while doing all the math by hand. Why drive a car. Why not walk to grocery so you could reflect carefully on what you want to buy and feel your muscle twitching after carrying 30 pounds of grocery back. Tools are there to help out with the labor and free up your mind for the more important. There is nothing wrong with…

I use emacs or sublime for java coding 90% of the time. Of course it is vital to have large screen real estate/extra monitors so I can keep the various docs open for reference. I prefer this approach because I learn more about the particular apis I'm using rather than just autocomplete and go. That said, I have occasionally needed an IDE for java projects but in hindsight that seems to be because those projects were…

True. The need for a full IDE is probably not always necessary. The need for no more than a notepad.exe? Hell no.
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