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Vim vs. IDE's

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Vim vs. IDE's

#11

Post by rplst8 »

For 99% of the coding I do, I use an IDE which is usually Eclipse. Though I like IntelliJ more, I just don't have the resources to pay for it where I work. That said, I do drop to vim for many things, mostly editing conf and properties files, stuff where the advantages of an IDE don't really play.

However, I've felt for a long time that most modern GUI based applications and windowing systems lack a truly comprehensive and slick way to navigate using the keyboard. And let's face it, that's what "power users" like about vim and the command line in general.

There are lots of keyboard short cuts for Eclipse, Visual Studio, and pretty much most popular GUI applications - the shortcuts just suck or are poorly documented - or both.

I find navigating with a mouse or trackpad to be cumbersome, slow, and inexact. A well though out keyboard based UI would be a welcome addition.

Re: Vim vs. IDE's

#12

Post by sonicallison »

I used vim daily for 15 years and I recently switched over to Atom. The reason was that I felt like I was handcuffed to my custom vim configuration. My ability to write code quickly was coupled to my editor configuration. Even vim bindings weren't enough in other editors due to the muscle memory of the custom bindings I'd built up over the years. Within a couple of weeks I was comfortable in Atom. I still miss some of the conveniences, but ultimately I like being able to pick up and start developing anywhere - without pulling in my dotfiles first.

Re: Vim vs. IDE's

#13

Post by rl3 »

Spacemacs[0] is neat, but I found myself longing for a full-fledged IDE again. It's very extensible however (and so is Vim).

Granted, I am not yet a hardcore Vim user, so I've been trying to get there via using the IdeaVim[1] plugin with whatever JetBrains IDE I happen to be working in. It seems like the best compromise presently.

I may be working in Visual Studio soon, so VS + Resharper + VsVim should be interesting.

[0] http://spacemacs.org/

[1] https://github.com/JetBrains/ideavim

Re: Vim vs. IDE's

#15

Post by mslate »

In my experience an IDE becomes a crutch for beginners to programming (and I reserve my right to change my opinion).

IDEs helps new engineers by postponing having to learn high productivity command line tools like Bash and Git.

I see this all the time with new engineers (read: bootcamp graduates) and it is expensive having to educate new employees about the context in which their IDE operates (whether that's locally, test, staging or production).

The IDE's value-add also becomes more questionable when developing on more than one part of the stack (e.g. client + server-side code).

There are also costs to vendor lock-in--no one should have to use your IDE to be able to contribute to your software. The IDE licensing business is a racket as evidenced by the JetBrains incident:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10170089

I think it's a good exercise to remind yourself: "what do I need beyond syntax-highlighting?" IMO, most IDE features are low value-add and do not increase productivity.

Re: Vim vs. IDE's

#16

Post by trungonnews »

I favor IDE because I want to be productive out of the box. My time is better spent coding than customizing vim. This feels like another iOS vs. Android debate. :)

Re: Vim vs. IDE's

#17

Post by Bombthecat »

I like nano and now please kill me :)

I use it remote and everything shell related.

If I program something bigger I like sublime.

And if it a project with several hundred files I use ides. Here I'm not really settled. Everything. NET related i use visual Studio. In my opinion nothing beats it. If I could I would use it for everything else. From php to Javascript to ruby. But that costs a bunch of money.

Re: Vim vs. IDE's

#18

Post by horsecaptin »

I have used vim for many years. I started using Atom and after giving it a couple of days, I have been using Atom exclusively for anything more than the one off script.

Re: Vim vs. IDE's

#19

Post by bobbytherobot »

mslate wrote: post #15

In my experience an IDE becomes a crutch for beginners to programming (and I reserve my right to change my opinion). IDEs helps new engineers by postponing having to learn high productivity command line tools like Bash and Git. I see this all the time with new engineers (read: bootcamp graduates) and it is expensive having to educate new employees about the context in which their IDE operates (whether that's locally,…

This is weird, because half of the engineers I know with more than 10 years use an IDE with the most popular being IntelliJ.

Bootcamp people seem to mostly use Atom - which isn't really an IDE in my mind. In my opinion, a core feature of an IDE is static analysis.

Re: Vim vs. IDE's

#20

Post by bobbytherobot »

I use IntelliJ. The biggest reason is because static analysis is a core feature. This core feature is a huge time saver when dealing with a large codebase.

* Visual highlighting for mistyping an import statement

* Code hints

* One-click navigation to where a method is defined

* Easy refactor

To illustrate what a time saver this is, it seems weekly some other engineer ask me to help them troubleshoot code that just isn't working. They've spent hours trying to troubleshoot it. I've not worked on this particularly code, in fact they have been working in the codebase twice as long as I have so they should know more than I.

We have the meeting where for the first few minutes I look at the code on their computer in VIM. I then load up their branch in IntelliJ. Quarter of the time we see a red squiggly line indicating a typo of some sort. Then the rest of the time, I'm able to navigate through several layers of code to find what is going on underneath in a matter of minutes.

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