Development Environments

Intellij / PyCharm does remarkably well with large Python code bases lacking type annotations, even if it has to take a guess here and there. But when you add type annotations, it's even better.

IntelliJ is special. Last I had seen they employ their own language tooling for almost everything. Nowadays the CLI (TUI) experience is capable of a LOT. CLI editors have fantastic integration with languages via LSP. You end up with similarly fat but more modular tooling. They offer a modularity and options that give you more choice in building the experience you want. (Not just color schemes and layouts)

You have to do more work to configure and learn your tools but it makes so much more personalization of workflow possible.

My personal CLI tooling for git is really nice and hacking on it keeps teaching me more about git creating a flywheel of optimization and joy from using things I made.

There is a cost to changing your personal workflow. As nice as some new and shiny things appear I don’t like flip flopping on my personal/professional setup. There comes a time when you start fresh. That will be when I try something different.

Yes a JetBrains IDEs will take longer to build the AST model in RAM but once you have it they do amazing things with it. E.g semantic search and replace, etc. The debugger capabilities are spectacular, they literally show the values of variables on the side of the line you stepped over. Another cool thing, inferred types just show next to the variable definition, parameter names appear in the method call, etc. These are small things that add up to a lot on the day to day.

About projects. JetBrains do create project files but don't require a project structure in newer versions of their IDEs.

The problem is that IDEs are very simple to pick up and people stop after that basic usage. They have depth that exceeds emacs in some respects.

That said, I have learned to stick to defaults and start from a clean slate every time. I often say that the main problem in software is containing complexity. When you need to deliver a product that works reliably, you want to remove all but essential concerns from your routine work. So I'd rather create a clean VM, install git CLI, VSCode, write a Dockerfile and get a nice clean package. If I learn how to use everyone of these tools out of the box with the default configuration, then I never have to think about dotfiles, plugins, set up etc.

I think we need more software hygiene. Keep environments clean and ready to go.

I was sort-of agreeing with you until this point. In my experience "write a Dockerfile" usually means "run a bunch of fragile, non-deterministic nonsense, like `apt-get update && apt-get -y install`, `yum install`, `pip install`, `npm install`, etc.; often all at the same time!"

(AWS are a serial offender IMHO, e.g. their documentation recommends this sort of crap https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/images-create.h... https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/user-dat... etc.)