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Why is it so hard to see code from 5 minutes ago?

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Re: Why is it so hard to see code from 5 minutes ago?

#141

Post by mssundaram »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #133

When making changes to a block of code or block of text, I frequently just comment out the code and rewrite it anew. I might copy-paste existing code (just to avoid stupid transcription errors). If its too large to see both what I'm writing, and the old code, at the same time, I just use two windows on the same file. This is relevant to writing fiction or non-fiction as well. For example, I didn't like this, so I com…

I do the same - both commenting out and viewing the file in parallel at different spots - vim vertical splits are great for that. In fact, one of my colleagues remarked that he never thought to view the same file alongside itself when he saw me do that when we were pairing.

Re: Why is it so hard to see code from 5 minutes ago?

#142

Post by grimgrin »

a workflow i'm pretty hooked on is:

using vim w/ git-gutters plugin, which shows the state of a line (+-~), and so you can stage and unstage these hunks with mappings.

so maybe you unstage a whole hunk to see what its original state was, but then just do an undo to return it. this is technically many undos in one

there's some more conveniences here, but this is one that stands out regarding "many undos ago"

Re: Why is it so hard to see code from 5 minutes ago?

#143

Post by ssivark »

awinter-py wrote: post #97
anschwa wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another cool thing about undo in Emacs is that it's context aware. By default, you can select any block of text and the undo command will cycle through the changes only from that region of your buffer.

whoa this is cool does it understand syntax boundaries like curly braces / functions? ('undo within function' would be key). or just line #?

That concern is isolated to your region selection tool, and orthogonal to the undo functionality :-) So, you could select by lines, or intelligently select by parentheses/braces, etc. And ask these are nicely composable, so you could easily set up custom shortcuts if you don’t like the sequence of keystrokes.

For eg, see https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2017/08/09/selecting-things-i...

Re: Why is it so hard to see code from 5 minutes ago?

#144

Post by bfung »

johnfn wrote: post #111
fingerlocks wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likewise. This whole thread is totally bizarre. The closest imaginable thing I might do is wrapping some block of code in an if(false) {..} or #ifdef it out, when I'm refactoring and feeling unsure about my changes. But is that even the same thing that we're talking about here?

Hello from the bizarro universe of people who do this all the time and can't imagine the opposite. Do you never rewrite some code only to realize it didn't precisely capture all the edge cases of the thing you rewrote? In those cases I use the git gutter in VSCode to view what the old code looked like and compare and contrast to the new version to see what I missed. It seems to me that that's the same as what these e…

TDD (test driven development) really help in solidifying interfaces ahead of time and also to capture regressions.

Yes, git diffs help, but once I’ve passed a parameterized suite of unit tests, never needed to undo/redo. Maybe not perfect the first go, but only need one/two tries to working code. Then refactor for readability.

Re: Why is it so hard to see code from 5 minutes ago?

#145

Post by piyush_soni »

thitcanh wrote: post #86
shade wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might not be exactly what you're looking for, but I saw this linked on Twitter recently and have been meaning to try it out, so maybe worth a look? https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Wattenbe...

This solves another problem I had, so I’ll try it, but it’s completely unrelated to edit history.

Don't know if it serves any other purpose than coloring, but if you want to just go back to the last (and next) edit locations, Visual Studio already has a shortcut for that (Ctrl+Shift+'-' / Ctrl+'-')

Re: Why is it so hard to see code from 5 minutes ago?

#146

Post by scaladev »

piyush_soni wrote: post #139
de6u99er wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Git doesn't mandate to only commit useful stuff.

But if there are more people in the team, it will be a great amount of noise they will have to go through before reaching any useful commit. Definitely not recommended.

`commit` doesn't mean `push`. Commit locally, rewrite history with rebase before pushing it to others.

Re: Why is it so hard to see code from 5 minutes ago?

#147

Post by hisham_hm »

piyush_soni wrote: post #139
de6u99er wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Git doesn't mandate to only commit useful stuff.

But if there are more people in the team, it will be a great amount of noise they will have to go through before reaching any useful commit. Definitely not recommended.

There's a difference between committing to your local tree and pushing it to others. You can always cleanup before pushing.

Re: Why is it so hard to see code from 5 minutes ago?

#148

Post by Semaphor »

azhenley wrote: post #11
avisser wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what you're looking at, but IntelliJ 2020.3 gives me a list w/ timestamps in 1/3 of the modal, then a diff viewer in the other 2/3. I can down-arrow through the versions and the diff updates.

Fantastic, downloading the latest version now!

That has been in for quite some time. I don’t remember since when, but at least in the 2019 version.

Re: Why is it so hard to see code from 5 minutes ago?

#149

Post by abc_lisper »

blunte wrote: post #50

Reading the comments, I'm stunned and disillusioned. Are most modern developers struggling to write code without this? If so, there is a fundamental problem that has nothing to do with levels of undo.

Agreed. I never do this. Why do people do this?

Re: Why is it so hard to see code from 5 minutes ago?

#150

Post by sslayer »

mssundaram wrote: post #141
jonnycomputer wrote: post #133

When making changes to a block of code or block of text, I frequently just comment out the code and rewrite it anew. I might copy-paste existing code (just to avoid stupid transcription errors). If its too large to see both what I'm writing, and the old code, at the same time, I just use two windows on the same file. This is relevant to writing fiction or non-fiction as well. For example, I didn't like this, so I com…

I do the same - both commenting out and viewing the file in parallel at different spots - vim vertical splits are great for that. In fact, one of my colleagues remarked that he never thought to view the same file alongside itself when he saw me do that when we were pairing.

Commenting is the answer. It stays until I'm certain I no longer need it.
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