He'll be happy with something like mg, acme or even sam.
I want a text editor that is a pain in the ass
31–40 of 44 posts
Re: I want a text editor that is a pain in the ass
#32I started programming when 'ed' was the editor of choice, then vi (not vim or even elvis, but plain old vi). It did not work out the way the author thinks it would. You don't refactor. Because refactoring is a pain in the ass with a terrible editor. You use terrible variables like r, rr, a, t, ... because typing is a chore and typos are frustratingly hard to fix. With autocompletion those nice, descriptive variable n…
I started with emacs in the mid 1980s and have never used any other editor unless I had no choice. Even when I've worked on ASP[.NET] projects I would still edit code in Emacs and use Visual Studio for builds, VSS integration, and managing the project metadata.
I can sympathize with some of the arguments the author makes. I don't like autocomplete or "IntelliSense" as I feel it's a crutch and if I rely on it I don't really learn the language syntax or libraries I'm working with.
I find that grep, awk/sed, and emacs functionality are adequate to refactor.
I would find an editor like Notepad way too limiting however... it just doesn't offer enough efficiencies in basic text editing. Though I have known good programmers who used it as their main editor.
Re: I want a text editor that is a pain in the ass
#33I started programming when 'ed' was the editor of choice, then vi (not vim or even elvis, but plain old vi). It did not work out the way the author thinks it would. You don't refactor. Because refactoring is a pain in the ass with a terrible editor. You use terrible variables like r, rr, a, t, ... because typing is a chore and typos are frustratingly hard to fix. With autocompletion those nice, descriptive variable n…
I started programming when the editor wars were between vi and Emacs. Somehow we've ended up on the same side. Good programmers did, in fact, refactor even with simpler tools. They did use descriptive names. They wrote tight code because they were good programmers, not because they weren't perfectly capable of generating reams of boilerplate. I'm seeing a lot of negative comments in this thread that miss the core poi…
Lol, I tried emacs for a couple of months but went back to vi.
I understand the broad strokes the author was applying, but it's missing the point. Modern IDE's make everybody more productive so bad programmers produce more bad code, but good programmers also produce more good code.
Overall, software quality is far better than it was 20 years ago and there is more of it.
Re: I want a text editor that is a pain in the ass
#34A good programmer will contribute to writing good code. A bad programmer will not.
A good editor will help a programmer do what the are going to do already, quicker and more accurately. A bad editor will slow progress and amplify error.
If you think that you need a barrier to impede your ability to get things out of your head and into reality to prevent you from slipping out garbage then I think you are just a bad programmer.And not just because you cant pound out the correct solution on the first try but because you think you can if you just think about it long enough. Any writer will tell you the key to writing is just write. Get yiur ideas out and on to paper. Fix them later during editing and revisons. And coding is just like writing in that sense. Get your code into the editor then revise, improve and optimize. Most of all let your editor help you do these things.
Re: I want a text editor that is a pain in the ass
#35I started programming when 'ed' was the editor of choice, then vi (not vim or even elvis, but plain old vi). It did not work out the way the author thinks it would. You don't refactor. Because refactoring is a pain in the ass with a terrible editor. You use terrible variables like r, rr, a, t, ... because typing is a chore and typos are frustratingly hard to fix. With autocompletion those nice, descriptive variable n…
I started programming when the editor wars were between vi and Emacs. Somehow we've ended up on the same side. Good programmers did, in fact, refactor even with simpler tools. They did use descriptive names. They wrote tight code because they were good programmers, not because they weren't perfectly capable of generating reams of boilerplate. I'm seeing a lot of negative comments in this thread that miss the core poi…
I'm one of the people that thinks that IDEs are a language smell. And yeah, boilerplate smells too.
But keeping the language constant, I agree with the GP. Yeah, good programmers refactor code on any environment (grep is great), but when it's easier, a good coder has more time to think about what he's writing, instead of wondering if he let any instance of a variable pass with the wrong name.
Re: I want a text editor that is a pain in the ass
#36If you write too much code because your editor makes it easy, you're a bad programmer. Period.
Good programmers detest redundant code and seek to reduce it regardless.
Maybe this guy used too many code generators or something. Regardless he is way off.
Good editors make refactoring easy, which encourages refactoring. And what's wrong with calling a method from lots of places? That's what methods are for.
Good editors also reduce typos and cognitive load, both of which contribute to faster, higher quality development.
Re: I want a text editor that is a pain in the ass
#37Hilarious. I stopped taking this post seriously at "You shouldn't write more than a few lines of code a day". I wonder what substantial project this person has worked on in the past, and if they kept metrics of how many lines of code they actually wrote day to day.
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Re: I want a text editor that is a pain in the ass
#38Programmers already have a ridiculous number of constraints to juggle. Every constraint you add reduces your ability to optimize for the others.
Potentially, using a low-feature editor could arguably be like jogging with weights. It could teach you good habits that then make you more effective once you switch back to a powerful editor. But you don't bring your weights on race day.
Re: I want a text editor that is a pain in the ass
#39Try 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…
> 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. Whenever I try Java, I don't want a smarter editor. I want a smarter language.
That's true of most people, but in some situations Java's unavoidable.
Re: I want a text editor that is a pain in the ass
#40I don’t want to be able to easily rename a hundred method calls, because why the hell am I calling a method from a hundred different places?
So if I don't have a tool that lets me rename a method everywhere it's called, then the guy who left the company two years ago won't have called it a hundred times from poorly-factored code? Sweet! I'll uninstall my IDE first thing Monday morning and let you know how it goes.