Live data from Hacker News

One IDE to Rule them All?

programmers.stackexchange.com

1–10 of 18 posts

Re: One IDE to Rule them All?

#2
that's what I did in my team, I want people to be able to sit next to each other, I want shared formatting settings, I don't want them to do the formatting by hands, and we have shared ownership of the code. You can only change the formatting style after discussing it with the others. I want people to remove my personal style after me, and I want to remove other's personal style in the code. Adding dependencies or libraries has to be debatted and if possible each new library should delete another one, the same with lines of code. I call it "trying to control the entropy".

Re: One IDE to Rule them All?

#3
I can accept that there are valid reasons to do this, but I couldn't work in a shop like that. The bottom line is I invest in my tools, and a big part of my career development is mastering standard unix tools. I don't expect to be doing Rails work 10 years from now, but I'll definitely be using vim + bash for the long haul.

Re: One IDE to Rule them All?

#4
post #2

that's what I did in my team, I want people to be able to sit next to each other, I want shared formatting settings, I don't want them to do the formatting by hands, and we have shared ownership of the code. You can only change the formatting style after discussing it with the others. I want people to remove my personal style after me, and I want to remove other's personal style in the code. Adding dependencies or li…

So you don't do the formatting by hand, you configure your editor of choice to do the work for you, assuming it is smart enough. If you have a group of people that use the same editor they can share this information through a developer wiki.

Sounds like you just need to have a well defined style guide rather than trying to micromanage developer habits.

Re: One IDE to Rule them All?

#5
post #2

that's what I did in my team, I want people to be able to sit next to each other, I want shared formatting settings, I don't want them to do the formatting by hands, and we have shared ownership of the code. You can only change the formatting style after discussing it with the others. I want people to remove my personal style after me, and I want to remove other's personal style in the code. Adding dependencies or li…

But there is a huge difference between enforcing style rules and enforcing which editors people use.

You can have different team members using different editors, but with the same style rules - and with a style checker that runs on commit/post-edit to verify the common rules are adhered to.

Enforcing which editors each team member must use to do his/her development is a form of management deciding it knows which tools each developer will be more efficient with than the developer does. It's pointless.

Re: One IDE to Rule them All?

#6
This question lacks a lot of details, what tech is being used, how experienced the team is, what the build and deploy environments are like, what level of syntax consistency is needed for various reasons etc..

While many programmers are religious about their tool chain there are very legitimate reasons for wanting a standardized dev environment especially with an IDE that does things like syntax homogenization for you. Without more details it's impossible to tell weather this specific individual case would really benefit from the mandate in spite of upsetting the comfort of their devs.

Re: One IDE to Rule them All?

#7
This specific question is talking about Eclipse, and depending on the language they are using it might be they are moving the build system to eclipse, so they are mandating everyone use the tool. I think in the FOSS world we are a little spoiled that we have options like what editor / build system / OS we would like to use to develop on. I know there are a lot of shops that on day one you are given access to Visual Studios and that's the last tool you will use at that company for anything. So this isn't anything extraordinary that is being asked of the employee. I know where I work we develop on remote system's and while some people prefer to do a lot of upfront work in eclipse, when testing on the production equipment your left with nothing but a command line. So knowledge of at least one text line editor and gcc/make is fundamental for anyone who wants to work with us. I could totally see someone coming in with the complete opposite question.

"My company is mandating that everyone use vim and make"

And still see it as a valid request of an employer.

Re: One IDE to Rule them All?

#8
post #2

that's what I did in my team, I want people to be able to sit next to each other, I want shared formatting settings, I don't want them to do the formatting by hands, and we have shared ownership of the code. You can only change the formatting style after discussing it with the others. I want people to remove my personal style after me, and I want to remove other's personal style in the code. Adding dependencies or li…

Enforcing formatting is good policy, and pre-installing a common editor on all workstations is certainly advisable; but enforcing the personal use a certain editor is like forcing a writer to use the editor's favorite pen, no matter how uncomfortable or cramped the writer's hands become.

From the answers:

  Yes, it's a bit of a red flag that management considers itself a better judge
  of which tools you would be more efficient with than you are.

Re: One IDE to Rule them All?

#9
post #7

This specific question is talking about Eclipse, and depending on the language they are using it might be they are moving the build system to eclipse, so they are mandating everyone use the tool. I think in the FOSS world we are a little spoiled that we have options like what editor / build system / OS we would like to use to develop on. I know there are a lot of shops that on day one you are given access to Visual S…

I think there's a very important line to be drawn between "require everyone to know (the basics of) $tool" and "mandate that everyone use $tool". I think the former can be reasonable, if it's done both ways, ie everyone is required to be somewhat familiar with the standard UNIX toolchain, but also with $IDE. Then, the choice could be left to every member of the team what to use.

I think, however, it's a huge mistake to take the second route. Myself, for example, I could never be even remotely productive in an IDE. The moment I open one, it feels wrong, and my productivity as well as motivation drops significantly. I just prefer vim + $tools for the language I am working with, and it's highly unlikely that this will ever change. It's like trying to code in a noisy, public place when I could be coding at my desk listening to my favorite music.

Yes, this is partially an emotional reason. I hate programs that throw tons of information, menus and buttons at you, most of which are useless 98% of the time. Furthermore, I hate programs that try to be a God Object and do everything by themselves - I'm a stern advocate of modularity/interoperability and the UNIX philosophy of writing programs that do one thing, and do it well.

But, to conclude this, I would fiercely disapprove forcing anyone to do it my way as much as I would object to being forced into a different workflow myself. I know I could never work for someone that does either.

Re: One IDE to Rule them All?

#10
Jungo (http://jungo.com/), a company where I first learned the "proper" development process with code reviews etc, had instituted Vim as the company wide editor. You could choose something else if you still could work reasonably in vim and mastered that "other" editor to a high degree, being able to do x,y,z things with it. There was an actual document describing required level of mastery ;)

Now, vim being one of the top productive environments (only probably be contested by emacs), and the fact that we worked in C, so stags vim plugin provided as much IDE-ness you could get anywhere else at the time (2000), I think that was a very reasonable requirement. Eclipse? nah, not really, you can pry VIM from my dead hands, definitely would not work at this place.

Post reply on HN