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People usually claim that one thing is more productive than the other without any real evidence. I think it's mostly just so we can stick with something out of

by cname 10y ago

People usually claim that one thing is more productive than the other without any real evidence. I think it's mostly just so we can stick with something out of familiarity. Or sometimes it's so we can switch to something else because we're bored. The "it feels right to me" argument just seems unbeatable (you can't argue with it without seeming like a jerk). For example, I might say that I'm super productive in IDE X, but I don't know for sure that I couldn't be more productive in IDE Y or Editor Z with various plugins. I haven't consulted any research in making my decision nor have I conducted any real research of my own. I guess maybe it doesn't matter. If everyone is "happy", maybe that's good enough. But I see people struggling to do certain things in their environment of choice and that ends up having an effect on not just them but potentially their coworkers.

Karunamon 10y ago
But that's an unknown right? You may or may not be more productive in IDE Y, but making the effort to find that out takes more time, your most precious resource, for something that may not even turn out to be true, and then your investment is wasted. I think this is why people tend to make the broad statements about "X is better than Y" since they only have their own experience to go on, but without full knowledge of how someone else's mind works, it's a fool's errand. Even if changing tools would solve the things you can observe and attach a "time wasted doing X" quantity, you don't know if they won't struggle with something else after changing.
- cname 10y ago
  > but making the effort to find that out takes more time This is always true, in every domain. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. I think it's worth some amount of effort to find out, but at some point, you have to settle on something and move on. Personally, I used to be an emacs user, then switched to Eclipse with some emacs keybindings, then learned vim after many years of being frustrated by it, and now use an IDE with a vim plugin (and occasionally straight vim). I feel like I've settled on the best of all worlds... for _me_ at least.
kstrauser 10y ago
> I think it's mostly just so we can stick with something out of familiarity. That's the single best reason to stick with something as personal as an editor. Emacs, for example, has all of the features of other IDEs but with a different interface. Want to single-step through a debugger? Got it! Refactor Java? Got it! Syntax highlight 1,373 file format you've never heard of? Oh, definitely got it! Given that for literally any feature I've seen in other IDEs and wanted to try, Emacs has already had it for a decade, I just don't have an incentive to learn a wholly different workflow. It could be true that I could make beautiful music on a guitar, but my piano skills satisfy my music requirements. I've played a guitar long enough to enjoy it and I see the appeal, but I like playing the piano more. Both would allow me to express my intent, but I can do it more easily with the interface I've been using for several decades. Why do people keep insisting I pick up a guitar? BTW, I had this conversation with a manager once. He wanted me to use Eclipse for Python - Python! - development and kept giving me serious grief about my "ancient" Emacs setup. We was quite serious about it, too. I finally prevailed upon him to STFU and let me work with this logic: "Are you happy with my output? You are? Great. That means Emacs works for me. I'm done talking about this." I wish that were an exaggeration, but I really had to have this conversation with a higher-up. If I'm using Notepad but still able to get my work done on schedule and meeting our quality requirements, then back off.

by cname 10y ago

Karunamon 10y ago

But that's an unknown right? You may or may not be more productive in IDE Y, but making the effort to find that out takes more time, your most precious resource, for something that may not even turn out to be true, and then your investment is wasted. I think this is why people tend to make the broad statements about "X is better than Y" since they only have their own experience to go on, but without full knowledge of how someone else's mind works, it's a fool's errand. Even if changing tools would solve the things you can observe and attach a "time wasted doing X" quantity, you don't know if they won't struggle with something else after changing.

cname 10y ago
> but making the effort to find that out takes more time This is always true, in every domain. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. I think it's worth some amount of effort to find out, but at some point, you have to settle on something and move on. Personally, I used to be an emacs user, then switched to Eclipse with some emacs keybindings, then learned vim after many years of being frustrated by it, and now use an IDE with a vim plugin (and occasionally straight vim). I feel like I've settled on the best of all worlds... for _me_ at least.

kstrauser 10y ago

> I think it's mostly just so we can stick with something out of familiarity. That's the single best reason to stick with something as personal as an editor. Emacs, for example, has all of the features of other IDEs but with a different interface. Want to single-step through a debugger? Got it! Refactor Java? Got it! Syntax highlight 1,373 file format you've never heard of? Oh, definitely got it! Given that for literally any feature I've seen in other IDEs and wanted to try, Emacs has already had it for a decade, I just don't have an incentive to learn a wholly different workflow. It could be true that I could make beautiful music on a guitar, but my piano skills satisfy my music requirements. I've played a guitar long enough to enjoy it and I see the appeal, but I like playing the piano more. Both would allow me to express my intent, but I can do it more easily with the interface I've been using for several decades. Why do people keep insisting I pick up a guitar? BTW, I had this conversation with a manager once. He wanted me to use Eclipse for Python - Python! - development and kept giving me serious grief about my "ancient" Emacs setup. We was quite serious about it, too. I finally prevailed upon him to STFU and let me work with this logic: "Are you happy with my output? You are? Great. That means Emacs works for me. I'm done talking about this." I wish that were an exaggeration, but I really had to have this conversation with a higher-up. If I'm using Notepad but still able to get my work done on schedule and meeting our quality requirements, then back off.