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Would you consider an engineer who is significantly more productive with CAD software than manual drafting to be a liability? Sure, you want your engineers to k

Would you consider an engineer who is significantly more productive with CAD software than manual drafting to be a liability? Sure, you want your engineers to know the basics of what they're doing, but why would you choose to throw away that productivity?

fit2rule 9y ago
Its never acceptable as a developer to say "I can't do it, because the IDE is broken" - this is a programmer-smell. Re: CAD software, I would consider them more productive, but only if they actually knew what the basics were and didn't just depend on the GUI doing all the work. If you can't get underneath the tooling and fix it, then I don't want to work with you, period.
- vertex-four 9y ago
  No, but it's plenty acceptable to say "I'll be less productive because the IDE is broken". Even the diehard Java enterprise developers I know can jot down code with a pen and paper if they were absolutely forced to - that doesn't make it a good idea to tell them not to use an IDE in their day-to-day job, nor a language without good IDE support.
- _pmf_ 9y ago
  > then I don't want to work with you, period. Are you one of those adorable persons who think search and replace is a suitable replacement for refactoring support?
  - fit2rule 9y ago
    If you can't refactor with just search and replace, you don't really know the depths of your project, and yes - I would be uncomfortable working with you.
    - orbifold 9y ago
      That just means you've never worked on a big project, where the component you are responsible for is used by >10 different other components. One very quickly reaches a limit where manual refactoring is an option.
      - fit2rule 9y ago
        Oh, I've worked on plenty of big projects - in fact, your life is probably being protected by my software right now. Its just that I don't believe in succumbing to the crutch of tools. If the IDE is getting in the way, get the IDE out of the way - too many projects are incapable of doing this.
        coldtea 9y ago
        >Oh, I've worked on plenty of big projects - in fact, your life is probably being protected by my software right now. Those two are orthogonal concepts. There is e.g. car or medical embedded software that's tiny in scope compared to a big enterprise project.
        fit2rule 9y ago
        Yeah, try taking a train in any one of 38 different countries around the world .. that big enough for you? No, you really don't need the IDE to make big software.
        coldtea 9y ago
        You don't need computers to ride trains either. Programming, as most technologies, is not about what you basically need. We are not cavemen. It's about what enhances what you can do.
        kaftoy 9y ago
        Just a remark on the topic. Been working in vehicle software business for 12+ years now and renaming variables is almost never done. In fact I don't remember someone ever renaming a system (global) variable. There tens of thousands such variables in a system, plus about the same number of calibratable constants. We have renamed our drivers variables only when we switched to a newer architecture (multicore ready, AUTOSAR compliant). The entire code base running a modern car goes well within millions of code lines. Our IDE changed in time from Blue River X32 v5 to internally modified Eclipse plugin. The only major use for us are X32 type contractions. [1] [1]http://tinypic.com/r/20qhq4y/9 http://tinypic.com/r/20qhq4y/9

fit2rule 9y ago

Its never acceptable as a developer to say "I can't do it, because the IDE is broken" - this is a programmer-smell. Re: CAD software, I would consider them more productive, but only if they actually knew what the basics were and didn't just depend on the GUI doing all the work. If you can't get underneath the tooling and fix it, then I don't want to work with you, period.

vertex-four 9y ago
No, but it's plenty acceptable to say "I'll be less productive because the IDE is broken". Even the diehard Java enterprise developers I know can jot down code with a pen and paper if they were absolutely forced to - that doesn't make it a good idea to tell them not to use an IDE in their day-to-day job, nor a language without good IDE support.
_pmf_ 9y ago
> then I don't want to work with you, period. Are you one of those adorable persons who think search and replace is a suitable replacement for refactoring support?
- fit2rule 9y ago
  If you can't refactor with just search and replace, you don't really know the depths of your project, and yes - I would be uncomfortable working with you.
  - orbifold 9y ago
    That just means you've never worked on a big project, where the component you are responsible for is used by >10 different other components. One very quickly reaches a limit where manual refactoring is an option.
    - fit2rule 9y ago
      Oh, I've worked on plenty of big projects - in fact, your life is probably being protected by my software right now. Its just that I don't believe in succumbing to the crutch of tools. If the IDE is getting in the way, get the IDE out of the way - too many projects are incapable of doing this.
      - coldtea 9y ago
        >Oh, I've worked on plenty of big projects - in fact, your life is probably being protected by my software right now. Those two are orthogonal concepts. There is e.g. car or medical embedded software that's tiny in scope compared to a big enterprise project.
        fit2rule 9y ago
        Yeah, try taking a train in any one of 38 different countries around the world .. that big enough for you? No, you really don't need the IDE to make big software.
        coldtea 9y ago
        You don't need computers to ride trains either. Programming, as most technologies, is not about what you basically need. We are not cavemen. It's about what enhances what you can do.
        kaftoy 9y ago
        Just a remark on the topic. Been working in vehicle software business for 12+ years now and renaming variables is almost never done. In fact I don't remember someone ever renaming a system (global) variable. There tens of thousands such variables in a system, plus about the same number of calibratable constants. We have renamed our drivers variables only when we switched to a newer architecture (multicore ready, AUTOSAR compliant). The entire code base running a modern car goes well within millions of code lines. Our IDE changed in time from Blue River X32 v5 to internally modified Eclipse plugin. The only major use for us are X32 type contractions. [1] [1]http://tinypic.com/r/20qhq4y/9 http://tinypic.com/r/20qhq4y/9