> It's a text editor at its heart. While I mostly agree that this is true, the best IDEs allow you to get your thoughts on the screen much quicker. This goes

> It's a text editor at its heart. While I mostly agree that this is true, the best IDEs allow you to get your thoughts on the screen much quicker. This goes beyond allowing you to type faster. When I'm writing code, I find that a lot of times, my mental "stack" can grow deep, especially when you try to write code with smaller methods. I start to write method A, which has a section I extract into method B, which has logic in method C, but slightly different. So I start refactoring method C, etc. A good IDE allows me to accomplish all these much faster, including updating all reference to the refactored method C, while still keeping track of my train of thought, allowing me to go back to method B and remember what I was trying to do there, then back to A. It's been said a lot of times here in HN that most of your time writing programs isn't spent on typing code, and that's true. However, once you do start typing, a good IDE can help quickly get your thoughts converted to correct, compilable code (proper reference names included), and I find that it helps a lot.