5 ms·

I always find the benefits of portability to be a rather funny one: It's always immediately followed by 800 lines of dotfiles that do an incredible amount of cu

I always find the benefits of portability to be a rather funny one: It's always immediately followed by 800 lines of dotfiles that do an incredible amount of customization. The IDE vs. vim/emacs purist debate is always crazy to me. There are some places where IDE's are almost certainly better: Java in a large project in IntelliJ has to be 100x better than in Vim. For new languages or languages where there isn't substantial IDE integration, it's probably 5x better in Vim/Emacs with a nice configuration.

brootstrap 8y ago
Just wait for the vim guy who will be like "but muh java plugins make it more efficient then IntelliJ"... I think i am more productive in an IDE, faster. Sure if you have this insane VI/EMACS setup that you have tuned for years. Good for you, you probably are a fucking wiz. My standard right now is a terminal & IDE combo. Working in the cloud era as a data person, you need to be comfortable with terminal & vi/emacs (vi for me but whatevs) as it makes life a ton easier. I hate watching co-workers do terminal shit and write code. Seriously guys if you invest a little time into VI pretty soon you are flying around your code. People literally watch my screen and are like WTF are you doing. I feel like a surgeon with precise incisions, cuts, tweaks. Compare this to spamming down arrow 30 times and then right arrow 80 times to get to a character in your editor...
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  > Sure if you have this insane VI/EMACS setup that you have tuned for years. Good for you, you probably are a fucking wiz. To share a glimpse of the mindset of us on the editors side: that insane Emacs setup I've been tuning for years enables me to be "a fucking wiz" not just with Lisp. The very same setup lets me work efficiently with Python, Shell, configs, SQL databases, HTML+CSS+JS, running a personal Wiki, organizing tasks, tracking time spent on those tasks, billing customers for that time, reading/writing mail, and a bunch of other things. We love our editors because of compound interest - we get to reapply the same tricks to almost every task done on a computer (and we complain loudly when we can't shoehorn a task into editor-oriented workflow :)). That said, I'll still grant you're better off with IntelliJ IDEA for Java. For the time being, at least. I'm having high hopes for language servers trend - they're the bridge that could enable vim and Emacs to reach feature parity in all the places they're currently deficient compared to IDEs.
  - nickjj 8y ago
    > The very same setup lets me work efficiently with Python, Shell, configs, SQL databases, HTML+CSS+JS, running a personal Wiki, organizing tasks, tracking time spent on those tasks, billing customers for that time, reading/writing mail, and a bunch of other things. We love our editors because of compound interest. I think that's really the takeaway here. Spending time in your environment allows you to accumulate skills that let you solve pretty much any text based problem you can think of. Whether that's using emacs with elisp or vim with shell scripts and Unix tools isn't important. It's having that playground of an environment to solve arbitrary problems.
- hartator 8y ago
  > Compare this to spamming down arrow 30 times and then right arrow 80 times to get to a character in your editor Or uses the mouse to get there. I don’t get that part of vim. Weirdly I do like Vim. The thing is you see something in sublime, you just click on it and you there. You don’t have to solve some vim puzzles to get the cursor on the right spot.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    GP isn't talking (just) about jumping between files or function definition. The difference between Vim and regular IDEs is this: in Vim, you notice an arbitrary piece of code on your screen, tap tap, you're there, tap tap, you've transposed it with another piece of code somewhere else in the file, tap tap, you're in another file, tap tap, you're back in the previous file, except it now contains half of the code from that other file, tap tap, now with proper namespacing. All done at the speed of thought - an experienced Vim/Emacs user thinks in semantic steps, not shortcuts. In regular keyboard+mouse approach, you either do operations that perfectly align with automated refactoring capabilities, or just have to click a lot.
- eitland 8y ago
  > I think i am more productive in an IDE, faster. Personally agree with this part. For those who need it because they are used to vim style editing most ides (at least on the Java side, + VS Code for everything else) has vim modes. For those who have never used it and think they need it because it seems so cool and "everybody" uses it: You don't need it, at least not right now. Most great developers I know actually don't use vim for programming high-level languages, even if some of them use vim modes. Instead I'd recommend: - Use a decent mainstream IDE - Memorize shortcuts for selection, search, replace, global search, global search and replace. - Learn to use the included refactoring tools - Learn to use the built in VCS tooling (or try and fall back to the console for VCS handling).
- btschaegg 8y ago
  > Just wait for the vim guy who will be like "but muh java plugins make it more efficient then IntelliJ"... I think you described the base of most arguments in that direction right there. The problem to either side isn't so much what the other side's doing (who cares, really? To each their own…). Usually, those discussions are fueled by people asserting how obviously the respective other side is inferior without having even had a proper look at it. My bias tells me there's much more of those on the IDE side, but I expect that's due to the way people are introduced to programming (if one "population" tends to be much bigger than the other, I suppose there's a higher chance of someone belonging to it starting a flamewar. And, of course, if it's also prone to have more newbies in it, the probability of… unaware statements also rises).
weliketocode 8y ago
Only a sith speaks in absolutes. I have known several vim purists who are extremely productive in Java/Scala/Kotlin. I both understand and respect your preference for Intellij. But, your dismissiveness of others is misguided.
- estsauver 8y ago
  Sure, there are definitely some folks who are excellent in those languages with Vim. But when you think about the amount of time that's required to make Vim comply, the amount of mental state that's required to manage the things that could have been taken care of by an IDE, I can't help but challenge the idea that there's nothing possibly better than tools. By analogy, I don't believe that a chainsaw is either a bad tool or that it's impossible to make good art with a chainsaw, but I do believe most marble sculptures would be better suited to a chisel.
  - weliketocode 8y ago
    When comparing vim and intellij, vim is a lot closer to the chisel, while intellij is closer to the chainsaw.
    - estsauver 8y ago
      I think you're missing the point I'm making, they're different tools that serve different purposes: IntelliJ is really great at managing large, statically typed, Java/Scala/Enterprisey frameworks. I have never seen a vim setup that effectively generates and manages javabeans. I have never seen a vim setup that manages an xml spring configuration file correctly (or even understands how to resolve xml namespaces and validate them.) But vim is very lightweight, it's incredibly customizable, it's adaptable. It is faster for editing text. If you're writing a new language that doesn't have integration with IntelliJ's language protocol, it's probably better. If you need to jump into the source code of other libraries to understand what's going on, Vim tends not to be good at that sort of thing. Regardless of which you think is the chisel and which is the chainsaw, there are some software engineers trying to cut down trees and some trying to make marble statues. The "all software engineers who don't use my tools are fools!" mentality doesn't make sense.
cphoover 8y ago
You are using Java as a convincing argument for using an IDE... Java... ugh.. If you use mainly statically typed languages where IDE static analysis, refactor tools proves super useful to you... keep using that set up. I don't really see the appeal personally.
- noxToken 8y ago
  I don't think the argument itself is Java. I think the argument is that heavy, corporate projects (typically written in Java or C#) can have lots of benefit from IDEs. This isn't to say that there aren't terminal utils that aren't powerful enough to handle such a project. But being able to Ctrl + Alt + LMB an interface and being taken to the implementation (or shown a list of all implementing classes) or pulling a graph of your DIs is damn delicious. It's those types of creature comforts that makes using an IDE worth it for me.
  - cphoover 8y ago
    > "I don't think the argument itself is Java. I think the argument is that heavy, corporate projects (typically written in Java or C#) can have lots of benefit from IDEs." I think this for me is the gist of the problem... A lot of corporations prefer these large monolithic codebases, with a thousand different interfaces and abstract classes. I think this is a mistake in design, and prefer simple applications with simple interfaces. They are easy to maintain, and are more reliable as their are less moving pieces. I'd rather write a small app/service in python, c, JavaScript than work in some horrifically gargantuan and abstract Java code base. This is a problem with enterprise in general, they'd rather incur technical debt to stuff in new features into legacy monoliths, instead of designing small applications and services with simple interfaces.
    - transpostmeta 8y ago
      Managing large businesses is complex, and requires complex software. Spreading the complexity between various codebases does not make the software less complex. Large codebases in COBOL, Java and C# are what make the world go round.
fiddlerwoaroof 8y ago
I’ve recently started opening the large java project at work in emacs because I didn’t want to deal with how many resources IntelliJ uses when I start it up with a huge Java project.
- BurningFrog 8y ago
  Sure, but if you're a professional developer, the cost of buying extra RAM to compensate for that is recaptured within hours or days. There is some deeper, irrational motivation in people who make this argument.
  - estsauver 8y ago
    I have 64GB in my laptop... which might be taking it too far.
vvanders 8y ago
Or take the best of both worlds with VIM IntelliJ plugin :D.
- zelos 8y ago
  I normally find that IDE Vim plugins are almost good enough, but not quite. They fall into a kind of uncanny valley where they'll support most of what you need, but that makes the bits that are missing more jarring. That, plus they often break other functionality. Using a Vim plugin with Eclipse made using the refactoring functionality a lot more fiddly, IIRC.
zelos 8y ago
I tend to switch back and forth depending on what I'm doing. I haven't found a Java IDE that can match vim+fzf for speed of editing, and ctrl-n autocomplete is generally good enough. For debugging, refactoring or working with some API where better autocomplete saves looking at the docs constantly I'll switch to IntelliJ.
nonbirithm 8y ago
Or you could connect to IntelliJ from emacs. https://github.com/Ruin0x11/intellij-lsp-server https://github.com/Ruin0x11/intellij-lsp-server (Though unfinished, it's at least proof the concept could work.) Personally I use omnisharp at work for C# projects, on Windows, and am able to accomplish all the tasks I need to do except debugging entirely in emacs, and get refactoring, diagnostics and completion.
- Scarbutt 8y ago
  Also https://github.com/emacs-lsp/lsp-java https://github.com/emacs-lsp/lsp-java
Scarbutt 8y ago
I launch emacs from intelli for text editing.
giancarlostoro 8y ago
My approach is to just setup Emacs once and edit files remotely from my one setup of Emacs. I mostly use Emacs for remote editing, otherwise I use IDE's if resources are limited I go for VIM / Sublime Text. Whatever helps me to work quickly given a situation.
yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
> I always find the benefits of portability to be a rather funny one: It's always immediately followed by 800 lines of dotfiles that do an incredible amount of customization. I'm not seeing a contradiction, given that config files are trivial to move around. Yes, I have a possibly excessive number of dotfiles, but they work fine on everything from Arch Linux to Termux on Android to OpenBSD and are just a clone away.

brootstrap 8y ago

Just wait for the vim guy who will be like "but muh java plugins make it more efficient then IntelliJ"... I think i am more productive in an IDE, faster. Sure if you have this insane VI/EMACS setup that you have tuned for years. Good for you, you probably are a fucking wiz. My standard right now is a terminal & IDE combo. Working in the cloud era as a data person, you need to be comfortable with terminal & vi/emacs (vi for me but whatevs) as it makes life a ton easier. I hate watching co-workers do terminal shit and write code. Seriously guys if you invest a little time into VI pretty soon you are flying around your code. People literally watch my screen and are like WTF are you doing. I feel like a surgeon with precise incisions, cuts, tweaks. Compare this to spamming down arrow 30 times and then right arrow 80 times to get to a character in your editor...

TeMPOraL 8y ago
> Sure if you have this insane VI/EMACS setup that you have tuned for years. Good for you, you probably are a fucking wiz. To share a glimpse of the mindset of us on the editors side: that insane Emacs setup I've been tuning for years enables me to be "a fucking wiz" not just with Lisp. The very same setup lets me work efficiently with Python, Shell, configs, SQL databases, HTML+CSS+JS, running a personal Wiki, organizing tasks, tracking time spent on those tasks, billing customers for that time, reading/writing mail, and a bunch of other things. We love our editors because of compound interest - we get to reapply the same tricks to almost every task done on a computer (and we complain loudly when we can't shoehorn a task into editor-oriented workflow :)). That said, I'll still grant you're better off with IntelliJ IDEA for Java. For the time being, at least. I'm having high hopes for language servers trend - they're the bridge that could enable vim and Emacs to reach feature parity in all the places they're currently deficient compared to IDEs.
- nickjj 8y ago
  > The very same setup lets me work efficiently with Python, Shell, configs, SQL databases, HTML+CSS+JS, running a personal Wiki, organizing tasks, tracking time spent on those tasks, billing customers for that time, reading/writing mail, and a bunch of other things. We love our editors because of compound interest. I think that's really the takeaway here. Spending time in your environment allows you to accumulate skills that let you solve pretty much any text based problem you can think of. Whether that's using emacs with elisp or vim with shell scripts and Unix tools isn't important. It's having that playground of an environment to solve arbitrary problems.
hartator 8y ago
> Compare this to spamming down arrow 30 times and then right arrow 80 times to get to a character in your editor Or uses the mouse to get there. I don’t get that part of vim. Weirdly I do like Vim. The thing is you see something in sublime, you just click on it and you there. You don’t have to solve some vim puzzles to get the cursor on the right spot.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  GP isn't talking (just) about jumping between files or function definition. The difference between Vim and regular IDEs is this: in Vim, you notice an arbitrary piece of code on your screen, tap tap, you're there, tap tap, you've transposed it with another piece of code somewhere else in the file, tap tap, you're in another file, tap tap, you're back in the previous file, except it now contains half of the code from that other file, tap tap, now with proper namespacing. All done at the speed of thought - an experienced Vim/Emacs user thinks in semantic steps, not shortcuts. In regular keyboard+mouse approach, you either do operations that perfectly align with automated refactoring capabilities, or just have to click a lot.
eitland 8y ago
> I think i am more productive in an IDE, faster. Personally agree with this part. For those who need it because they are used to vim style editing most ides (at least on the Java side, + VS Code for everything else) has vim modes. For those who have never used it and think they need it because it seems so cool and "everybody" uses it: You don't need it, at least not right now. Most great developers I know actually don't use vim for programming high-level languages, even if some of them use vim modes. Instead I'd recommend: - Use a decent mainstream IDE - Memorize shortcuts for selection, search, replace, global search, global search and replace. - Learn to use the included refactoring tools - Learn to use the built in VCS tooling (or try and fall back to the console for VCS handling).
btschaegg 8y ago
> Just wait for the vim guy who will be like "but muh java plugins make it more efficient then IntelliJ"... I think you described the base of most arguments in that direction right there. The problem to either side isn't so much what the other side's doing (who cares, really? To each their own…). Usually, those discussions are fueled by people asserting how obviously the respective other side is inferior without having even had a proper look at it. My bias tells me there's much more of those on the IDE side, but I expect that's due to the way people are introduced to programming (if one "population" tends to be much bigger than the other, I suppose there's a higher chance of someone belonging to it starting a flamewar. And, of course, if it's also prone to have more newbies in it, the probability of… unaware statements also rises).

weliketocode 8y ago

Only a sith speaks in absolutes. I have known several vim purists who are extremely productive in Java/Scala/Kotlin. I both understand and respect your preference for Intellij. But, your dismissiveness of others is misguided.

estsauver 8y ago
Sure, there are definitely some folks who are excellent in those languages with Vim. But when you think about the amount of time that's required to make Vim comply, the amount of mental state that's required to manage the things that could have been taken care of by an IDE, I can't help but challenge the idea that there's nothing possibly better than tools. By analogy, I don't believe that a chainsaw is either a bad tool or that it's impossible to make good art with a chainsaw, but I do believe most marble sculptures would be better suited to a chisel.
- weliketocode 8y ago
  When comparing vim and intellij, vim is a lot closer to the chisel, while intellij is closer to the chainsaw.
  - estsauver 8y ago
    I think you're missing the point I'm making, they're different tools that serve different purposes: IntelliJ is really great at managing large, statically typed, Java/Scala/Enterprisey frameworks. I have never seen a vim setup that effectively generates and manages javabeans. I have never seen a vim setup that manages an xml spring configuration file correctly (or even understands how to resolve xml namespaces and validate them.) But vim is very lightweight, it's incredibly customizable, it's adaptable. It is faster for editing text. If you're writing a new language that doesn't have integration with IntelliJ's language protocol, it's probably better. If you need to jump into the source code of other libraries to understand what's going on, Vim tends not to be good at that sort of thing. Regardless of which you think is the chisel and which is the chainsaw, there are some software engineers trying to cut down trees and some trying to make marble statues. The "all software engineers who don't use my tools are fools!" mentality doesn't make sense.

cphoover 8y ago

You are using Java as a convincing argument for using an IDE... Java... ugh.. If you use mainly statically typed languages where IDE static analysis, refactor tools proves super useful to you... keep using that set up. I don't really see the appeal personally.

noxToken 8y ago
I don't think the argument itself is Java. I think the argument is that heavy, corporate projects (typically written in Java or C#) can have lots of benefit from IDEs. This isn't to say that there aren't terminal utils that aren't powerful enough to handle such a project. But being able to Ctrl + Alt + LMB an interface and being taken to the implementation (or shown a list of all implementing classes) or pulling a graph of your DIs is damn delicious. It's those types of creature comforts that makes using an IDE worth it for me.
- cphoover 8y ago
  > "I don't think the argument itself is Java. I think the argument is that heavy, corporate projects (typically written in Java or C#) can have lots of benefit from IDEs." I think this for me is the gist of the problem... A lot of corporations prefer these large monolithic codebases, with a thousand different interfaces and abstract classes. I think this is a mistake in design, and prefer simple applications with simple interfaces. They are easy to maintain, and are more reliable as their are less moving pieces. I'd rather write a small app/service in python, c, JavaScript than work in some horrifically gargantuan and abstract Java code base. This is a problem with enterprise in general, they'd rather incur technical debt to stuff in new features into legacy monoliths, instead of designing small applications and services with simple interfaces.
  - transpostmeta 8y ago
    Managing large businesses is complex, and requires complex software. Spreading the complexity between various codebases does not make the software less complex. Large codebases in COBOL, Java and C# are what make the world go round.

fiddlerwoaroof 8y ago

I’ve recently started opening the large java project at work in emacs because I didn’t want to deal with how many resources IntelliJ uses when I start it up with a huge Java project.

BurningFrog 8y ago
Sure, but if you're a professional developer, the cost of buying extra RAM to compensate for that is recaptured within hours or days. There is some deeper, irrational motivation in people who make this argument.
- estsauver 8y ago
  I have 64GB in my laptop... which might be taking it too far.

vvanders 8y ago

Or take the best of both worlds with VIM IntelliJ plugin :D.

zelos 8y ago
I normally find that IDE Vim plugins are almost good enough, but not quite. They fall into a kind of uncanny valley where they'll support most of what you need, but that makes the bits that are missing more jarring. That, plus they often break other functionality. Using a Vim plugin with Eclipse made using the refactoring functionality a lot more fiddly, IIRC.

zelos 8y ago

I tend to switch back and forth depending on what I'm doing. I haven't found a Java IDE that can match vim+fzf for speed of editing, and ctrl-n autocomplete is generally good enough. For debugging, refactoring or working with some API where better autocomplete saves looking at the docs constantly I'll switch to IntelliJ.

nonbirithm 8y ago

Or you could connect to IntelliJ from emacs. https://github.com/Ruin0x11/intellij-lsp-server https://github.com/Ruin0x11/intellij-lsp-server (Though unfinished, it's at least proof the concept could work.) Personally I use omnisharp at work for C# projects, on Windows, and am able to accomplish all the tasks I need to do except debugging entirely in emacs, and get refactoring, diagnostics and completion.

Scarbutt 8y ago
Also https://github.com/emacs-lsp/lsp-java https://github.com/emacs-lsp/lsp-java

Scarbutt 8y ago

I launch emacs from intelli for text editing.

giancarlostoro 8y ago

My approach is to just setup Emacs once and edit files remotely from my one setup of Emacs. I mostly use Emacs for remote editing, otherwise I use IDE's if resources are limited I go for VIM / Sublime Text. Whatever helps me to work quickly given a situation.

yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago

> I always find the benefits of portability to be a rather funny one: It's always immediately followed by 800 lines of dotfiles that do an incredible amount of customization. I'm not seeing a contradiction, given that config files are trivial to move around. Yes, I have a possibly excessive number of dotfiles, but they work fine on everything from Arch Linux to Termux on Android to OpenBSD and are just a clone away.