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Comments like this were part of the reason I wasted a lot of time earlier in my career trying to use emacs or vim on large code bases instead of an IDE. I susp

Comments like this were part of the reason I wasted a lot of time earlier in my career trying to use emacs or vim on large code bases instead of an IDE. I suspect this is some tribal identity thing about being a “real” programmer that I fell victim too. The IDEs are extremely powerful and much better out of the box for working in a large code base. They allow you to navigate a lot more easily and focus on the code itself rather than constantly having to deal with your setup. Don’t let comments like the parent scare you away from them.

b5n 7y ago
Use what works best, but Emacs is incredibly powerful, and certainly has the potential to make you more productive. I wish I had taken the time to learn Emacs earlier in my career, my task efficiency has increased significantly since converting my work flows. It does take a long time to learn relative to plug and play solutions (especially for someone like me with decades of old habits), luckily I had a few months off from work for the transition. The investment has been well worth it, it helps if you like lisp :) Disclaimer: I use and advocate for tools derided above: linter/test integration, embedded features like autocomplete, etc.
- rsynnott 7y ago
  Yeah, that was the bit that got me. Emacs is in many ways the original IDE; insisting that people not use things like method signature hinting feels vaguely perverse.
  - mlthoughts2018 7y ago
    Method signature hinting and other forms of autocomplete-like functionality are very actively harmful to productivity and prevent you from holding a mental model of the codebase. The larger the codebase, the worse this effect gets and the more critical it is to only approach writing code when you’ve got a sufficiently burned in mental model of the subsystem you’re dealing with, by searching and reading code with tools & interfaces wholly distinct from what you use for writing code. It’s like the difference between someone who can navigate the highway system with interstate signs & atlases alone vs someone who is unable to navigate at all without a GPS system. Even if the GPS system experiences no downtime, they still lack skills that make the driving lower quality, like anticipating changes or adjusting for weather. Coders heavily reliant on IDE tools simply understand the ramifications of what they are writing less well, because they haven’t invested in the mental map of the code and mistakenly believe they can safely offload many parts of that cognitive requirement to an IDE. Worst of all, they believe that code shipped this way is somehow reinforcing evidence that the IDE was a value additive tool, which is the wrong counterfactual for comparison. You have to consider the value lost from what better solution could otherwise have been shipped for lower cost using a different set of tools.
ProfSarkov 7y ago
I know a couple of people holding the same opinion as OP. Can't say they are more productive. The percentage of people that are hard to work with is higher in this group though. And I know, what I'm talking about here. Started with a Commodore 64 in 1982, first Linux 1994. Did everything in emacs, calculated mode lines, Unix was my IDE, you name it. I'm a very happy user of CLion and IntelliJ IDEA now. Wouldn't want to go back to the dark ages.
- mlthoughts2018 7y ago
  > “I know a couple of people holding the same opinion as OP. Can't say they are more productive. The percentage of people that are hard to work with is higher in this group though.” This seems more telling about your attitude towards this subject, and perhaps also lesser skill in assessing or understanding those productivity differences.

b5n 7y ago

Use what works best, but Emacs is incredibly powerful, and certainly has the potential to make you more productive. I wish I had taken the time to learn Emacs earlier in my career, my task efficiency has increased significantly since converting my work flows. It does take a long time to learn relative to plug and play solutions (especially for someone like me with decades of old habits), luckily I had a few months off from work for the transition. The investment has been well worth it, it helps if you like lisp :) Disclaimer: I use and advocate for tools derided above: linter/test integration, embedded features like autocomplete, etc.

rsynnott 7y ago
Yeah, that was the bit that got me. Emacs is in many ways the original IDE; insisting that people not use things like method signature hinting feels vaguely perverse.
- mlthoughts2018 7y ago
  Method signature hinting and other forms of autocomplete-like functionality are very actively harmful to productivity and prevent you from holding a mental model of the codebase. The larger the codebase, the worse this effect gets and the more critical it is to only approach writing code when you’ve got a sufficiently burned in mental model of the subsystem you’re dealing with, by searching and reading code with tools & interfaces wholly distinct from what you use for writing code. It’s like the difference between someone who can navigate the highway system with interstate signs & atlases alone vs someone who is unable to navigate at all without a GPS system. Even if the GPS system experiences no downtime, they still lack skills that make the driving lower quality, like anticipating changes or adjusting for weather. Coders heavily reliant on IDE tools simply understand the ramifications of what they are writing less well, because they haven’t invested in the mental map of the code and mistakenly believe they can safely offload many parts of that cognitive requirement to an IDE. Worst of all, they believe that code shipped this way is somehow reinforcing evidence that the IDE was a value additive tool, which is the wrong counterfactual for comparison. You have to consider the value lost from what better solution could otherwise have been shipped for lower cost using a different set of tools.

ProfSarkov 7y ago

I know a couple of people holding the same opinion as OP. Can't say they are more productive. The percentage of people that are hard to work with is higher in this group though. And I know, what I'm talking about here. Started with a Commodore 64 in 1982, first Linux 1994. Did everything in emacs, calculated mode lines, Unix was my IDE, you name it. I'm a very happy user of CLion and IntelliJ IDEA now. Wouldn't want to go back to the dark ages.

mlthoughts2018 7y ago
> “I know a couple of people holding the same opinion as OP. Can't say they are more productive. The percentage of people that are hard to work with is higher in this group though.” This seems more telling about your attitude towards this subject, and perhaps also lesser skill in assessing or understanding those productivity differences.