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I'm glad you had a good experience with this, but I can tell you right now that if I had a professor insist I couldn't use my own tools for his class out of wha

I'm glad you had a good experience with this, but I can tell you right now that if I had a professor insist I couldn't use my own tools for his class out of what appears to be nothing more than "you will use what I force you to use because I believe only REAL programmers use vim," I would be the type of student who would take great pleasure in using my text editor of choice discretely and doing whatever I could to ensure there was no proof that I was using my tools of choice. I'm fine if a professor wants to say "we're not using IDEs, we're using text editors in this class and this is why" -- but to dictate the editor would be akin to being told what type of pencil or pen I could use to take hand-written notes. It reminds me of one of my writing professors who insisted that all papers presented to him be formatted in Arial. Arial is a bad font, so I asked if I could use the metrically identical Helvetica, and he refused. I still submitted my papers in Helvetica anyway and he never noticed. (I'm not claiming this is a mature response, FWIW, but a core part of my personality naturally pushes back on anyone telling me I can't use something for a wholly arbitrary reason or because they want to enact a ridiculous level of control.)

yebyen 7y ago
I am a Vim user, and if I had a group leader tell me that I had to use some different editor because we are all learning how to do this job together, and that learning how to use the editor properly was part of learning how to do the job, I would do what he says. At least for as long as he stays in the room... On the other hand, we had an architect who has since retired that said, if it was up to him, all developers across the campus would use the same programming language, editor, and configuration. Thankfully it was not up to him, and we still have this lovely diversity of opinions and tools that signals it is encouraged for specializations to develop, thus making sure that we are not all replaceable cogs in an exceedingly boring machine. But the memory of this man's twisted vision remains with me, and it strikes me that the leadership still would seem to prefer if we were in fact fungible units of work-capacity, without any distinctive features or unique characteristics differentiating us from other developers. IMO if you learned to ensure there was no proof of different tools, you learned an equally valuable lesson; I would mark you down for example if I opened your file and found a bunch of CRLF line endings, or some other similar obvious linting violation that was prevented by an editor configuration you were supposed to have installed during the class. But if you applied enough attention to detail to make sure this was not possible, in a way you got the point (and also for the purposes of the grade, you definitely got the point!)
- vidarh 7y ago
  I would do as they said if they convinced me that they had sound reasons for the choice. I don't think they'd be able to come up with sound reasons for dictating vi specifically, over a more lenient requirement, though. And being dictated to like that without sound reasoning behind it would instantly make me rebel. Unlike the other commenter, I would not do so quietly - I'd be more likely to make sure to use whatever he'd take most offense at in front of him, and seek to rally others to that cause.
  - yebyen 7y ago
    I just sat through a two day training/workshop session called "Design Thinking" during which we learned about techniques to interview stakeholders, and how to empathize with their needs and concerns (specifically without solving the problem at hand, or trying to solve it.) My perception is that I am closer to the problem than most of the other classroom participants, and I have more than enough experience to solve it by myself, without any help. It was very difficult to follow the guidelines for the exercise and refrain from simply going ahead and solving a problem that I've solved many times before in a way that was familiar to me. In my view it would have taken less time to simply solve the problem than to engage in this seemingly "pointless" exercise, but I do think I understand better after taking the time to convince myself that those other points-of-view have merit and should be taken into account. Maybe I simply have a case of the old Stockholm syndrome, but between you and GP, I think I'd rather have a more cooperative and acquiescent person on my project team, for the grade. Sounds like a bikeshed argument. First we said the choice didn't matter, that it was less important than the actual programming content of the class; now we're actively combating and making a big stink until someone does some argument dance about it, and convincing happens, so the justification for the specific choice is judged acceptable. (And I guess you've already dug in your heels by this point, and won't be convinced no matter what the reasoning offered.) What would be your reasons for rejecting vi, specifically? It seems to me that we've actually rejected the idea that editor choice is unimportant; if it was so trivial and doesn't matter which editor, we probably wouldn't be fighting about it, nobody would mind the seemingly arbitrary decision. Nobody would ask for sound reasons to justify.

yebyen 7y ago

I am a Vim user, and if I had a group leader tell me that I had to use some different editor because we are all learning how to do this job together, and that learning how to use the editor properly was part of learning how to do the job, I would do what he says. At least for as long as he stays in the room... On the other hand, we had an architect who has since retired that said, if it was up to him, all developers across the campus would use the same programming language, editor, and configuration. Thankfully it was not up to him, and we still have this lovely diversity of opinions and tools that signals it is encouraged for specializations to develop, thus making sure that we are not all replaceable cogs in an exceedingly boring machine. But the memory of this man's twisted vision remains with me, and it strikes me that the leadership still would seem to prefer if we were in fact fungible units of work-capacity, without any distinctive features or unique characteristics differentiating us from other developers. IMO if you learned to ensure there was no proof of different tools, you learned an equally valuable lesson; I would mark you down for example if I opened your file and found a bunch of CRLF line endings, or some other similar obvious linting violation that was prevented by an editor configuration you were supposed to have installed during the class. But if you applied enough attention to detail to make sure this was not possible, in a way you got the point (and also for the purposes of the grade, you definitely got the point!)

vidarh 7y ago
I would do as they said if they convinced me that they had sound reasons for the choice. I don't think they'd be able to come up with sound reasons for dictating vi specifically, over a more lenient requirement, though. And being dictated to like that without sound reasoning behind it would instantly make me rebel. Unlike the other commenter, I would not do so quietly - I'd be more likely to make sure to use whatever he'd take most offense at in front of him, and seek to rally others to that cause.
- yebyen 7y ago
  I just sat through a two day training/workshop session called "Design Thinking" during which we learned about techniques to interview stakeholders, and how to empathize with their needs and concerns (specifically without solving the problem at hand, or trying to solve it.) My perception is that I am closer to the problem than most of the other classroom participants, and I have more than enough experience to solve it by myself, without any help. It was very difficult to follow the guidelines for the exercise and refrain from simply going ahead and solving a problem that I've solved many times before in a way that was familiar to me. In my view it would have taken less time to simply solve the problem than to engage in this seemingly "pointless" exercise, but I do think I understand better after taking the time to convince myself that those other points-of-view have merit and should be taken into account. Maybe I simply have a case of the old Stockholm syndrome, but between you and GP, I think I'd rather have a more cooperative and acquiescent person on my project team, for the grade. Sounds like a bikeshed argument. First we said the choice didn't matter, that it was less important than the actual programming content of the class; now we're actively combating and making a big stink until someone does some argument dance about it, and convincing happens, so the justification for the specific choice is judged acceptable. (And I guess you've already dug in your heels by this point, and won't be convinced no matter what the reasoning offered.) What would be your reasons for rejecting vi, specifically? It seems to me that we've actually rejected the idea that editor choice is unimportant; if it was so trivial and doesn't matter which editor, we probably wouldn't be fighting about it, nobody would mind the seemingly arbitrary decision. Nobody would ask for sound reasons to justify.