4 ms·

I shouldn't need an industrial-strength editing engine to efficiently express my ideas. (And don't, if I'm using a nice expressive language.)

nappy-doo 7y ago
ever written Java?
throwaway894345 7y ago
Generally speaking, Go is one of the easiest languages to write with a simple text editor. Rust is among the hardest due to its complexity and demanding static analysis. This isn't a bad thing, and tools like rust-analyzer make writing Rust a lot easier. But rust-analyzer is amazing technology from the future; hardly an ordinary text editor plugin.
- eropple 7y ago
  > Generally speaking, Go is one of the easiest languages to write with a simple text editor. And one of the absolute dog's-breakfast worst to refactor regardless of editing environment. No statically typed language should be this hard to do basic changes in, and yet it exists. Being writable in a "simple text editor" isn't a plus when the "simple text editors" in 2020 are IDEs with the name filed off.
- centimeter 6y ago
  > Go is one of the easiest languages to write with a simple text editor. As long as you never refactor anything. > Rust is among the hardest due to its complexity and demanding static analysis I have never wanted or needed to offload Rust's "demanding static analysis" to my text editor. Rust's linearity/lifetime type system is really quite simple - it's not like you have to keep track of long-distance lifetime relationships in your head. Even a reasonably powerful type system with e.g. HKTs, arithmetic, etc. like Haskell's rarely benefits from external tooling, and any interactivity can often be just as easily done via a polling build tool like ghcid rather than integrating it into a text editor. The one place where it strikes me as sane to have a "smart" text editor is if you're using a proof assistant-style language like Coq/Idris/Isabelle/Liquid Haskell/etc. where there's actually a non-trivial amount of interactivity required while writing the code.
- mcqueenjordan 6y ago
  OK, I'll bite... The demanding static analysis and clear compiler errors actually make it easier and more robust to write unaided for me. Especially when it comes to refactoring -- it's essentially a process of resolving the compiler errors and you can be pretty confident you've arrived at a correct result. Source: I write Rust everyday in a plain text editor without syntax highlighting.

nappy-doo 7y ago

ever written Java?

throwaway894345 7y ago

Generally speaking, Go is one of the easiest languages to write with a simple text editor. Rust is among the hardest due to its complexity and demanding static analysis. This isn't a bad thing, and tools like rust-analyzer make writing Rust a lot easier. But rust-analyzer is amazing technology from the future; hardly an ordinary text editor plugin.

eropple 7y ago
> Generally speaking, Go is one of the easiest languages to write with a simple text editor. And one of the absolute dog's-breakfast worst to refactor regardless of editing environment. No statically typed language should be this hard to do basic changes in, and yet it exists. Being writable in a "simple text editor" isn't a plus when the "simple text editors" in 2020 are IDEs with the name filed off.
centimeter 6y ago
> Go is one of the easiest languages to write with a simple text editor. As long as you never refactor anything. > Rust is among the hardest due to its complexity and demanding static analysis I have never wanted or needed to offload Rust's "demanding static analysis" to my text editor. Rust's linearity/lifetime type system is really quite simple - it's not like you have to keep track of long-distance lifetime relationships in your head. Even a reasonably powerful type system with e.g. HKTs, arithmetic, etc. like Haskell's rarely benefits from external tooling, and any interactivity can often be just as easily done via a polling build tool like ghcid rather than integrating it into a text editor. The one place where it strikes me as sane to have a "smart" text editor is if you're using a proof assistant-style language like Coq/Idris/Isabelle/Liquid Haskell/etc. where there's actually a non-trivial amount of interactivity required while writing the code.
mcqueenjordan 6y ago
OK, I'll bite... The demanding static analysis and clear compiler errors actually make it easier and more robust to write unaided for me. Especially when it comes to refactoring -- it's essentially a process of resolving the compiler errors and you can be pretty confident you've arrived at a correct result. Source: I write Rust everyday in a plain text editor without syntax highlighting.