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I like the enthusiasm, but this article is a little too breathless to be fully believed. > The most important thing I look for when choosing which tools to use
by munificent 6y ago
I like the enthusiasm, but this article is a little too breathless to be fully believed.
> The most important thing I look for when choosing which tools to use is longevity.
In my time, I've programmed using Director, Microsoft QuickBASIC, FutureBASIC, THINK C, CodeWarrior, BBEdit, TextMate, Visual C++, Visual Studio, Sublime Text, Eclipse, Atom, VS Code, IntelliJ, XCode, and probably a few others I'm forgetting. I don't have any particularly strong attachment to any, except for maybe Sublime (which supplanted TextMate, which supplanted BBEdit).
Instead, what I've found is that IDE evolution is converging such that hopping between them gets easier and easier over time. The shortcuts and mouse behavior is becoming standardized, and the feature sets are getting more similar. These days, I just use whatever IDE is the "main" one for whatever language I'm developing in. Within a day or two, I'm up and running fine.
The only one I particularly enjoy using is Sublime and that's mostly for what it doesn't do than what it does. Sublime is fast and unencumbered, so it stays out of my way when I use it. I strongly prefer it when I'm writing prose for that reason.
- richiebful1 6y agoI agree. With language server protocol becoming commonplace for auto-complete and static analysis, I don't see a huge difference between various text editors.
- TheRealDunkirk 6y agoI've given VSC several months. I just went back to ST3. I find it refreshingly clean.
- keb_ 6y agoI'm in a similar boat, except I used VSCode for two years before switching back to Sublime Text. I remember watching [this funfunfunction video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIjKJjzRX_E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIjKJjzRX_E) and thinking how much I related to what he says about becoming addicted to tooling. This was me with VSCode; I was spending a large amount of my work time tweaking it, adding plugins, tweaking plugins, troubleshooting plugins, removing plugins, looking for new plugins, etc. However, the main kicker that made me switch back to Sublime was that I started it up one day and was astounded by how much snappier and responsive it was compared to my plugin-ridden VSCode. Admittedly, I do miss a lot of the plugins I used to use with VSCode, but at the same time, I'm happy to no longer have to rely on them.