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Once coding no longer was on the critical path of my employment (as a middle manager in a large tech company) I went back to vim from IntelliJ with nothing more

Once coding no longer was on the critical path of my employment (as a middle manager in a large tech company) I went back to vim from IntelliJ with nothing more than syntax highlight and autoindent. The reason? I wanted to know my programming languages better. Instead of auto-imports and auto-complete I was forced to have java/scala docs open for whatever library I was using. Beyond giving me better muscle memory for the core language libraries, this had the interesting side effect of only using well documented libraries. The lack of jump-to-definition also made me think more about dependencies in the code I was writing since they would require a cognitive leap and reasonably heavy context switch. Since cross-file refactoring requires bash-fu and is also a heavy process, this furthered my desire to minimize coupling. I can't say I'm more productive and if I were coding day in and day out for my day job I would probably still use IntelliJ (especially for large Java code bases that were crafted by advanced IDE usage), but I find coding to be a more holistic endeavor now.

8ytecoder 6y ago
IntelliJ lets me read library code way easier. I now pay out of pocket to get IntelliJ just for that privilege.
- cle 6y ago
  This used to be the case for me. With the growth of LSP and DAP, it's no longer an issue, and I'm back in Emacs for the vast majority of my daily work (including Java). I hope LSP beats JetBrains products. It's an open standard and lets language designers focus on their language instead of tooling. Don't get me wrong, JetBrains products are well polished and productive. I just don't see them being able to compete in the long-term with LSP, which is free and more attractive to language designers.
mgkimsal 6y ago
> this had the interesting side effect of only using well documented libraries That's great that you get to choose your own libraries. I'd wager most people that are using IntelliJ (or any IDE) also don't often have much of a choice in libraries they're using. IDEs never seemed to appeal to me when I was writing 100% of my own code. When I migrated to using more and more OPC (other peoples' code), whether project legacy stuff, or third party libraries, the ability to more quickly scan/jump/drill into that OPC, the more value I realized from various IDEs. Mostly JetBrains these days (interested in pairing with folks with their newish 'code with me' plugin/service), but vscode and eclipse make their way in to my life for small periods now and then.
greggman3 6y ago
That sounds awfully close to "books will ruin the world. If people stop memorizing their scriptures they'll stop believing" and complaints against progress. "I write by hand. Using a typewriter will take me away further away from the essence of 'writing'" etc... "Why would I email? Fax works fine for me and I get a hard copy" etc...
- brailsafe 6y ago
  To me it sounds more like if you use orthodics, the muscles in your feet will weaken over time.
- jqcoffey 6y ago
  > That sounds awfully close to "books will ruin the world. If people stop memorizing their scriptures they'll stop believing" and complaints against progress. Ok, so wow! No! Definitely not the message I was trying to convey. I love books, have many of them, don't read as much as I'd like, but would _certainly_ love to have more of them memorized! I'm always jealous of those folks who can recite poems from memory and the like. > "I write by hand. Using a typewriter will take me away further away from the essence of 'writing'" etc... Off (my) topic, but because you brought it up, writing by hand does increase memory retention! (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret-don-t-take-notes-with-a-laptop/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret...) > "Why would I email? Fax works fine for me and I get a hard copy" etc... Well... I do have a very nice laser printer and tend to print whitepapers even though I have a really nice iPad to read them on. So I guess all of the above could add up to me being a bit of a luddite, which I accept, but really I guess I was just expressing my way of retaining and improving my own knowledge of programming languages that I like. Hard copy reading, hand writing (which I don't actually do much of) and navigating scaladocs instead of tab-completion helps me do that. As I also said, if my job depending on my coding output, I would absolutely use a full featured IDE of one sort or another.
yters 6y ago
Totally agree with this. I much prefer being really slow and actually learning a language and writing code I understand vs banging out a thing for work with stackoverflow and an IDE.
dehrmann 6y ago
> Instead of auto-imports and auto-complete I was forced to have java/scala docs open for whatever library I was using. Beyond giving me better muscle memory for the core language libraries, this had the interesting side effect of only using well documented libraries. I guess that's nice to know, but it's also almost trivia. I write better code faster in an IDE and navigate existing code faster, and this is having worked in vi, VS Code, and IntelliJ.

8ytecoder 6y ago

IntelliJ lets me read library code way easier. I now pay out of pocket to get IntelliJ just for that privilege.

cle 6y ago
This used to be the case for me. With the growth of LSP and DAP, it's no longer an issue, and I'm back in Emacs for the vast majority of my daily work (including Java). I hope LSP beats JetBrains products. It's an open standard and lets language designers focus on their language instead of tooling. Don't get me wrong, JetBrains products are well polished and productive. I just don't see them being able to compete in the long-term with LSP, which is free and more attractive to language designers.

mgkimsal 6y ago

> this had the interesting side effect of only using well documented libraries That's great that you get to choose your own libraries. I'd wager most people that are using IntelliJ (or any IDE) also don't often have much of a choice in libraries they're using. IDEs never seemed to appeal to me when I was writing 100% of my own code. When I migrated to using more and more OPC (other peoples' code), whether project legacy stuff, or third party libraries, the ability to more quickly scan/jump/drill into that OPC, the more value I realized from various IDEs. Mostly JetBrains these days (interested in pairing with folks with their newish 'code with me' plugin/service), but vscode and eclipse make their way in to my life for small periods now and then.

greggman3 6y ago

That sounds awfully close to "books will ruin the world. If people stop memorizing their scriptures they'll stop believing" and complaints against progress. "I write by hand. Using a typewriter will take me away further away from the essence of 'writing'" etc... "Why would I email? Fax works fine for me and I get a hard copy" etc...

brailsafe 6y ago
To me it sounds more like if you use orthodics, the muscles in your feet will weaken over time.
jqcoffey 6y ago
> That sounds awfully close to "books will ruin the world. If people stop memorizing their scriptures they'll stop believing" and complaints against progress. Ok, so wow! No! Definitely not the message I was trying to convey. I love books, have many of them, don't read as much as I'd like, but would _certainly_ love to have more of them memorized! I'm always jealous of those folks who can recite poems from memory and the like. > "I write by hand. Using a typewriter will take me away further away from the essence of 'writing'" etc... Off (my) topic, but because you brought it up, writing by hand does increase memory retention! (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret-don-t-take-notes-with-a-laptop/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret...) > "Why would I email? Fax works fine for me and I get a hard copy" etc... Well... I do have a very nice laser printer and tend to print whitepapers even though I have a really nice iPad to read them on. So I guess all of the above could add up to me being a bit of a luddite, which I accept, but really I guess I was just expressing my way of retaining and improving my own knowledge of programming languages that I like. Hard copy reading, hand writing (which I don't actually do much of) and navigating scaladocs instead of tab-completion helps me do that. As I also said, if my job depending on my coding output, I would absolutely use a full featured IDE of one sort or another.

yters 6y ago

Totally agree with this. I much prefer being really slow and actually learning a language and writing code I understand vs banging out a thing for work with stackoverflow and an IDE.

dehrmann 6y ago

> Instead of auto-imports and auto-complete I was forced to have java/scala docs open for whatever library I was using. Beyond giving me better muscle memory for the core language libraries, this had the interesting side effect of only using well documented libraries. I guess that's nice to know, but it's also almost trivia. I write better code faster in an IDE and navigate existing code faster, and this is having worked in vi, VS Code, and IntelliJ.