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Cool. Still, a lot of people start out programming with complex IDEs and end up being unable to run their code without the "play" button of their IDE. Startin

Cool. Still, a lot of people start out programming with complex IDEs and end up being unable to run their code without the "play" button of their IDE. Starting out, or only ever leaning an IDE is also hiding a lot of things from you. For me, knowing the shell isn't about IDE vs. shell tooling, it's about, whatever you use, be aware and knowledgeable about the foundation and being able to do stuff even if there is no IDE. An IDE is a great tool, but it shouldn't be a crutch. And vim without extensions - I'm pretty sure that's a rare thing among programmers.

phkahler 6y ago
>> Still, a lot of people start out programming with complex IDEs and end up being unable to run their code without the "play" button of their IDE. Yep. Another thing I hate is IDEs that build their own project files that tie you to them. A good IDE works with standard tooling, not as a replacement.
- azalemeth 6y ago
  I could not agree with this more. I've worked on projects with some unholy combination of (gnu) Makefiles and VS Solutions. I've never "got" Visual Studio and have always found it very jarring -- but I mostly don't use windows much, and that always feels like it has a way of thinking that is...very orthogonal to mine. KDevelop has honestly been the best "not in your face" IDE I've personally found. I mostly do not do any MacOS programming, but when I have occasionally played, I've realised that xcode is brilliant but it seems like it utterly reinvents itself every major revision number. Eclipse, something I rarely-if-never used has sunk from a popular zeitgeist without a trace. Many of my colleagues (in a medical imaging setting) use jupyter, RStudio or Matlab, occasionally venturing into julia. The winds shift, and the ship of progress sails a direction that is difficult to chart, but vim....vim never changes, and for that I am very glad.
- rjsw 6y ago
  I'm not really an IDE person but I find native Netbeans projects easier to understand than Maven ones.
CodeAndCuffs 6y ago
Cant we make this argument for any level of abstraction? A lot of people start out with shells and end up being unable to understand how to construct a switch or adder in logic gates. A shell is a great tool but shouldn't be a crutch.
- spijdar 6y ago
  Emotionally, I actually agree with this. I'd love for at least a basic understanding of computers down to boolean logic and the very basics of semiconductors up to the OS level and beyond to be "widely known" by programmers and "computer literate". At the same time, I know that's extremely unreasonable to expect. I guess for the shell and editor, you can argue you ought to understand it stripped of abstractions, since it's actually the level you're working at, while most people don't work at the logic gate level.
  - Shared404 6y ago
    You may like "The Secret Life of Programs" by Jonathan Steinhart. It starts at boolean logic and works up to a web browser and then some other stuff. Edit: It's a high level covering of each topic of course, it does have to fit in a book. It's ~444 pages.
  - didericis 6y ago
    Another book recommendation: "Elements of Computing Systems" by Noam Nisan and Shimon Schocken. It doesn't go all the way down to the physics of semiconductors, but it goes down to logic gates and all the way up to tetris (there's a related course/website called nand to tetris: https://www.nand2tetris.org/ https://www.nand2tetris.org/) If you want to go further down, check out Jeri Ellsworth's old videos where she built a transistor at home: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_znRopGtbE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_znRopGtbE
  - wott 6y ago
    > At the same time, I know that's extremely unreasonable to expect. However, that's exactly the path every Electrical & Electronics Engineer classically took.
Jasper_ 6y ago
Still, a lot of people start out programming with complex compilers and end up being unable to hand-write their assembly code in pure HEX without the "help" of their compiler. Starting out, or only ever leaning a compiler is also hiding a lot of things from you. Now, I am familiar with assembly, I live and breathe it honestly, but I don't gatekeep and say "you're not a real programmer unless you've written your own assembler macros". Some people are happy in their IDEs and see no reason to move to the lower-level of abstraction in their tooling. I don't see why we should fault or shame them for that. Personally, I see shell as a poorly-designed, very error-prone language and I think we should move past it, onto far better tools.
- turbinerneiter 6y ago
  Where did I fault anyone, where am I gatekeeping? I'm talking about the befits of knowing more stuff. I'm not arguing against IDEs, I'm only arguing about the benefit of also knowing other stuff. Better tools: I'm very interested in, what I would in lieu of a better term describe as, Bret Victor's ideas and the example of Swift playground. At the same time, I'm very sceptic against everything that isn't a simple, human readable Textfile underneath. One thing I keep thinking about is making diagrams executable, but I haven't seen a graphical programming language that convinced me. Still, I think this could happen some day, if someone finds the right design.
  - vvanders 6y ago
    By framing the IDE as a crutch, that's very much in the gatekeeping category.
    - turbinerneiter 6y ago
      I didn't mean to frame the IDE as a crutch, I'm merely saying that you should try to not let it become a crutch aka. overly rely on it. I recently worked with a colleague who couldn't run the python program he wrote without the IDE. The IDE was not installed on the PC we were testing the program on. He is a better programmer than me. And I'm not saying "people who are using IDEs don't know anything". I'm literally only talking about the benefits of also knowing some basic shell and CLI stuff.
mraza007 6y ago
I didn’t really started out with IDE I become overwhelmed by using an IDE its just my personal preference but I love using text editor they are very simple and minimal
- dlivingston 6y ago
  My understanding, as an exclusively nix developer, is that if you’re a Windows dev, all you really have are IDEs. Yes, I know about Cygwin and WSL and the rest, but if you’re a run of the mill Windows developer then your life is centered around Visual Studio and NetBeans and PyCharm and maybe Powershell and maybe maybe cmd.exe if you’re a greybeard. That vim and bash and all of these terminal-driven ways of developing are the unique privilege (and I do say that unironically) of working with *nix systems. That’s not to say Windows devs don’t use vim, but in my (limited) experience, it’s about as common as using a gas-powered generator to charge your Tesla.
divbzero 6y ago
Agreed. IDEs were how I was taught in class, but discovering shell tooling on my own removed the magic and made programming a transparent process.
gfxgirl 6y ago
I entirely agree with you there is a time for the shell and a time for an IDE and knowing when and knowing both is a huge win. My comment is more addressing the article where in the author mentions vim with no extensions and grepping. IMO that's often the wrong tool for the job (writing code). It can be a useful tool but there are often better tools for that job. Knowing when to use one vs the other and therefore knowing both is very useful.

phkahler 6y ago

>> Still, a lot of people start out programming with complex IDEs and end up being unable to run their code without the "play" button of their IDE. Yep. Another thing I hate is IDEs that build their own project files that tie you to them. A good IDE works with standard tooling, not as a replacement.

azalemeth 6y ago
I could not agree with this more. I've worked on projects with some unholy combination of (gnu) Makefiles and VS Solutions. I've never "got" Visual Studio and have always found it very jarring -- but I mostly don't use windows much, and that always feels like it has a way of thinking that is...very orthogonal to mine. KDevelop has honestly been the best "not in your face" IDE I've personally found. I mostly do not do any MacOS programming, but when I have occasionally played, I've realised that xcode is brilliant but it seems like it utterly reinvents itself every major revision number. Eclipse, something I rarely-if-never used has sunk from a popular zeitgeist without a trace. Many of my colleagues (in a medical imaging setting) use jupyter, RStudio or Matlab, occasionally venturing into julia. The winds shift, and the ship of progress sails a direction that is difficult to chart, but vim....vim never changes, and for that I am very glad.
rjsw 6y ago
I'm not really an IDE person but I find native Netbeans projects easier to understand than Maven ones.

CodeAndCuffs 6y ago

Cant we make this argument for any level of abstraction? A lot of people start out with shells and end up being unable to understand how to construct a switch or adder in logic gates. A shell is a great tool but shouldn't be a crutch.

spijdar 6y ago
Emotionally, I actually agree with this. I'd love for at least a basic understanding of computers down to boolean logic and the very basics of semiconductors up to the OS level and beyond to be "widely known" by programmers and "computer literate". At the same time, I know that's extremely unreasonable to expect. I guess for the shell and editor, you can argue you ought to understand it stripped of abstractions, since it's actually the level you're working at, while most people don't work at the logic gate level.
- Shared404 6y ago
  You may like "The Secret Life of Programs" by Jonathan Steinhart. It starts at boolean logic and works up to a web browser and then some other stuff. Edit: It's a high level covering of each topic of course, it does have to fit in a book. It's ~444 pages.
- didericis 6y ago
  Another book recommendation: "Elements of Computing Systems" by Noam Nisan and Shimon Schocken. It doesn't go all the way down to the physics of semiconductors, but it goes down to logic gates and all the way up to tetris (there's a related course/website called nand to tetris: https://www.nand2tetris.org/ https://www.nand2tetris.org/) If you want to go further down, check out Jeri Ellsworth's old videos where she built a transistor at home: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_znRopGtbE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_znRopGtbE
- wott 6y ago
  > At the same time, I know that's extremely unreasonable to expect. However, that's exactly the path every Electrical & Electronics Engineer classically took.

Jasper_ 6y ago

Still, a lot of people start out programming with complex compilers and end up being unable to hand-write their assembly code in pure HEX without the "help" of their compiler. Starting out, or only ever leaning a compiler is also hiding a lot of things from you. Now, I am familiar with assembly, I live and breathe it honestly, but I don't gatekeep and say "you're not a real programmer unless you've written your own assembler macros". Some people are happy in their IDEs and see no reason to move to the lower-level of abstraction in their tooling. I don't see why we should fault or shame them for that. Personally, I see shell as a poorly-designed, very error-prone language and I think we should move past it, onto far better tools.

turbinerneiter 6y ago
Where did I fault anyone, where am I gatekeeping? I'm talking about the befits of knowing more stuff. I'm not arguing against IDEs, I'm only arguing about the benefit of also knowing other stuff. Better tools: I'm very interested in, what I would in lieu of a better term describe as, Bret Victor's ideas and the example of Swift playground. At the same time, I'm very sceptic against everything that isn't a simple, human readable Textfile underneath. One thing I keep thinking about is making diagrams executable, but I haven't seen a graphical programming language that convinced me. Still, I think this could happen some day, if someone finds the right design.
- vvanders 6y ago
  By framing the IDE as a crutch, that's very much in the gatekeeping category.
  - turbinerneiter 6y ago
    I didn't mean to frame the IDE as a crutch, I'm merely saying that you should try to not let it become a crutch aka. overly rely on it. I recently worked with a colleague who couldn't run the python program he wrote without the IDE. The IDE was not installed on the PC we were testing the program on. He is a better programmer than me. And I'm not saying "people who are using IDEs don't know anything". I'm literally only talking about the benefits of also knowing some basic shell and CLI stuff.

mraza007 6y ago

I didn’t really started out with IDE I become overwhelmed by using an IDE its just my personal preference but I love using text editor they are very simple and minimal

dlivingston 6y ago
My understanding, as an exclusively nix developer, is that if you’re a Windows dev, all you really have are IDEs. Yes, I know about Cygwin and WSL and the rest, but if you’re a run of the mill Windows developer then your life is centered around Visual Studio and NetBeans and PyCharm and maybe Powershell and maybe maybe cmd.exe if you’re a greybeard. That vim and bash and all of these terminal-driven ways of developing are the unique privilege (and I do say that unironically) of working with *nix systems. That’s not to say Windows devs don’t use vim, but in my (limited) experience, it’s about as common as using a gas-powered generator to charge your Tesla.

divbzero 6y ago

Agreed. IDEs were how I was taught in class, but discovering shell tooling on my own removed the magic and made programming a transparent process.

gfxgirl 6y ago

I entirely agree with you there is a time for the shell and a time for an IDE and knowing when and knowing both is a huge win. My comment is more addressing the article where in the author mentions vim with no extensions and grepping. IMO that's often the wrong tool for the job (writing code). It can be a useful tool but there are often better tools for that job. Knowing when to use one vs the other and therefore knowing both is very useful.