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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.
- pulsapietro 6y ago
  Don't worry - it was an completely fair comment but everything has to be so controversial in what has nowadays become the fashion industry, so it feels at times.
tharne 6y ago
For a lot of people, the IDE does end up being a crutch. I was one of those people, and I can honestly say that over reliance on IDEs really held me back. I became a much stronger programmer when I ditched the IDEs for most tasks. I'll still use IDEs for a few select things, but overall they tend to hide a lot from you and you end up learning the IDE instead of the concepts of whatever language or framework you're working in.
pessimizer 6y ago
Is "gatekeeping" now just another word for making people feel bad? Like "pretentious" or "elitist" has become? Nobody is saying that people with crutches shouldn't be allowed to walk. edit: It's so strange to not only demand the right to not know how to do something without a complicated tool (a right which is inalienable and not threatened), but to also demand that people who do know how to do that thing not think that it is better to know how to do that thing. I get that when one has invested their time into a tool they want to defend its usage, but people who aren't dependent on a particular vendor's tool have also invested time, and should be able to think it's better to not be dependent on a particular vendor without it being considered violence or bullying (in the modern twitter sense.)
- vvanders 6y ago
  I mean shouldn't you feel bad if you're trying to discourage active engagement in a topic if one doesn't do it in a specific "correct" way? Personally I've found a diverse set of viewpoints to be incredibly valuable on the teams I've been a part of. I have my own biases on testing, stability, performance and seeing how others approach it has broadened my understanding of how to build software. To put it another way, the parent could have said "IDEs are awesome and I've found when you combine that with an understanding of the CLI you have an awesome set of tools at your disposal that are greater than the sum of their parts" instead of making it an exclusive trade off or implying that IDEs are limiting.
  - yowlingcat 6y ago
    > instead of making it an exclusive trade off or implying that IDEs are limiting. But that would be a completely different argument. Their whole point is that there /is/ an exclusive trade-off, which is different from what they're trying to say. If you want my opinion, they both piss me off, just in different ways. The IDE requires me to use my mouse, even with the best Vim impersonation plugins. I hate that, but I put up with it because the autocomplete, syntax completion and indexing just works so much better than the Vim equivalents which fall apart under heavily load. And conversely, trying to edit remotely complex projects is a nightmare with Vim, no matter which distributions I use. Which maybe is a different tone of saying exactly what you are saying.
  - turbinerneiter 6y ago
    I literally said that "IDEs are great tools" and my whole argument was that people can broaden their understanding by also learning some shell in addition to their IDE. So not sure what your point is.
    - vvanders 6y ago
      I'm sure that was your true intent, but the way you framed it made it seem like it was in exclusion(the dismissive "Cool." at the top didn't help). At the risk of sounding patronizing as much as we'd like to everything to be binary pass/fail and survive on the technical merits or semantic details, how you frame things and driving communication in an inclusive way is important of you want to convince people that something is worthwhile.

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.

pulsapietro 6y ago
Don't worry - it was an completely fair comment but everything has to be so controversial in what has nowadays become the fashion industry, so it feels at times.

tharne 6y ago

For a lot of people, the IDE does end up being a crutch. I was one of those people, and I can honestly say that over reliance on IDEs really held me back. I became a much stronger programmer when I ditched the IDEs for most tasks. I'll still use IDEs for a few select things, but overall they tend to hide a lot from you and you end up learning the IDE instead of the concepts of whatever language or framework you're working in.

pessimizer 6y ago

Is "gatekeeping" now just another word for making people feel bad? Like "pretentious" or "elitist" has become? Nobody is saying that people with crutches shouldn't be allowed to walk. edit: It's so strange to not only demand the right to not know how to do something without a complicated tool (a right which is inalienable and not threatened), but to also demand that people who do know how to do that thing not think that it is better to know how to do that thing. I get that when one has invested their time into a tool they want to defend its usage, but people who aren't dependent on a particular vendor's tool have also invested time, and should be able to think it's better to not be dependent on a particular vendor without it being considered violence or bullying (in the modern twitter sense.)

vvanders 6y ago
I mean shouldn't you feel bad if you're trying to discourage active engagement in a topic if one doesn't do it in a specific "correct" way? Personally I've found a diverse set of viewpoints to be incredibly valuable on the teams I've been a part of. I have my own biases on testing, stability, performance and seeing how others approach it has broadened my understanding of how to build software. To put it another way, the parent could have said "IDEs are awesome and I've found when you combine that with an understanding of the CLI you have an awesome set of tools at your disposal that are greater than the sum of their parts" instead of making it an exclusive trade off or implying that IDEs are limiting.
- yowlingcat 6y ago
  > instead of making it an exclusive trade off or implying that IDEs are limiting. But that would be a completely different argument. Their whole point is that there /is/ an exclusive trade-off, which is different from what they're trying to say. If you want my opinion, they both piss me off, just in different ways. The IDE requires me to use my mouse, even with the best Vim impersonation plugins. I hate that, but I put up with it because the autocomplete, syntax completion and indexing just works so much better than the Vim equivalents which fall apart under heavily load. And conversely, trying to edit remotely complex projects is a nightmare with Vim, no matter which distributions I use. Which maybe is a different tone of saying exactly what you are saying.
- turbinerneiter 6y ago
  I literally said that "IDEs are great tools" and my whole argument was that people can broaden their understanding by also learning some shell in addition to their IDE. So not sure what your point is.
  - vvanders 6y ago
    I'm sure that was your true intent, but the way you framed it made it seem like it was in exclusion(the dismissive "Cool." at the top didn't help). At the risk of sounding patronizing as much as we'd like to everything to be binary pass/fail and survive on the technical merits or semantic details, how you frame things and driving communication in an inclusive way is important of you want to convince people that something is worthwhile.