4 ms·

I use very few developer tools, mostly because I couldn't get them to stop doing things I hated, or because I couldn't get them to stop doing things I didn't ne

I use very few developer tools, mostly because I couldn't get them to stop doing things I hated, or because I couldn't get them to stop doing things I didn't need, or because I couldn't get them to stop doing things I didn't understand. There's a common theme there. The autocompletion stuff really bothered me because I know what I want to type, my fingers are already doing it, and I had to stop them. I don't want to learn to retype just for this tool. No. Certainly, some of them seemed like they would benefit from some kind of beginner mode, intermediate mode, and so on. I remember not having touched Visual Studio for over a decade, and then looking at it and feeling like a chimp dropped into the cockpit of an F-15.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
> There's a common theme there. Ironically, and perhaps opposite to the point you're trying to make, this is part of the reason I prefer to evolve my Emacs towards being an IDE than to use an actual IDE. Bolting advanced tooling onto Emacs takes lots of ongoing work, but at the end I can be damn sure I actually understand what the tooling is doing, and why - and I can easily patch any piece of it to stop doing things I hate or don't need.
CrLf 6y ago
I can totally sympathize with this idea. When you pick a tool to make a specific task easier, you want it to do exactly that. I see this all the time in conversation (with younger developers, mostly). They find it very difficult to understand how one can possibly survive without an (advanced) IDE, and most likely look at me as exactly that chimp. I'm a very basic user of IDEs. I don't use almost any of their advanced features, nor do I memorize anything beyond the most basic shortcuts. I can't even justify the investment to learn them properly, as context may require me to change IDEs (and that context is often an accumulation of grievances). On the other hand, I live inside the CLI, have no trouble composing basic tools to do what I want, and has been so for ages. I'd much rather have a toolbox of individual tools that I can choose from and mix-and-match over time, than a fancy all-in-one powertool that would trap me with sunk costs like a bad marriage.
nikanj 6y ago
I understand where you're coming from, but it also sounds similar to insisting on hand saws and hammers, because chainsaws and nail guns have too much complexity.
skocznymroczny 6y ago
I'm the opposite. I had mixed feelings about developer tools, but they got much better once I started to embrace them instead of trying to customize them each step of the way. After you adopt such way, it's hard to come back. I am used to completely not worrying about formatting. Sometimes if I want some fast code I type it in a single line with semicolons, press Ctrl+S and VSCode automatically formats the entire file according to the "official" language formatting guide. Same with autocompletion. I program in OOP languages, so I really like long names such as AbstractMachineDevicePool. I really like that I can write AMDP, press ctrl+space, enter and it puts AbstractMachineDevicePool into my code.

TeMPOraL 6y ago

> There's a common theme there. Ironically, and perhaps opposite to the point you're trying to make, this is part of the reason I prefer to evolve my Emacs towards being an IDE than to use an actual IDE. Bolting advanced tooling onto Emacs takes lots of ongoing work, but at the end I can be damn sure I actually understand what the tooling is doing, and why - and I can easily patch any piece of it to stop doing things I hate or don't need.

CrLf 6y ago

I can totally sympathize with this idea. When you pick a tool to make a specific task easier, you want it to do exactly that. I see this all the time in conversation (with younger developers, mostly). They find it very difficult to understand how one can possibly survive without an (advanced) IDE, and most likely look at me as exactly that chimp. I'm a very basic user of IDEs. I don't use almost any of their advanced features, nor do I memorize anything beyond the most basic shortcuts. I can't even justify the investment to learn them properly, as context may require me to change IDEs (and that context is often an accumulation of grievances). On the other hand, I live inside the CLI, have no trouble composing basic tools to do what I want, and has been so for ages. I'd much rather have a toolbox of individual tools that I can choose from and mix-and-match over time, than a fancy all-in-one powertool that would trap me with sunk costs like a bad marriage.

nikanj 6y ago

I understand where you're coming from, but it also sounds similar to insisting on hand saws and hammers, because chainsaws and nail guns have too much complexity.

skocznymroczny 6y ago

I'm the opposite. I had mixed feelings about developer tools, but they got much better once I started to embrace them instead of trying to customize them each step of the way. After you adopt such way, it's hard to come back. I am used to completely not worrying about formatting. Sometimes if I want some fast code I type it in a single line with semicolons, press Ctrl+S and VSCode automatically formats the entire file according to the "official" language formatting guide. Same with autocompletion. I program in OOP languages, so I really like long names such as AbstractMachineDevicePool. I really like that I can write AMDP, press ctrl+space, enter and it puts AbstractMachineDevicePool into my code.