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Definitely a no-brainer. Always buy the best machine you can get. I'm surprised that most developers don't take the same approach to tools. If you're using E

Definitely a no-brainer. Always buy the best machine you can get. I'm surprised that most developers don't take the same approach to tools. If you're using Eclipse or (god forbid) a text editor to write code, spend a minute and tally up all those 5-second chunks of your life you've spent this year looking up the names of variables, objects, whatever, and running into runtime errors from typos. Multiply by $$$/hour and see what you could have spent on a decent IDE. JetBrains makes IDEs for pretty much every language out there by now, and any one of them will pay for itself in about four days.

ams6110 15y ago
"Best machine you can get" would often be overkill. Consider the "best" on the Apple Store today: a 12-core Mac Pro with RAID and 2 27" Apple Cinema displays, you're looking at more than $12,000. And unless you're overflowing in VC cash like it was 1999 it would be insane from a business point of view to equip every developer with this kind of hardware. By the way many folks are highly productive using a text editor to write code. They might start off slower but end up actually learning the language and libraries they are using. IDEs that step in and try to take over while I'm typing drive me insane. Back to the primary topic, certainly it's a false savings to skimp out on buying an adequate machine for the task, but for most devs who spend most of their time in an IDE or editor, something like buying last year's best is often completely adequate and much more economical. To expect the "best machine you can get" without regard for cost is not realistic.
_mayo 15y ago
> If you're using Eclipse or (god forbid) a text editor to write code, spend a minute and tally up all those 5-second chunks of your life you've spent this year looking up the names of variables, objects, whatever, and running into runtime errors from typos. Multiply by $$$/hour and see what you could have spent on a decent IDE. This is a bit of FUD. There are plugins for most text editors that give them features that most IDEs have. For example, my Vim setup has tab and code completion, snippet management, syntax error highlighting in real time, code folding, document and file search, etc. I can also traverse a file faster in Vim than an IDE, my fingers do not ever need to leave the keyboard, and it's completely free (as in beer and freedom).
- StavrosK 15y ago
  I use Vim and don't really need all the fancy code/whatever completion things, but how on earth do you get them? It seems complicated enough that I haven't bothered.
  - _mayo 15y ago
    It's not to difficult, There are a ton of plugin's listed on the Vim site, and some on github. Most of them are just dropped into your .vim directory and some need to be set to startup in your .vimrc. Command-T(this one can acutally be kind of a pain to setup if your vim was not compiled with Ruby support), SuperTab, SnipMate are the three I recommend the most.
    - StavrosK 15y ago
      Thank you, I'll give them a shot now.
  - AlecSchueler 15y ago
    For something like on-the-fly highlighting of syntax errors it's usually just as easy as downloading the plugin and dropping it into your ~/.vim/ folder. For more some things you might have the extra step of having to remember a new command or keybinding, but that's about as complicated as it gets.
    - lclarkmichalek 15y ago
      Emacs users should check out the flymake minor-mode.
  - stonemetal 15y ago
    ctrl-( p previous or n for Next) is built in auto-completion of what you are typing. It can be configured to use tags, files, only open buffers etc.
    - StavrosK 15y ago
mtogo 15y ago
If you're using Eclipse or (god forbid) a text editor to write code, spend a minute and tally up all those 5-second chunks of your life you've spent this year looking up the names of variables, objects, whatever Nope, i love my text editor and i see no reason to start using an IDE. I've used IDEs before and they're all monolithic, slow, bloated tools that slow me down and make my life harder[1]. [1] Hi! I'm <strike>clippy</strike> Netbeans. It looks like you're trying to write a program. Can i autocomplete your words wrong, reformat your text in ways that don't make sense or follow your formatting guidelines and then crash?

ams6110 15y ago

"Best machine you can get" would often be overkill. Consider the "best" on the Apple Store today: a 12-core Mac Pro with RAID and 2 27" Apple Cinema displays, you're looking at more than $12,000. And unless you're overflowing in VC cash like it was 1999 it would be insane from a business point of view to equip every developer with this kind of hardware. By the way many folks are highly productive using a text editor to write code. They might start off slower but end up actually learning the language and libraries they are using. IDEs that step in and try to take over while I'm typing drive me insane. Back to the primary topic, certainly it's a false savings to skimp out on buying an adequate machine for the task, but for most devs who spend most of their time in an IDE or editor, something like buying last year's best is often completely adequate and much more economical. To expect the "best machine you can get" without regard for cost is not realistic.

_mayo 15y ago

> If you're using Eclipse or (god forbid) a text editor to write code, spend a minute and tally up all those 5-second chunks of your life you've spent this year looking up the names of variables, objects, whatever, and running into runtime errors from typos. Multiply by $$$/hour and see what you could have spent on a decent IDE. This is a bit of FUD. There are plugins for most text editors that give them features that most IDEs have. For example, my Vim setup has tab and code completion, snippet management, syntax error highlighting in real time, code folding, document and file search, etc. I can also traverse a file faster in Vim than an IDE, my fingers do not ever need to leave the keyboard, and it's completely free (as in beer and freedom).

StavrosK 15y ago
I use Vim and don't really need all the fancy code/whatever completion things, but how on earth do you get them? It seems complicated enough that I haven't bothered.
- _mayo 15y ago
  It's not to difficult, There are a ton of plugin's listed on the Vim site, and some on github. Most of them are just dropped into your .vim directory and some need to be set to startup in your .vimrc. Command-T(this one can acutally be kind of a pain to setup if your vim was not compiled with Ruby support), SuperTab, SnipMate are the three I recommend the most.
  - StavrosK 15y ago
    Thank you, I'll give them a shot now.
- AlecSchueler 15y ago
  For something like on-the-fly highlighting of syntax errors it's usually just as easy as downloading the plugin and dropping it into your ~/.vim/ folder. For more some things you might have the extra step of having to remember a new command or keybinding, but that's about as complicated as it gets.
  - lclarkmichalek 15y ago
    Emacs users should check out the flymake minor-mode.
- stonemetal 15y ago
  ctrl-( p previous or n for Next) is built in auto-completion of what you are typing. It can be configured to use tags, files, only open buffers etc.
  - StavrosK 15y ago

mtogo 15y ago

If you're using Eclipse or (god forbid) a text editor to write code, spend a minute and tally up all those 5-second chunks of your life you've spent this year looking up the names of variables, objects, whatever Nope, i love my text editor and i see no reason to start using an IDE. I've used IDEs before and they're all monolithic, slow, bloated tools that slow me down and make my life harder[1]. [1] Hi! I'm <strike>clippy</strike> Netbeans. It looks like you're trying to write a program. Can i autocomplete your words wrong, reformat your text in ways that don't make sense or follow your formatting guidelines and then crash?