> For example, an IDE lets you rename a variable or type in a semantic fashion, making it easier for me to iterate on names and land on something that people un

> For example, an IDE lets you rename a variable or type in a semantic fashion, making it easier for me to iterate on names and land on something that people understand. The rename functionality is helpful, mainly for names that are referenced throughout the codebase. For locals it's not hard to replace this functionality - narrow the buffer to the scope you want (expand-region helps), then use iedit or multiple-cursors to perform the change. For public names referenced in multiple places you can use grep-find, then wgrep with iedit or multiple-cursors to do the rename. It's more work, and you risk renaming things you didn't intend to rename (ie. it's not semantic), but it works also with languages that have no IDEs or LSP implementation, so it's worth knowing.