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> Regarding the comment about the debugging. For me personally, I always take the time to study the code first before I start debugging. A lot of times I alread

> Regarding the comment about the debugging. For me personally, I always take the time to study the code first before I start debugging. A lot of times I already find the problem by just reading the code and even if that is not the case, I have a much better understanding about how the code is supposed to behave and that makes the debugging session a lot more useful. And I say that because I have the impression that it is common for developers to dive straight into a debugging session without a good understanding of what the code is doing or trying to do. I don’t understand this sentiment about “modern” (interactive, user friendly) debuggers. Simply because you have a tool doesn’t mean you have to skip the step of trying to understand the code. Is the suggestion seriously to avoid having tools that are objectively better because there may be a temptation to use them too early, whereas having only more primitive tools would do better? I have seen the same argument about syntax highlighting. That pretty colors makes for sloppy code reading and monochrome text means you read slower and thus more thoroughly…

BlargMcLarg 4y ago
>That pretty colors makes for sloppy code reading and monochrome text means you read slower and thus more thoroughly… On the contrary, I get quite annoyed losing track of indents and scoping. VSCode finally adding colored brackets has been a blessing in navigating legacy code with way too much nesting in the face of developers still unable to keep their code from scrolling horizontally and dividing methods / using different paradigms to prevent overnesting. Also helps to just not have to spend the limited amount of focus on things that an IDE can cover for you. Programming has become far more complicated (no, not complex) in many ways, and we as a species haven't magically gotten a lot better at understanding it while we seem awfully good at writing things even more complicated.
noisy_boy 4y ago
> I have seen the same argument about syntax highlighting. That pretty colors makes for sloppy code reading and monochrome text means you read slower and thus more thoroughly… The amount of times color change has indicated syntax error to me makes it a no brainer. Sure, some systems may have an older editor that doesn't have color highlighting, but that's a rare scenario for me. I'm not going to give up the huge benifit just to "train" my mind for such rare cases.
rvdginste 4y ago
> Simply because you have a tool doesn’t mean you have to skip the step of trying to understand the code. Exactly. Maybe that was not clear from my comment, but my point is basically that using the most fancy tools is not gonna help a lot when you don't start with getting an understanding of the code.

BlargMcLarg 4y ago

>That pretty colors makes for sloppy code reading and monochrome text means you read slower and thus more thoroughly… On the contrary, I get quite annoyed losing track of indents and scoping. VSCode finally adding colored brackets has been a blessing in navigating legacy code with way too much nesting in the face of developers still unable to keep their code from scrolling horizontally and dividing methods / using different paradigms to prevent overnesting. Also helps to just not have to spend the limited amount of focus on things that an IDE can cover for you. Programming has become far more complicated (no, not complex) in many ways, and we as a species haven't magically gotten a lot better at understanding it while we seem awfully good at writing things even more complicated.

noisy_boy 4y ago

> I have seen the same argument about syntax highlighting. That pretty colors makes for sloppy code reading and monochrome text means you read slower and thus more thoroughly… The amount of times color change has indicated syntax error to me makes it a no brainer. Sure, some systems may have an older editor that doesn't have color highlighting, but that's a rare scenario for me. I'm not going to give up the huge benifit just to "train" my mind for such rare cases.

rvdginste 4y ago

> Simply because you have a tool doesn’t mean you have to skip the step of trying to understand the code. Exactly. Maybe that was not clear from my comment, but my point is basically that using the most fancy tools is not gonna help a lot when you don't start with getting an understanding of the code.