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I used Emacs for a while and now I use Intellij. Now I don't understand the appeal of customizing the editor to such degree. I'm not that unique. I just want st

I used Emacs for a while and now I use Intellij. Now I don't understand the appeal of customizing the editor to such degree. I'm not that unique. I just want stuff that works. Give me the same setup as everyone else so that when issues arise everyone will push for them to get fixed and everyone can help each other.

adastra22 4y ago
I use Visual Studio Code now for pretty much this exact reason. The only configuration I need to do is to install the right language server extensions for the code I develop, but even this is mostly handled by the "It looks like you're writing Rust code. Do you want to install the extension to handle this file type?" dialog that pops up on first use. Everything is auto-updated, settings synchronized across devices, and default settings are mostly ideal. Reaping the benefit of everyone else's hard work at improving vscode is awesome. It just gets better over time without me having to do anything except occasionally read about new features in the release notes. Spending hours twiddling in emacs lisp to get things configured just right is just wasting my limited time.
- thom 4y ago
  You also get the benefit of everyone else’s hard work with Emacs. One of the differences is that it’s such an established ecosystem, that instead of individual extensions just getting better, with Emacs they’ve yielded shared abstractions that make _new_ extensions trivial and much more consistent than with VSCode (which is nevertheless still an excellent editor these days). I also don’t understand why people think spending time on the tools they use to do work is wasted. You either believe software creates value or you don’t. If your time is so limited, eliminating toil seems essential.
  - Scuds 4y ago
    I think my time is better spent improving my build and deployment environments instead of something like customizing my text editor. More of my work is in tying command line utilities together Maybe I don’t know what hardcore emacs use is like.
    - thom 4y ago
      Yeah, I suspect the fundamental disconnect is that some people think of the terminal as the dev environment and something else is used purely as a text editor. Emacs edits text, but it’s an environment beyond that (one which happens to also contain a terminal).
  - adastra22 4y ago
    I think you're missing the point. With vscode I literally don't have to do anything. It just magically gets better every time I start it up. Most people I know who use vim or emacs don't have it setup to auto-update extensions, and even if they did they wouldn't automatically fetch and configure those new extensions you mention. What I'm objecting to is the very idea of a highly customizable editor.
    - thom 4y ago
      VSCode is a highly customisable editor.
    - ParetoOptimal 4y ago
      > It just magically gets better every time I start it up. Some of my coworkers violently agree, but at least 20-30% get annoyed when autoupdate removes/ changes some feature (pane splitting recently I think) and they have to adapt their workflow.
  - oblio 4y ago
    > If your time is so limited, eliminating toil seems essential. The counter point to this is usually: What exactly is your toil as a professional software developer (or associated profession) that is eliminated with a "better"[1] editor in 2023? Refactoring is more powerful with an IDE, for mainstream languages. For non-mainstream languages 95% of what Emacs enables can be done using multi-cursors and a macro language built in to the editor, and we're in 2023. Those kinds of editors are a dime a dozen :-) Editing data dumps or whatever is probably better with an advanced editor (I generally use Vim for that). But it's such a rare occurrence. Writing code is super easy in an IDE. Most of my toil is unnecessary meetings, unnecessary reporting, unnecessary social stuff. Emacs can't help with any of that. * * * [1] To note, "better" is strictly a claim. I'm quite sure there's no peer reviewed study that can prove conclusively that Emacs/Vim users are more productive than non-Emacs/Vim users, just due to their usage of Emacs/Vim.
    - quanticle 4y ago
      For non-mainstream languages 95% of what Emacs enables can be done using multi-cursors and a macro language built in to the editor, and we're in 2023. Those kinds of editors are a dime a dozen :-) Are they? Multi-cursors, sure, but what other editors have a macro language that combines the power and accessbility of emacs lisp? The only other one that comes close is vim, and, as many critiques as I have of emacs lisp, I can firmly state: it's a lot nicer to use than vimscript. But other than emacs and vim, which other editors allow me to interactively automate portions of my editing workflow? All the other IDEs and editors that you've cited, like IntelliJ or VSCode require you to either find or write a package. That's a much bigger step than just interactively evaluating some lisp to do a one-off thing.
      - dmitriid 4y ago
        > but what other editors have a macro language that combines the power and accessbility of emacs lisp? Is it accessible? Why would I want to spend time learning the idiosyncrasies of a 40-year-old editor to write something that I might use once in a blue moon? I have other, more interesting things in life.
      - 4y ago
- raverbashing 4y ago
  Yeah, with more experience I have realized that most customization is not better A certain level yes, but doesn't need to be all, end all VSCode solves most of my issues. "oh but in Emacs you can do..." a thing that I either don't need, or I don't care about or I can do using a web service or some other offline program or maybe even a VSCode plugin or a short vim script.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    > "oh but in Emacs you can do..." a thing that I either don't need, or I don't care about or or it's already available in pretty much any IDE out of the box. Most people advocating for emacs or vim usually have no idea what a modern IDE is, and pretend modern IDEs have not surpassed win3.1 notepad in terms of functionality.
    - raverbashing 4y ago
      Yes, that's a good reminder. And I agree, a lot of those heavy advocates live in a bubble
Kwpolska 4y ago
IntelliJ is very configurable, and there are some settings and plugins I couldn't live without (such as the Vim plugin). I've also been through a Vim-as-main-editor phase, but I'm now using Rider (a JetBrains IDE) as my main editor, VSCode as my secondary editor (for things where opening Rider would be impractical), and NeoVim for some one-off things and Git commit messages. Rider/VSCode with Vim plugins get you the best of both worlds, a friendly and smart IDE with great text editing tools. (And I don't see the appeal of Emacs at all.)
- abudabi123 4y ago
  (And I don't see the appeal of Emacs at all.) Use the source and the Common Lisp image repl. Do the math, A.I. or quantum.
Y_Y 4y ago
I use Spacemacs for this reason. Building up from scratch might be most satisfying, but I don't have the time or knowledge for that. Vanilla Emacs is not so easy to find your way around IMHO, and I find the discoverability and batteries-includedness removes a lot of friction. I guess I'm trying to start with everything and pare down, rather than the other way.
mlatu 4y ago
but if only the manufacturer is allowed to service your tools, do you actually own them? i think tools should be able to conform to its users' hands, i dont see that in intellij that much...
agumonkey 4y ago
I'm not that unique either but i just suffer in other editors, serious pain. I totally agree emacs can be a sinkhole of config nihilism. But there's something else. It's an ergonomic flattening... I don't have a right expression for that. I'm not a bleeding fanatic, I can recognize flaws (I prefer vim moves for instance) but everytime I see someone using something else I cringe hard.
logicchains 4y ago
I use vanilla Emacs for everything. For me customisation isn't what matters, it's having an editor that will never lag, requires barely any ram, and can be used over SSH on pretty much any machine.
- quanticle 4y ago
  requires barely any ram It's incredible to me that our tools have bloated to the point where we look at Emacs and think, "Ah yes, what a svelte program!"
  - brabel 4y ago
    But Emacs is incredibly light for the current generation hardware... and it's been incredibly light for probably 15 years or more. On my "small" laptop, I only use Emacs... Trying to run IntelliJ or VSCode makes the laptop burning hot and forces the fan to keep running. With Emacs, no matter what I do, it's always quiet and cool.
    - loup-vaillant 4y ago
      One gripe I have with Emacs is that it doesn't boot instantly enough. Annoys me every time I edit a Git commit message. Though it's not horrible enough that I found the courage to set up an Emacs server, as easy as it is… Anyway, it would be nice if it could just boot instantly by default.
      - pama 4y ago
        Simply set EDITOR to emacsclient -a “”. See https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/emacsclient-Options.html https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/em...
      - __david__ 4y ago
        Setting up emacs server is as easy as: alias emacs='emacsclient -c -nw -a ""' Seriously, that's it!
Symbiote 4y ago
I use both, and also Kate (the KDE text editor). I use IntelliJ for writing Java code. Emacs can do a lot, [1] is a good 5 minute introduction, but I think I prefer a GUI-first mouse-first UI. I use Emacs for general text editing, so for most non-Java code. I occasionally edit individual Java classes with Emacs if I have something repetitive to do, and I know an Emacs macro (F3, do things, F4 to save, F4 to run) can do it. I use Kate when I want its nice tabbed views with a terminal at the bottom. Often this is things like moving content between 20 different documentation files. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yah69AfYP34 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yah69AfYP34
richardjdare 4y ago
For me, the appeal is not so much that Emacs is customizable, but that it's basically a live coding environment for working with text, seamlessly integrated with all the usual functionality of a text editor. I often write short programs interactively to manipulate the text I am working on, and have a whole bunch of Elisp code for common things that come up at work. For example, transforming a pasted ad-hoc spreadsheet column into sql insert statements (because nobody wants to pay to add that functionality to the software, and they email me instead). I used to have a bunch of code for generating Java boilerplate, and even entire classes but the situation has improved in recent years... Sure I could write scripts or conventional programs to do these jobs, I just prefer the interactivity and fluidity of Lisp environments. Also, being an Emacs user means I can write Lisp at work and get away with it. Having said all that, I tend to primarily use a dedicated IDE, with a general purpose text editor in the background. I will use Emacs alone when I am writing plain text, Common Lisp, or simple stuff that doesn't require a load of configuration or a complex toolchain. I want the IDE to take care of that for me.
cle 4y ago
Most real Emacs users I know don't spend much time configuring it. Including me. I continue to use Emacs not because it has the best UX--it doesn't. I use it because it's a stable foundation that I'm confident will be around as other IDE/editor fads come and go (Eclipse, Atom, Sublime, IntelliJ, VS Code, etc.). Sure occasionally I tweak my config to keep up with ecosystem developments, but that's much less dramatic than changing editors every few years. There's no particular reason I use Emacs over vim other than my own momentum, I think they both have this property. I think IntelliJ comes in second place here because the incentives of JetBrains are pretty well-aligned with developers' best interests (I definitely can't say the same for VS Code...). I'm not that old of an engineer, but the consistency of using the same tool for 8 years continues to compound. Interacting with Emacs has become second nature, I've built up a small collection of utility Elisp functions for getting stuff done quickly, etc. It definitely compounds. This is a big deal for me. I can't find a stronger, longer-lasting foundation to build a compounding developer toolset on than Emacs.
strken 4y ago
I started using Emacs because it could actually run on my cheap netbook, and continued because I'm addicted to Magit and Tramp plus I can't retrain my window management muscle memory. Tinkering with it came naturally over the years in tiny increments, the same way VSCode users change a setting or install a plugin. The emacs.d folder is a git repo that follows me from system to system. Customising it isn't a selling point, it's more just the natural outcome of spending a lot of time near the editor. Choosing Emacs for its low memory and CPU footprint is probably very ironic to anyone from the era of Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping jokes.
- seanw444 4y ago
  It still does use a lot of memory, but thankfully most systems have that to spare, and CPU usage is much more optimal now thanks to native compilation.
crabbone 4y ago
Intellij out of the box offers such a crappy text editor, I feel like programming with one hand behind my back... well, actually even worse, because I'm forced into using mouse and a crappy text editor at the same time when touching this stuff... This has nothing to do with extending the editor. People making Intellij editors simply don't know how to make editors, they don't have a good understanding how a professional would want to edit text. Their whole approach is based on satisfying inexperienced users (because that's the only thing they know). As for helping each other: yes, my wife is using VSCode (she's also in IT, but more of a scientific research that uses IT wing). When she has problems, I SSH into her laptop and use Emacs. And, for users who have problems with their editor, I can only say: git gud. If you are so pathetically bad you cannot solve problems with the only tool you are supposed to know how to use well, then take a class on how to use it, spend a few weekends reading documentation. It's your responsibility to know this stuff, if you don't, you are a liability for your team.
- throwawaysalome 4y ago
  It's your responsibility to know this stuff, if you don't, you are a liability for your team. The fuq? I feel sorry for your spouse.
  - crabbone 4y ago
    She's not on my team and doesn't need to be a professional text editor. She can be very bad at editing text, and still be productive at what she needs to do. And so are most people, even in IT. I also had to work with a mostly Java shop (a branch within HP) where I was on the ops team. A significant portion of my day was spent walking between cubicles and "fixing" Maven builds. I wasn't really fixing the builds though. Every time it was because another Java dummy couldn't figure out how to do something trivial in Intellij or Eclipse and were blaming the ops for that. No matter how much I despise Intellij products, the average Java programmer at the time seem to be incapable to internalize even the bare minimum these editors require to function. I call this "the race to the bottom", a situation where technology encourages its users to be dumber, where, in turn, the dumber users make technology worse by requesting dumb features. And this is how Intellij is. It tries to cushion the fall, to put a fence around every useful but potentially "dangerous" operation by limiting what users can do to a fixed number of choices, where free-form input would've been appropriate, by creating layers of renaming of basic stuff the users need to work with in a failed attempt to "make it easier to understand", by hiding things that it perceives as being "out of scope", giving no easy way to reveal the hidden features. So, yeah, these programmers were a liability to the company. So much so they needed to payroll a dedicated person to do their work for them. And, of course, a dedicated person could only service single Java dummy at a time, while the rest were taking a break downstairs playing table tennis or socializing in cafeteria. Good times!
Narishma 4y ago
Just because you can doesn't mean you have to customize your editor. I've been using vanilla vi and emacs for years just fine.

adastra22 4y ago

I use Visual Studio Code now for pretty much this exact reason. The only configuration I need to do is to install the right language server extensions for the code I develop, but even this is mostly handled by the "It looks like you're writing Rust code. Do you want to install the extension to handle this file type?" dialog that pops up on first use. Everything is auto-updated, settings synchronized across devices, and default settings are mostly ideal. Reaping the benefit of everyone else's hard work at improving vscode is awesome. It just gets better over time without me having to do anything except occasionally read about new features in the release notes. Spending hours twiddling in emacs lisp to get things configured just right is just wasting my limited time.

thom 4y ago
You also get the benefit of everyone else’s hard work with Emacs. One of the differences is that it’s such an established ecosystem, that instead of individual extensions just getting better, with Emacs they’ve yielded shared abstractions that make _new_ extensions trivial and much more consistent than with VSCode (which is nevertheless still an excellent editor these days). I also don’t understand why people think spending time on the tools they use to do work is wasted. You either believe software creates value or you don’t. If your time is so limited, eliminating toil seems essential.
- Scuds 4y ago
  I think my time is better spent improving my build and deployment environments instead of something like customizing my text editor. More of my work is in tying command line utilities together Maybe I don’t know what hardcore emacs use is like.
  - thom 4y ago
    Yeah, I suspect the fundamental disconnect is that some people think of the terminal as the dev environment and something else is used purely as a text editor. Emacs edits text, but it’s an environment beyond that (one which happens to also contain a terminal).
- adastra22 4y ago
  I think you're missing the point. With vscode I literally don't have to do anything. It just magically gets better every time I start it up. Most people I know who use vim or emacs don't have it setup to auto-update extensions, and even if they did they wouldn't automatically fetch and configure those new extensions you mention. What I'm objecting to is the very idea of a highly customizable editor.
  - thom 4y ago
    VSCode is a highly customisable editor.
  - ParetoOptimal 4y ago
    > It just magically gets better every time I start it up. Some of my coworkers violently agree, but at least 20-30% get annoyed when autoupdate removes/ changes some feature (pane splitting recently I think) and they have to adapt their workflow.
- oblio 4y ago
  > If your time is so limited, eliminating toil seems essential. The counter point to this is usually: What exactly is your toil as a professional software developer (or associated profession) that is eliminated with a "better"[1] editor in 2023? Refactoring is more powerful with an IDE, for mainstream languages. For non-mainstream languages 95% of what Emacs enables can be done using multi-cursors and a macro language built in to the editor, and we're in 2023. Those kinds of editors are a dime a dozen :-) Editing data dumps or whatever is probably better with an advanced editor (I generally use Vim for that). But it's such a rare occurrence. Writing code is super easy in an IDE. Most of my toil is unnecessary meetings, unnecessary reporting, unnecessary social stuff. Emacs can't help with any of that. * * * [1] To note, "better" is strictly a claim. I'm quite sure there's no peer reviewed study that can prove conclusively that Emacs/Vim users are more productive than non-Emacs/Vim users, just due to their usage of Emacs/Vim.
  - quanticle 4y ago
    For non-mainstream languages 95% of what Emacs enables can be done using multi-cursors and a macro language built in to the editor, and we're in 2023. Those kinds of editors are a dime a dozen :-) Are they? Multi-cursors, sure, but what other editors have a macro language that combines the power and accessbility of emacs lisp? The only other one that comes close is vim, and, as many critiques as I have of emacs lisp, I can firmly state: it's a lot nicer to use than vimscript. But other than emacs and vim, which other editors allow me to interactively automate portions of my editing workflow? All the other IDEs and editors that you've cited, like IntelliJ or VSCode require you to either find or write a package. That's a much bigger step than just interactively evaluating some lisp to do a one-off thing.
    - dmitriid 4y ago
      > but what other editors have a macro language that combines the power and accessbility of emacs lisp? Is it accessible? Why would I want to spend time learning the idiosyncrasies of a 40-year-old editor to write something that I might use once in a blue moon? I have other, more interesting things in life.
    - 4y ago
raverbashing 4y ago
Yeah, with more experience I have realized that most customization is not better A certain level yes, but doesn't need to be all, end all VSCode solves most of my issues. "oh but in Emacs you can do..." a thing that I either don't need, or I don't care about or I can do using a web service or some other offline program or maybe even a VSCode plugin or a short vim script.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  > "oh but in Emacs you can do..." a thing that I either don't need, or I don't care about or or it's already available in pretty much any IDE out of the box. Most people advocating for emacs or vim usually have no idea what a modern IDE is, and pretend modern IDEs have not surpassed win3.1 notepad in terms of functionality.
  - raverbashing 4y ago
    Yes, that's a good reminder. And I agree, a lot of those heavy advocates live in a bubble

Kwpolska 4y ago

IntelliJ is very configurable, and there are some settings and plugins I couldn't live without (such as the Vim plugin). I've also been through a Vim-as-main-editor phase, but I'm now using Rider (a JetBrains IDE) as my main editor, VSCode as my secondary editor (for things where opening Rider would be impractical), and NeoVim for some one-off things and Git commit messages. Rider/VSCode with Vim plugins get you the best of both worlds, a friendly and smart IDE with great text editing tools. (And I don't see the appeal of Emacs at all.)

abudabi123 4y ago
(And I don't see the appeal of Emacs at all.) Use the source and the Common Lisp image repl. Do the math, A.I. or quantum.

Y_Y 4y ago

I use Spacemacs for this reason. Building up from scratch might be most satisfying, but I don't have the time or knowledge for that. Vanilla Emacs is not so easy to find your way around IMHO, and I find the discoverability and batteries-includedness removes a lot of friction. I guess I'm trying to start with everything and pare down, rather than the other way.

mlatu 4y ago

but if only the manufacturer is allowed to service your tools, do you actually own them? i think tools should be able to conform to its users' hands, i dont see that in intellij that much...

agumonkey 4y ago

I'm not that unique either but i just suffer in other editors, serious pain. I totally agree emacs can be a sinkhole of config nihilism. But there's something else. It's an ergonomic flattening... I don't have a right expression for that. I'm not a bleeding fanatic, I can recognize flaws (I prefer vim moves for instance) but everytime I see someone using something else I cringe hard.

logicchains 4y ago

I use vanilla Emacs for everything. For me customisation isn't what matters, it's having an editor that will never lag, requires barely any ram, and can be used over SSH on pretty much any machine.

quanticle 4y ago
requires barely any ram It's incredible to me that our tools have bloated to the point where we look at Emacs and think, "Ah yes, what a svelte program!"
- brabel 4y ago
  But Emacs is incredibly light for the current generation hardware... and it's been incredibly light for probably 15 years or more. On my "small" laptop, I only use Emacs... Trying to run IntelliJ or VSCode makes the laptop burning hot and forces the fan to keep running. With Emacs, no matter what I do, it's always quiet and cool.
  - loup-vaillant 4y ago
    One gripe I have with Emacs is that it doesn't boot instantly enough. Annoys me every time I edit a Git commit message. Though it's not horrible enough that I found the courage to set up an Emacs server, as easy as it is… Anyway, it would be nice if it could just boot instantly by default.
    - pama 4y ago
      Simply set EDITOR to emacsclient -a “”. See https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/emacsclient-Options.html https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/em...
    - __david__ 4y ago
      Setting up emacs server is as easy as: alias emacs='emacsclient -c -nw -a ""' Seriously, that's it!

Symbiote 4y ago

I use both, and also Kate (the KDE text editor). I use IntelliJ for writing Java code. Emacs can do a lot, [1] is a good 5 minute introduction, but I think I prefer a GUI-first mouse-first UI. I use Emacs for general text editing, so for most non-Java code. I occasionally edit individual Java classes with Emacs if I have something repetitive to do, and I know an Emacs macro (F3, do things, F4 to save, F4 to run) can do it. I use Kate when I want its nice tabbed views with a terminal at the bottom. Often this is things like moving content between 20 different documentation files. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yah69AfYP34 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yah69AfYP34

richardjdare 4y ago

For me, the appeal is not so much that Emacs is customizable, but that it's basically a live coding environment for working with text, seamlessly integrated with all the usual functionality of a text editor. I often write short programs interactively to manipulate the text I am working on, and have a whole bunch of Elisp code for common things that come up at work. For example, transforming a pasted ad-hoc spreadsheet column into sql insert statements (because nobody wants to pay to add that functionality to the software, and they email me instead). I used to have a bunch of code for generating Java boilerplate, and even entire classes but the situation has improved in recent years... Sure I could write scripts or conventional programs to do these jobs, I just prefer the interactivity and fluidity of Lisp environments. Also, being an Emacs user means I can write Lisp at work and get away with it. Having said all that, I tend to primarily use a dedicated IDE, with a general purpose text editor in the background. I will use Emacs alone when I am writing plain text, Common Lisp, or simple stuff that doesn't require a load of configuration or a complex toolchain. I want the IDE to take care of that for me.

cle 4y ago

Most real Emacs users I know don't spend much time configuring it. Including me. I continue to use Emacs not because it has the best UX--it doesn't. I use it because it's a stable foundation that I'm confident will be around as other IDE/editor fads come and go (Eclipse, Atom, Sublime, IntelliJ, VS Code, etc.). Sure occasionally I tweak my config to keep up with ecosystem developments, but that's much less dramatic than changing editors every few years. There's no particular reason I use Emacs over vim other than my own momentum, I think they both have this property. I think IntelliJ comes in second place here because the incentives of JetBrains are pretty well-aligned with developers' best interests (I definitely can't say the same for VS Code...). I'm not that old of an engineer, but the consistency of using the same tool for 8 years continues to compound. Interacting with Emacs has become second nature, I've built up a small collection of utility Elisp functions for getting stuff done quickly, etc. It definitely compounds. This is a big deal for me. I can't find a stronger, longer-lasting foundation to build a compounding developer toolset on than Emacs.

strken 4y ago

I started using Emacs because it could actually run on my cheap netbook, and continued because I'm addicted to Magit and Tramp plus I can't retrain my window management muscle memory. Tinkering with it came naturally over the years in tiny increments, the same way VSCode users change a setting or install a plugin. The emacs.d folder is a git repo that follows me from system to system. Customising it isn't a selling point, it's more just the natural outcome of spending a lot of time near the editor. Choosing Emacs for its low memory and CPU footprint is probably very ironic to anyone from the era of Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping jokes.

seanw444 4y ago
It still does use a lot of memory, but thankfully most systems have that to spare, and CPU usage is much more optimal now thanks to native compilation.

crabbone 4y ago

Intellij out of the box offers such a crappy text editor, I feel like programming with one hand behind my back... well, actually even worse, because I'm forced into using mouse and a crappy text editor at the same time when touching this stuff... This has nothing to do with extending the editor. People making Intellij editors simply don't know how to make editors, they don't have a good understanding how a professional would want to edit text. Their whole approach is based on satisfying inexperienced users (because that's the only thing they know). As for helping each other: yes, my wife is using VSCode (she's also in IT, but more of a scientific research that uses IT wing). When she has problems, I SSH into her laptop and use Emacs. And, for users who have problems with their editor, I can only say: git gud. If you are so pathetically bad you cannot solve problems with the only tool you are supposed to know how to use well, then take a class on how to use it, spend a few weekends reading documentation. It's your responsibility to know this stuff, if you don't, you are a liability for your team.

throwawaysalome 4y ago
It's your responsibility to know this stuff, if you don't, you are a liability for your team. The fuq? I feel sorry for your spouse.
- crabbone 4y ago
  She's not on my team and doesn't need to be a professional text editor. She can be very bad at editing text, and still be productive at what she needs to do. And so are most people, even in IT. I also had to work with a mostly Java shop (a branch within HP) where I was on the ops team. A significant portion of my day was spent walking between cubicles and "fixing" Maven builds. I wasn't really fixing the builds though. Every time it was because another Java dummy couldn't figure out how to do something trivial in Intellij or Eclipse and were blaming the ops for that. No matter how much I despise Intellij products, the average Java programmer at the time seem to be incapable to internalize even the bare minimum these editors require to function. I call this "the race to the bottom", a situation where technology encourages its users to be dumber, where, in turn, the dumber users make technology worse by requesting dumb features. And this is how Intellij is. It tries to cushion the fall, to put a fence around every useful but potentially "dangerous" operation by limiting what users can do to a fixed number of choices, where free-form input would've been appropriate, by creating layers of renaming of basic stuff the users need to work with in a failed attempt to "make it easier to understand", by hiding things that it perceives as being "out of scope", giving no easy way to reveal the hidden features. So, yeah, these programmers were a liability to the company. So much so they needed to payroll a dedicated person to do their work for them. And, of course, a dedicated person could only service single Java dummy at a time, while the rest were taking a break downstairs playing table tennis or socializing in cafeteria. Good times!

Narishma 4y ago

Just because you can doesn't mean you have to customize your editor. I've been using vanilla vi and emacs for years just fine.