7 ms·

Even "lite" editors like VSCode, NP++, Sublime Text, etc have become distracting for me. Every time I fire one of these things up, my mental state is eliminated

Even "lite" editors like VSCode, NP++, Sublime Text, etc have become distracting for me. Every time I fire one of these things up, my mental state is eliminated by being forced to dismiss some "hey we got a new version for you :D:D:D" bullshit modal. To whomever is responsible for adding these to apps: please stop. No one is enjoying your shenanigans. It is a text editor. Empathize with the user: People with far less time than you are trying to paste some hot mess right off their clipboard to work with. They've probably got a super nasty idea in their head they can barely hold on to. Visual studio proper is a 100% circus for me now. I can power through it, but I lose tabs in about 15 seconds after opening them. Many times I feel convinced these tools have been engineered with intent to be shittier over time and slow down neurodivergent users. The ADHD/etc crowd is definitely the #1 thing a software company needs to worry about in terms of moat maintenance...

kzrdude 3y ago
I'm sorry to shame here, but one of my favourite environments jupyterlab has started with the same thing. Update notification popup. And this is python, where I specificed exact version in my requirements file.
kazinator 3y ago
> I lose tabs in about 15 seconds after opening them. But even simple editors open multiple files somehow, in tabs or otherwise.
phito 3y ago
I love intellij/rider's Distraction Free mode, combined with shortcuts and no mouse
jstarfish 3y ago
The corollary is enabling auto-update to get rid of the box, only to find UI features added or rearranged every time you try to start working.
ziml77 3y ago
Sublime Text is surprisingly bad about that. Or at least the package manager is. I'm okay with occasionally being prompted to update the editor, but it drives me crazy when I launch Sublime Text, go to start working in a text buffer, and then suddenly have the tab swap out from under me to show me changelogs for everything it just updated. All doing that does is piss me off and make me certainly not read the changelog because I'm instantly closing it to get back to what I was doing!
technojamin 3y ago
VS Code isn't actually that bad with its extension and application updates. When an extension has been updated, it'll try to load the new version in-memory (if the extension supports it), otherwise it'll add a badge to the Extensions panel icon in the sidebar, leaving a subtle reminder that you need to restart in order to get the new extension update. For updates to VS Code proper, it adds a badge to the settings icon. No popups or notifications. You can also disable auto-updating for extensions and the application if you find the badges distracting. Now, if certain extensions try to get your attention with notifications or automatically opening release notes, that can absolutely be a problem. Extensions vary wildly in quality, since the barrier for publishing one is effectively nothing. These leaves the job of curating good, non-spammy extensions up to the developer.
- a_wild_dandan 3y ago
  VS Code: * Opens a welcome tab anytime you open a project * Pops up unsolicited toast notifications for new file extensions, "we have extensions which can help you with that file type!" * Opens "what's new" type tabs anytime it updates * Starts the "jumping up and down" MacOS dock animation for sometimes trivial problems I could list more examples, but suffice it to say, this is...not ideal. I love VS Code, so for fresh/unsync'ed installs I'm willing to meticulously trawl through its settings, twiddling various knobs to disable these multifarious annoyances. But hey, it's worth it (to me).
  - leshenka 3y ago
    I learned to smash escape button as soon as I see something spawning in the bottom-right corner of the screen I haven't missed anything critical yet. > Opens "what's new" type tabs anytime it updates this happens once a month maybe and sometimes it's actually something useful. Realistically though, it's just another ⌘W. By the way, look at the `update.showReleaseNotes` setting > Opens a welcome tab anytime you open a project I don't have this behavior on my computer, it's just empty file or whatever was opened last time
nwallin 3y ago
> Visual studio proper is a 100% circus for me now. I can power through it, but I lose tabs in about 15 seconds after opening them. I used to be the same way but then I discovered Visual Studio's vertical tab option. Tabs are displayed vertically on the left side of the editor pane. The filenames are all aligned so it's actually possible to visually scan them. You can group them by project and color code them by file type. Tabs are unusable otherwise. For me at least.
- kazinator 3y ago
  There are browser extensions to do that with browser tabs. I use Sideberry.
- jimktrains2 3y ago
  I use the tab tree extension in Firefox for the same reason. Vertical tabs have only minor usefulness anymore for me.
- bob1029 3y ago
  Thank you. I just tried this out and it immediately felt like a dagger being removed from my back. I can instantly see my new pattern is solution explorer on the right, vertical tabs on the left. I can probably go back to one 1440p monitor again. I was abusing multiple monitors just to keep tabs pinned in physical space...
- speakspokespok 3y ago
  My Google Fu is pretty good and I cannot find how to do this. I love vertical tabs in Firefox and never considered doing this in VSCode. How!? edit: on linux at least the process linked below doesn't work... https://domysee.com/blogposts/vscode-vertical-tabs https://domysee.com/blogposts/vscode-vertical-tabs
  - nwallin 3y ago
    I was talking about Visual Studio proper, not VSCode.
  - huntoa 3y ago
kayodelycaon 3y ago
For Sublime Text, you should be able to set this in your settings file: "update_check": false In VSCode change the Update Mode setting to manual.
- bob1029 3y ago
  > in your settings file Further into the distracted rabbit hole we go...
btilly 3y ago
I've always hated IDEs. And I hate most UIs - they are a nightmare for me. I never connected it to ADHD. But I have to say that vim is a godsend to me when I try to do anything serious. And if you are able to reach me whenever you want by Slack, I'm not being productive.
- spanktheuser 3y ago
  I'm a designer & product manager whose taste runs extremely strongly to minimalism, simplicity, and clarity in user interfaces. A late-in-life diagnosis of ADHD revealed why and linked it strongly (in my mind) to my ability to enter a hyper-focus mode when visual distractions are reduced.
myself248 3y ago
There is no earthly reason why a text editor should have network access in the first place. Can you just block that?
- kayodelycaon 3y ago
  For Sublime and VS Code, you can turn off automatic updates.
- solardev 3y ago
  Built-in git, Github PRs & comments, documentation lookups, database browsers, copilot, opening preview browsers, networked Docker, remote coding, CI/CD pipelines... this is talking about IDEs after all, not just a basic text editor
numpad0 3y ago
My baseless posthoc justification: 1. ADHD superengineers could be representing more than 0.0% but below 0% of all users. 2. A lot of ADHD-specific optimizations, e.g. fast transitions without frustrating gooey animations, distraction-free UI without tips and emojis, could be detrimental to telemetry items that: a) do represent non-ADHD needs, and also; b) engineer performances are evaluated upon, even for Free Software these days.
- jahewson 3y ago
  All things being equal the UI that doesn’t require tips is the better UI.
godelski 3y ago
This is why I, and I suspect many others, like terminal based text editors like vim (or emacs, whatever. Our war is against GUI before each other). I find IDEs have too much going on and any little blip on the side shifts my focus. Whereas with vim/tmux/zsh I can highly and easily customize my environment to... __me__. About everything an IDE offers I also get[0], but with more ease in having it placed where I want and __when__ I want. I can have a project drawer visible or push it away with NerdTree or use netrw (native) or vimfiler as an explorer. I have tags, linters, smart autocomplete (native), color bracket matching, git, buffers, panes, marks, and all that. All that with trees and interfaces to view in code or quickly turn things off if they are distracting (e.g. pull up my tag tree when reading code or referencing a signature but shove it away when not). But the best feature is that I can can make it most readable to me. Not only that, but also to the project. I am a true believer that coding environments __should__ be highly personalized. Standardization seems to be a death sentence, especially for ADHD/neurodivergent people like me. I definitely get the sentiment of intent to be shittier over time too. Systems like VSCode feel impenetrable to me despite numerous attempts and strong insistence to use them from many others. (I'm sure this can be true of vim/emacs to others but my argument is about customizing your environment to you, not the tool you use for that) [0] realistically there's only two things I want that I haven't found: 1) a (good) debugger, and 2) a note system. There are definitely debuggers for vim and useful ones but I've always felt debuggers could be more useful and this isn't just a vim issue. Which, a connection to the second thing, I'd love if I could make notes to specific lines of code in a popup or split and that the note has a mark on that line wherein I can go back and forth. This is immensely helpful when debugging where I'm usually sitting with a piece of paper and drawing[1] and writing notes and often in that I notice optimization or other opportunities that I should come back to later but are not prioritized in the "make it work first" mode (or else rabbit hole). (Minor 3rd thing: in line python execution. Like I want to test a single line or small block. `python -i` can help but just doing this easily would be nice) [1] Do people not like call graphs? It seems they're rather unpopular and the interfaces that draw them tend to be really bad. Maybe I just haven't found a good one? Mostly work with python fwiw.
- throwanem 3y ago
  > I'd love if I could make notes to specific lines of code in a popup or split and that the note has a mark on that line wherein I can go back and forth. Emacs does this with a feature called "bookmarks". I don't use vim particularly so can't vouch for anything, but https://github.com/MattesGroeger/vim-bookmarks https://github.com/MattesGroeger/vim-bookmarks looks like the same concepts I'm thinking of in a vim-flavored implementation - maybe worth a look.
javajosh 3y ago
I think it's time for you to roll up your sleeves and start modifying your editor, then. And if it's not modifiable enough, ditch it. I've been using IntelliJ for years (it's main thing is Java but it is also the best javascript/html editor, by far; the git UI is quirky but good once you get used to it). It's highly customizable such that you can banish anything you don't want to see. Features like "find anything" and "run anything" are great for less often used files and features, respectively. Their license is reasonable - it's annual, but if you stop paying you just stop at the last version you paid for. Also the free version is probably good enough for 90% of people. It's also the platform on which Android Studio is based - but I don't do Android so I can't say if that's good or not. Oh and something I do when I really really need to focus is use another editor! Usually vim unless I'm on a mac in which case I'll use Sublime Text. But more and more I've been using IntelliJ's own "View modes" to get the effect I want.
- solardev 3y ago
  As an IntelliJ user (and lover), it also gives you annoying update prompts basically every time I open it. There's always some plugin or another needing a reboot. It has a lot of pros and cons compared to VSCode, but upgrade politeness isn't one of them. The frequent reindexing will often take you out of the flow too. It's very easy to move faster than IntelliJ can keep up with, especially on a slower computer. And in terms of perceptual load, its interface is way more cluttered than VSCode, with multiple overlapping panels that each have several modes and tabs they can be in, and an unclear closing hierarchy that will often close some but not all of them (like shift-esc won't work reliably). Some workarounds: * Distraction-free mode reduces the noise: https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/guide/tips/distraction-free-mode/#:~:text=Use%20%5E%60%20(macOS)%2C,window%20and%20focus%20on%20coding https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/guide/tips/distraction-free-m.... * Jetbrains is also working on a whole IDE rewrite to a cleaner UI: https://www.jetbrains.com/fleet/ https://www.jetbrains.com/fleet/
  - javajosh 3y ago
    >multiple overlapping panels that each have several modes and tabs they can be in, and an unclear closing hierarchy that will often close some but not all of them (like shift-esc won't work reliably) Yes, this is the default. But it's pretty easy to change. Most of my windows are on hotkeys and mostly unpinned so they get out of the way. Some are pinned, so to close you hit the hot key again. For example, project view is ctrl 1 (or option 1 on mac) and I often close it - the highest source of not-useful visual clutter, imho. terminal is ctrl 2, which simulates some nice early linux utilties that would slide a terminal on and off the screen. The same set up for the run/debug tabs, database tabs, and so on. 90% of the time I'm just looking at the editor and a terminal. The way God intended.
thepostman0 3y ago
The one good thing about IDEs is their key bindings when they're like vim. Everything else sucks. I use vim with debuggers. Nothing seems to have changed for the worse over decades. It doesn't get in the way and seems to work the same everywhere.
grumpyprole 3y ago
Those aren't light editors! I use a bare bones emacs with all the UI turned off. Just a flashing cursor. It helps me focus on the content.
janalsncm 3y ago
Not a text editor but Postman is the worst for that. Every time I open it there’s another damn update, another prompt, another “hey check out this feature” popup. I don’t care. What I actually want is a gui version of curl. Just let me send my CRUD operation over HTTP. I want it to work and that is all.
lokimedes 3y ago
I still keep TextMate around for hitting flow on specific tasks for this reason.
jimmaswell 3y ago
Hm, I've dealt with ADHD for a long time but Visual Studio proper never bothered me, even before I got any medication. If anything I greatly appreciate how much it does for me (various autocomplete functions etc) so I can focus my mental load on the problem, and these days I feel out of my element trying to write any code in a plain text editor.
themoonisachees 3y ago
Visual studio is such consistently the slowest program to open on my machine it's not even funny. I once tried to build an open source project which was tooled around VS and in the time it took to open, I successfully read the VS config in notepad and did the actions by hand.

kzrdude 3y ago

I'm sorry to shame here, but one of my favourite environments jupyterlab has started with the same thing. Update notification popup. And this is python, where I specificed exact version in my requirements file.

kazinator 3y ago

> I lose tabs in about 15 seconds after opening them. But even simple editors open multiple files somehow, in tabs or otherwise.

phito 3y ago

I love intellij/rider's Distraction Free mode, combined with shortcuts and no mouse

jstarfish 3y ago

The corollary is enabling auto-update to get rid of the box, only to find UI features added or rearranged every time you try to start working.

ziml77 3y ago

Sublime Text is surprisingly bad about that. Or at least the package manager is. I'm okay with occasionally being prompted to update the editor, but it drives me crazy when I launch Sublime Text, go to start working in a text buffer, and then suddenly have the tab swap out from under me to show me changelogs for everything it just updated. All doing that does is piss me off and make me certainly not read the changelog because I'm instantly closing it to get back to what I was doing!

technojamin 3y ago

VS Code isn't actually that bad with its extension and application updates. When an extension has been updated, it'll try to load the new version in-memory (if the extension supports it), otherwise it'll add a badge to the Extensions panel icon in the sidebar, leaving a subtle reminder that you need to restart in order to get the new extension update. For updates to VS Code proper, it adds a badge to the settings icon. No popups or notifications. You can also disable auto-updating for extensions and the application if you find the badges distracting. Now, if certain extensions try to get your attention with notifications or automatically opening release notes, that can absolutely be a problem. Extensions vary wildly in quality, since the barrier for publishing one is effectively nothing. These leaves the job of curating good, non-spammy extensions up to the developer.

a_wild_dandan 3y ago
VS Code: * Opens a welcome tab anytime you open a project * Pops up unsolicited toast notifications for new file extensions, "we have extensions which can help you with that file type!" * Opens "what's new" type tabs anytime it updates * Starts the "jumping up and down" MacOS dock animation for sometimes trivial problems I could list more examples, but suffice it to say, this is...not ideal. I love VS Code, so for fresh/unsync'ed installs I'm willing to meticulously trawl through its settings, twiddling various knobs to disable these multifarious annoyances. But hey, it's worth it (to me).
- leshenka 3y ago
  I learned to smash escape button as soon as I see something spawning in the bottom-right corner of the screen I haven't missed anything critical yet. > Opens "what's new" type tabs anytime it updates this happens once a month maybe and sometimes it's actually something useful. Realistically though, it's just another ⌘W. By the way, look at the `update.showReleaseNotes` setting > Opens a welcome tab anytime you open a project I don't have this behavior on my computer, it's just empty file or whatever was opened last time

nwallin 3y ago

> Visual studio proper is a 100% circus for me now. I can power through it, but I lose tabs in about 15 seconds after opening them. I used to be the same way but then I discovered Visual Studio's vertical tab option. Tabs are displayed vertically on the left side of the editor pane. The filenames are all aligned so it's actually possible to visually scan them. You can group them by project and color code them by file type. Tabs are unusable otherwise. For me at least.

kazinator 3y ago
There are browser extensions to do that with browser tabs. I use Sideberry.
jimktrains2 3y ago
I use the tab tree extension in Firefox for the same reason. Vertical tabs have only minor usefulness anymore for me.
bob1029 3y ago
Thank you. I just tried this out and it immediately felt like a dagger being removed from my back. I can instantly see my new pattern is solution explorer on the right, vertical tabs on the left. I can probably go back to one 1440p monitor again. I was abusing multiple monitors just to keep tabs pinned in physical space...
speakspokespok 3y ago
My Google Fu is pretty good and I cannot find how to do this. I love vertical tabs in Firefox and never considered doing this in VSCode. How!? edit: on linux at least the process linked below doesn't work... https://domysee.com/blogposts/vscode-vertical-tabs https://domysee.com/blogposts/vscode-vertical-tabs
- nwallin 3y ago
  I was talking about Visual Studio proper, not VSCode.
- huntoa 3y ago

kayodelycaon 3y ago

For Sublime Text, you should be able to set this in your settings file: "update_check": false In VSCode change the Update Mode setting to manual.

bob1029 3y ago
> in your settings file Further into the distracted rabbit hole we go...

btilly 3y ago

I've always hated IDEs. And I hate most UIs - they are a nightmare for me. I never connected it to ADHD. But I have to say that vim is a godsend to me when I try to do anything serious. And if you are able to reach me whenever you want by Slack, I'm not being productive.

spanktheuser 3y ago
I'm a designer & product manager whose taste runs extremely strongly to minimalism, simplicity, and clarity in user interfaces. A late-in-life diagnosis of ADHD revealed why and linked it strongly (in my mind) to my ability to enter a hyper-focus mode when visual distractions are reduced.

myself248 3y ago

There is no earthly reason why a text editor should have network access in the first place. Can you just block that?

kayodelycaon 3y ago
For Sublime and VS Code, you can turn off automatic updates.
solardev 3y ago
Built-in git, Github PRs & comments, documentation lookups, database browsers, copilot, opening preview browsers, networked Docker, remote coding, CI/CD pipelines... this is talking about IDEs after all, not just a basic text editor

numpad0 3y ago

My baseless posthoc justification: 1. ADHD superengineers could be representing more than 0.0% but below 0% of all users. 2. A lot of ADHD-specific optimizations, e.g. fast transitions without frustrating gooey animations, distraction-free UI without tips and emojis, could be detrimental to telemetry items that: a) do represent non-ADHD needs, and also; b) engineer performances are evaluated upon, even for Free Software these days.

jahewson 3y ago
All things being equal the UI that doesn’t require tips is the better UI.

godelski 3y ago

This is why I, and I suspect many others, like terminal based text editors like vim (or emacs, whatever. Our war is against GUI before each other). I find IDEs have too much going on and any little blip on the side shifts my focus. Whereas with vim/tmux/zsh I can highly and easily customize my environment to... __me__. About everything an IDE offers I also get[0], but with more ease in having it placed where I want and __when__ I want. I can have a project drawer visible or push it away with NerdTree or use netrw (native) or vimfiler as an explorer. I have tags, linters, smart autocomplete (native), color bracket matching, git, buffers, panes, marks, and all that. All that with trees and interfaces to view in code or quickly turn things off if they are distracting (e.g. pull up my tag tree when reading code or referencing a signature but shove it away when not). But the best feature is that I can can make it most readable to me. Not only that, but also to the project. I am a true believer that coding environments __should__ be highly personalized. Standardization seems to be a death sentence, especially for ADHD/neurodivergent people like me. I definitely get the sentiment of intent to be shittier over time too. Systems like VSCode feel impenetrable to me despite numerous attempts and strong insistence to use them from many others. (I'm sure this can be true of vim/emacs to others but my argument is about customizing your environment to you, not the tool you use for that) [0] realistically there's only two things I want that I haven't found: 1) a (good) debugger, and 2) a note system. There are definitely debuggers for vim and useful ones but I've always felt debuggers could be more useful and this isn't just a vim issue. Which, a connection to the second thing, I'd love if I could make notes to specific lines of code in a popup or split and that the note has a mark on that line wherein I can go back and forth. This is immensely helpful when debugging where I'm usually sitting with a piece of paper and drawing[1] and writing notes and often in that I notice optimization or other opportunities that I should come back to later but are not prioritized in the "make it work first" mode (or else rabbit hole). (Minor 3rd thing: in line python execution. Like I want to test a single line or small block. `python -i` can help but just doing this easily would be nice) [1] Do people not like call graphs? It seems they're rather unpopular and the interfaces that draw them tend to be really bad. Maybe I just haven't found a good one? Mostly work with python fwiw.

throwanem 3y ago
> I'd love if I could make notes to specific lines of code in a popup or split and that the note has a mark on that line wherein I can go back and forth. Emacs does this with a feature called "bookmarks". I don't use vim particularly so can't vouch for anything, but https://github.com/MattesGroeger/vim-bookmarks https://github.com/MattesGroeger/vim-bookmarks looks like the same concepts I'm thinking of in a vim-flavored implementation - maybe worth a look.

javajosh 3y ago

I think it's time for you to roll up your sleeves and start modifying your editor, then. And if it's not modifiable enough, ditch it. I've been using IntelliJ for years (it's main thing is Java but it is also the best javascript/html editor, by far; the git UI is quirky but good once you get used to it). It's highly customizable such that you can banish anything you don't want to see. Features like "find anything" and "run anything" are great for less often used files and features, respectively. Their license is reasonable - it's annual, but if you stop paying you just stop at the last version you paid for. Also the free version is probably good enough for 90% of people. It's also the platform on which Android Studio is based - but I don't do Android so I can't say if that's good or not. Oh and something I do when I really really need to focus is use another editor! Usually vim unless I'm on a mac in which case I'll use Sublime Text. But more and more I've been using IntelliJ's own "View modes" to get the effect I want.

solardev 3y ago
As an IntelliJ user (and lover), it also gives you annoying update prompts basically every time I open it. There's always some plugin or another needing a reboot. It has a lot of pros and cons compared to VSCode, but upgrade politeness isn't one of them. The frequent reindexing will often take you out of the flow too. It's very easy to move faster than IntelliJ can keep up with, especially on a slower computer. And in terms of perceptual load, its interface is way more cluttered than VSCode, with multiple overlapping panels that each have several modes and tabs they can be in, and an unclear closing hierarchy that will often close some but not all of them (like shift-esc won't work reliably). Some workarounds: * Distraction-free mode reduces the noise: https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/guide/tips/distraction-free-mode/#:~:text=Use%20%5E%60%20(macOS)%2C,window%20and%20focus%20on%20coding https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/guide/tips/distraction-free-m.... * Jetbrains is also working on a whole IDE rewrite to a cleaner UI: https://www.jetbrains.com/fleet/ https://www.jetbrains.com/fleet/
- javajosh 3y ago
  >multiple overlapping panels that each have several modes and tabs they can be in, and an unclear closing hierarchy that will often close some but not all of them (like shift-esc won't work reliably) Yes, this is the default. But it's pretty easy to change. Most of my windows are on hotkeys and mostly unpinned so they get out of the way. Some are pinned, so to close you hit the hot key again. For example, project view is ctrl 1 (or option 1 on mac) and I often close it - the highest source of not-useful visual clutter, imho. terminal is ctrl 2, which simulates some nice early linux utilties that would slide a terminal on and off the screen. The same set up for the run/debug tabs, database tabs, and so on. 90% of the time I'm just looking at the editor and a terminal. The way God intended.

thepostman0 3y ago

The one good thing about IDEs is their key bindings when they're like vim. Everything else sucks. I use vim with debuggers. Nothing seems to have changed for the worse over decades. It doesn't get in the way and seems to work the same everywhere.

grumpyprole 3y ago

Those aren't light editors! I use a bare bones emacs with all the UI turned off. Just a flashing cursor. It helps me focus on the content.

janalsncm 3y ago

Not a text editor but Postman is the worst for that. Every time I open it there’s another damn update, another prompt, another “hey check out this feature” popup. I don’t care. What I actually want is a gui version of curl. Just let me send my CRUD operation over HTTP. I want it to work and that is all.

lokimedes 3y ago

I still keep TextMate around for hitting flow on specific tasks for this reason.

jimmaswell 3y ago

Hm, I've dealt with ADHD for a long time but Visual Studio proper never bothered me, even before I got any medication. If anything I greatly appreciate how much it does for me (various autocomplete functions etc) so I can focus my mental load on the problem, and these days I feel out of my element trying to write any code in a plain text editor.

themoonisachees 3y ago

Visual studio is such consistently the slowest program to open on my machine it's not even funny. I once tried to build an open source project which was tooled around VS and in the time it took to open, I successfully read the VS config in notepad and did the actions by hand.