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Vim is what we used in school in my first programming class. While I understand the appeal of IDEs, I hate autocomplete as I feel like it gets in the way more

by rifung 12y ago

Vim is what we used in school in my first programming class. While I understand the appeal of IDEs, I hate autocomplete as I feel like it gets in the way more than it helps. I type faster than most people I know though so that is probably why I don't really appreciate the autocomplete. I really really hate having to constantly use the mouse. Finally, I am fairly new to working but I really feel like using vim and the command line usually makes it so that you have a better understanding of what's happening. I don't think this is a problem inherent to IDEs but more that because they do so much for you, it's much easier to just get things done without actually having to understand what it's doing. I've had many teammates who could tell me how they got something working in terms of the steps they took in their IDE but could not tell me what those steps actually translated to doing (e.g. I went to this menu and did this as opposed to I had to add a dependency to so and so)

alkonaut 12y ago
But is autocomplete the only feature distinguishing the IDEs from the editors? I'd say interactive debugger/watches etc are most important, followed by graphical tools in the case of frontend mobile/desktop development. Autocomplete isn't about speed, it's about context sensitive lookup in documentation. You should never have to alt-tab to a browser to check a function signature, that costs too much.
- rifung 12y ago
  Ah interesting. Yes it's kind of sad but to be honest I still debug all my programs via print statements (and reasoning). I've been meaning to learn how to use gdb/jdb/whatever for a while. And I completely agree that having autocomplete for lookup is really awesome. I usually do just use the browser to check it. It's silly, and I'm not going to say that I'm faster than someone using an IDE, but using an IDE just gives me too much stress. But the most important thing by far is that I like how using a text editor forces me to really think about everything. For example, the way you order your imports, or what packages things belong in, how methods are named, etc matter much more. And I know it's silly but I find being forced to memorize method signatures enjoyable like a game of sorts, and in a way it pressures me to make sure my method/variable names are all very reasonable so they are easy to remember. I guess I'm just not hardcore enough to go after every bit of programming efficiency! I try my best to enjoy my work =D (not that I think you don't enjoy your work because you use an IDE of course!)
  - alkonaut 12y ago
    Yeah I just like to leave neat code (like sorted import statements) but not do the work. And I just get more joy out of thinking about the logic of the code rather than worrying about whether the string arg or the int arg comes first in that 2-arg method. I get completely stressed by most IDE's where it feels like swimming upstream and you just long for something that gets out of your way. But VS or the Jetbrains products just do that: they get out of your way so you can think about code.
    - rifung 12y ago
      I totally get you. I usually have the logic of the code already sorted out before I actually start coding though, so trying to recall those things usually just makes it a little more interesting for me than just typing everything out. It definitely adds a lot of work in having to consciously write neat code the first time around, although I also enjoy thinking about something like what ordering of import statements makes the most sense. Anyway I'm just glad there's an option for everybody =]

by rifung 12y ago

alkonaut 12y ago

But is autocomplete the only feature distinguishing the IDEs from the editors? I'd say interactive debugger/watches etc are most important, followed by graphical tools in the case of frontend mobile/desktop development. Autocomplete isn't about speed, it's about context sensitive lookup in documentation. You should never have to alt-tab to a browser to check a function signature, that costs too much.

rifung 12y ago
Ah interesting. Yes it's kind of sad but to be honest I still debug all my programs via print statements (and reasoning). I've been meaning to learn how to use gdb/jdb/whatever for a while. And I completely agree that having autocomplete for lookup is really awesome. I usually do just use the browser to check it. It's silly, and I'm not going to say that I'm faster than someone using an IDE, but using an IDE just gives me too much stress. But the most important thing by far is that I like how using a text editor forces me to really think about everything. For example, the way you order your imports, or what packages things belong in, how methods are named, etc matter much more. And I know it's silly but I find being forced to memorize method signatures enjoyable like a game of sorts, and in a way it pressures me to make sure my method/variable names are all very reasonable so they are easy to remember. I guess I'm just not hardcore enough to go after every bit of programming efficiency! I try my best to enjoy my work =D (not that I think you don't enjoy your work because you use an IDE of course!)
- alkonaut 12y ago
  Yeah I just like to leave neat code (like sorted import statements) but not do the work. And I just get more joy out of thinking about the logic of the code rather than worrying about whether the string arg or the int arg comes first in that 2-arg method. I get completely stressed by most IDE's where it feels like swimming upstream and you just long for something that gets out of your way. But VS or the Jetbrains products just do that: they get out of your way so you can think about code.
  - rifung 12y ago
    I totally get you. I usually have the logic of the code already sorted out before I actually start coding though, so trying to recall those things usually just makes it a little more interesting for me than just typing everything out. It definitely adds a lot of work in having to consciously write neat code the first time around, although I also enjoy thinking about something like what ordering of import statements makes the most sense. Anyway I'm just glad there's an option for everybody =]