3 ms·

Using the tools available to you to their fullest extent, rather than doing things the hard way on purpose just to be more "hardcore", is not a sign of a bad pr

Using the tools available to you to their fullest extent, rather than doing things the hard way on purpose just to be more "hardcore", is not a sign of a bad programmer

woah 12y ago
Definitely agree, however I can also see the shortcomings of the "IDE languages". One of the nice things about non-auto-completable scripting languages is that they force you to write code that you can reason about yourself. IDEs let you write really inelegant code that you can still continue to slog through because of autocomplete. Another big downside of IDEs is that they constrain your choice of tooling to only the IDE. There's a rich ecosystem of editors, preprocessors, templating, etc. for JS, but (for example) in iOS development you only get xcode's half-working gee-whiz features like the interface builder. In my experience, the more IDE features there are, the more of your program moves into hidden, IDE-specific automagical stuff. So resistance that you may see to IDE's is not because someone wants to be "hardcore", but because they recognize that it is desirable for code to be able to stand on its own and be understood by a human no matter the editor used.
- bootload 12y ago
  "recognize that it is desirable for code to be able to stand on its own and be understood by a human no matter the editor used." That and hardware constraint.
- jschwartzi 12y ago
  I especially hate IDE features that don't have a corresponding plaintext representation that you can edit. For example, a graphical layout editor which saves data into a binary blob that then requires a special merge tool which is only available in the IDE.
bootload 12y ago
"rather than doing things the hard way on purpose just to be more "hardcore", is not a sign of a bad programmer" I agree, IDE's boost productivity. The next question I ask is, what's your client? Mine is a tty terminal over ssh. This limits the kind of IDEs I can use, so it's cli/vi/[languate]. Simple tools from a more elegant time.
- jimmaswell 12y ago
  Why do you choose to do it that way? If you really wanted to use an IDE you could just keep it on a github repo or even dropbox, or if it's a local or very fast connection it could even be reasonable to use X11 tunneling. But, if the CLI environment is the most convenient or efficient for whatever's being done then it's a better choice.
  - gizmo686 12y ago
    You could also mount it as a remote filesystem (such as sshfs) and run an IDE locally.
    - bootload 12y ago
      "mount it as a remote filesystem (such as sshfs) and run an IDE locally." could but a PIA.
  - bootload 12y ago
    "Why do you choose to do it that way?" One word, RaspberryPi. [0] Though I use a small laptop as a client and sometimes at the machine with monitor and keyboard, most work I do is on a Pi, remotely. I'll be upgrading my Pi to version 2 and splash out the necessary $40. Forty dollars, think about that. All I need to hack with: #raspberrypi & #robertsradio ~ https://flic.kr/p/o1yXKe https://flic.kr/p/o1yXKe [0] https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/tags/raspberrypi https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/tags/raspberrypi
    - jobposter1234 12y ago
      Isn't your small laptop a more powerful system? You state what you do, not why you are doing it, which was the original question. FTR I support your decision to include your own constraints. I believe better things are developed from constrained systems than from without.
      - bootload 12y ago
carbocation 12y ago
Agreed. People wouldn't appreciate it if I ignored the "interactions" warnings when prescribing medications just because I felt like I should be able to recall every drug-drug interaction myself...

Using the tools available to you to their fullest extent, rather than doing things the hard way on purpose just to be more "hardcore", is not a sign of a bad programmer

woah 12y ago

Definitely agree, however I can also see the shortcomings of the "IDE languages". One of the nice things about non-auto-completable scripting languages is that they force you to write code that you can reason about yourself. IDEs let you write really inelegant code that you can still continue to slog through because of autocomplete. Another big downside of IDEs is that they constrain your choice of tooling to only the IDE. There's a rich ecosystem of editors, preprocessors, templating, etc. for JS, but (for example) in iOS development you only get xcode's half-working gee-whiz features like the interface builder. In my experience, the more IDE features there are, the more of your program moves into hidden, IDE-specific automagical stuff. So resistance that you may see to IDE's is not because someone wants to be "hardcore", but because they recognize that it is desirable for code to be able to stand on its own and be understood by a human no matter the editor used.

bootload 12y ago
"recognize that it is desirable for code to be able to stand on its own and be understood by a human no matter the editor used." That and hardware constraint.
jschwartzi 12y ago
I especially hate IDE features that don't have a corresponding plaintext representation that you can edit. For example, a graphical layout editor which saves data into a binary blob that then requires a special merge tool which is only available in the IDE.

bootload 12y ago

"rather than doing things the hard way on purpose just to be more "hardcore", is not a sign of a bad programmer" I agree, IDE's boost productivity. The next question I ask is, what's your client? Mine is a tty terminal over ssh. This limits the kind of IDEs I can use, so it's cli/vi/[languate]. Simple tools from a more elegant time.

jimmaswell 12y ago
Why do you choose to do it that way? If you really wanted to use an IDE you could just keep it on a github repo or even dropbox, or if it's a local or very fast connection it could even be reasonable to use X11 tunneling. But, if the CLI environment is the most convenient or efficient for whatever's being done then it's a better choice.
- gizmo686 12y ago
  You could also mount it as a remote filesystem (such as sshfs) and run an IDE locally.
  - bootload 12y ago
    "mount it as a remote filesystem (such as sshfs) and run an IDE locally." could but a PIA.
- bootload 12y ago
  "Why do you choose to do it that way?" One word, RaspberryPi. [0] Though I use a small laptop as a client and sometimes at the machine with monitor and keyboard, most work I do is on a Pi, remotely. I'll be upgrading my Pi to version 2 and splash out the necessary $40. Forty dollars, think about that. All I need to hack with: #raspberrypi & #robertsradio ~ https://flic.kr/p/o1yXKe https://flic.kr/p/o1yXKe [0] https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/tags/raspberrypi https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/tags/raspberrypi
  - jobposter1234 12y ago
    Isn't your small laptop a more powerful system? You state what you do, not why you are doing it, which was the original question. FTR I support your decision to include your own constraints. I believe better things are developed from constrained systems than from without.
    - bootload 12y ago

carbocation 12y ago

Agreed. People wouldn't appreciate it if I ignored the "interactions" warnings when prescribing medications just because I felt like I should be able to recall every drug-drug interaction myself...