Jason Knight

The less code you use, the less there is to break

Oct 18, 2017

Whilst I can't stand either -- I have a great distaste for emacs -- the use of simpler editors is easy to understand if you know what the hell you are doing.

Honestly, MOST of the features of IDE's just get in my damned way! Code folding more often than not just hides bugs or prevents you from seeing the whole picture, IDE's often restrict you to a single window for each set of code defeating the point of large high resolution displays and/or multiple displays, auto-completion you end up wasting more time correcting than having it help you, etc, etc.

.. and more often than not their UI wastes endless pointless amounts of screen space on "code management" tools or stupid side panels and toolbars that would be better devoted to just "SHOW ME THE DAMNED CODE!!!"

But I'm a bit of an extremist on this count, since I find even colour syntax highlighting to be a drawback since it's an illegibly useless acid trip doing NOTHING of value for me as a programmer. I hated it the first time I saw it in Turbo Pascal 4 back in the '80's, and my opinion of it has only gone downhill as the decades have passed!

Clean simple lightweight tools that let you have multiple windows open side-by-side (well written code is usually taller than it is wider anyways, leverage that huffing widescreen or multiple displays!), with nothing that gets in the damned way of reading the code or GOD FORBID writing it.

Like a great many things these days there is so much incompetent GARBAGE being touted as "easier" or "helpful" or "being more productive" that's more echo-chamber cultist hoodoo-voodoo than fact. Fancy IDE's, RAD's, and so forth squarely fall into that classification for me as a developer. It's ALMOST as mind-numbingly idiotic as using a WYSIWYG to build a website!

If you can't program productively using just a flat editor with the most basic of features and HAVE to rely on a tool to handle the simplest of tasks, you're probably a really bad developer!

win32pad, editplus, notepad++, flo's notepad2 (what I use), sublime, vi, vim... clean simple doesn't get in the damned way. Anything fancier is typically just covering up for incompetence.

SO many times I've ended up in workplaces that "required" you use whatever pet IDE their project lead had a boner for at the time, and I always ended up screaming at the display "FOR *** SAKE JUST LET ME SEE ALL THE CODE AND EDIT IT!!!"

Of course with so many today just blindly copypasting other people's work together and going "wah wah, I don't wanna type" every five minutes with the TLDR twitter generation mouth-breather mentality, it's not surprising that IDE's exist or there are fools that buy into their lies.

Ivan Bernatović

Full stack web developer

Oct 19, 2017

"Anything fancier is typically just covering up for incompetence." This and few other lines are pathetic to hear from a grown up man. Grow up already and stop being a man-child with that "only mine opinion is valid, everybody else are idiots if they don't follow" attitude. There are valid points for and against IDE's or whatever software you like for editing code, but in the end it comes down to personal preferences and specific needs and workflows your projects need. You don't have to be a dick if you don't like something.

Ivan Bernatović It stops being personal preference when it breaks good practices, and results in nube after nube after nube, decade after decade after decade screwing up the simplest of things because the tool makes THEM the tool.

See mind-numbingly idiotic asshattery like Dreamweaver or any HTML/CSS WYSIWYG. They generate non-semantic markup, throw endless pointless classes at everything, encourage presentation in the markup, and only DELUDES people into THINKING they can build a website -- when more often than not the result is flipping the double bird at large swaths of users on a speed and accessibility fronts.

BUT DOG FORBID anyone DARE to come right out and say that. No, instead we're just supposed to slap the rose coloured glasses on everyone's heads, use soothing syrup words as we lead them down the garden path to sing Kumbaya around the drum circle. THAT'S what's pathetic.

JUST as PATHETIC as the ENDLESS lame excuses used to justify broken, bugging tools or grabbing the biggest hammer you can find to force that square peg into the round hole.

... or even as pathetic as the people who get their panties in a knot over a little stern brusque language, meaning they've likely never had to work in a REAL business for a REAL business owner!

For forty Joe-damned years I've watched "tool after tool" screw over person after person, and STILL people make up endless excuses for it instead of actually addressing the problem. EVERY generation -- hell, every five years -- some new flavor of the month manure becomes hot and trendy because everyone is so busy looking for shortcuts, they end up lost and taking longer than if they had just stuck to the main road!

THAT's what's pathetic... and where people REALLY need to grow the **** up and maybe be a hair more realistic in their expectations!

I don't particularly like IDEs but I have to agree with Ivan Bernatović in that simply using them as needed for a project doesn't make someone less of a programmer, a fool, asshat, etc... The thing is, I and many others I know, have been FORCED to use IDEs in the past for a given project due to either some policies, project setup, or other strange scenario. When I get to choose, I choose Vim and a command-line compiler and that's basically it, but the thing is, being a PROFESSIONAL as @cutcodedown says, sometimes you don't get to choose. It's actually the opposite; if you always get scenarios exactly how you want them then you are either a CEO or you're an amateur because in the real-world sometimes you have to make do with what you are given/told.

For example, I have to use SQL Server Management Studio for work. Do I love it? No. Primarily because I have all kinds of performance issues with it with our work network setup that have been going on for months and slowing down my productivity. I have to sit here, with an i7 and 16GB of RAM, watching this thing lock threads up and work sometimes as slow as 56k days.

Does this make me an asshat? A fool? A clown? Etc... No... it's what I have to do per my employer and they are aware of the situations. Now, when I'm off work, I use exactly what I want for all of my personal or educational projects.

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