Comment by dkhenry | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dkhenry | Hacker News Reader

This specific question is talking about Eclipse, and depending on the language they are using it might be they are moving the build system to eclipse, so they are mandating everyone use the tool. I think in the FOSS world we are a little spoiled that we have options like what editor / build system / OS we would like to use to develop on. I know there are a lot of shops that on day one you are given access to Visual Studios and that's the last tool you will use at that company for anything. So this isn't anything extraordinary that is being asked of the employee. I know where I work we develop on remote system's and while some people prefer to do a lot of upfront work in eclipse, when testing on the production equipment your left with nothing but a command line. So knowledge of at least one text line editor and gcc/make is fundamental for anyone who wants to work with us. I could totally see someone coming in with the complete opposite question.

"My company is mandating that everyone use vim and make"

And still see it as a valid request of an employer.

I think there's a very important line to be drawn between "require everyone to know (the basics of) $tool" and "mandate that everyone use $tool". I think the former can be reasonable, if it's done both ways, ie everyone is required to be somewhat familiar with the standard UNIX toolchain, but also with $IDE. Then, the choice could be left to every member of the team what to use.

I think, however, it's a huge mistake to take the second route. Myself, for example, I could never be even remotely productive in an IDE. The moment I open one, it feels wrong, and my productivity as well as motivation drops significantly. I just prefer vim + $tools for the language I am working with, and it's highly unlikely that this will ever change. It's like trying to code in a noisy, public place when I could be coding at my desk listening to my favorite music.

Yes, this is partially an emotional reason. I hate programs that throw tons of information, menus and buttons at you, most of which are useless 98% of the time. Furthermore, I hate programs that try to be a God Object and do everything by themselves - I'm a stern advocate of modularity/interoperability and the UNIX philosophy of writing programs that do one thing, and do it well.

But, to conclude this, I would fiercely disapprove forcing anyone to do it my way as much as I would object to being forced into a different workflow myself. I know I could never work for someone that does either.

It's completely and totally within the rights of an employer to demand and mandate the usage of any tool. It's usually not a problem when there's a small, single-digit number of programmers, but once you reach a certain number, mandating procedures, code-conventions, style, tools, even the machine you work on to guarantee as little difference between developers becomes a necessity.

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