Comment by SwellJoe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SwellJoe | Hacker News Reader

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I mean if you have access to an IDE, why would anyone use a text editor?

But, why would I use an IDE if I have access to a proper text editor like vim or emacs (I use vim, but I've used emacs enough to know I could be productive in it if vim didn't exist)? Your question makes no sense to me.

I've known a (very) few people who are productive in IDEs, but generally speaking, the best developers I've known use either vim or emacs. I've never experienced an IDE that didn't make me angry, so I've never spent any significant time with one, so I don't know what the valid arguments for using them are, though I'm sure there are some.

I'm curious about the framing of your question. What is the rationale behind your question? When you use a big IDE do you feel more productive? Do you just want to avoid learning how to use vim or emacs? What are you trying to achieve here that brings up this question? Do you think an IDE will make learning to program easier?

One of the reasons I've never used an IDE heavily is because I find them very difficult to use and understand. They pile together a bunch of different concepts under one roof, and assume that it fits the work I'm doing. It pretty much never does, so I would just be using it as a big slow editor anyway. The other reason is that whenever I've wanted something IDE-like (like completion, or highlighting and indenting for various syntax, etc.), I've easily found a plugin for vim to do the same job without all the extra baggage.

The answer is generally that IDEs are big, slow, cumbersome and distract from the software you're building. If you're working in a language where the assistive tools are a core part of the experience (Java and C# seem to fall into this category), then maybe you should use those tools. I work in dynamic languages, and big slow editors just get in my way, slow me down, and fight against my own toolchain and workflow (which includes shell scripts, the shell itself, the ability to open and edit files from anywhere, including in-place on the server).

I'm curious about the framing of your question. What is the rationale behind your question? When you use a big IDE do you feel more productive? Do you just want to avoid learning how to use vim or emacs? What are you trying to achieve here that brings up this question? Do you think an IDE will make learning to program easier?

I am not a programmer. I have recently started to learn programming. I was reading up on mediums to write programs in (text editors vs IDEs) and came across all the features provided in IDEs. Which was when I became curious as to why I see a lot more chatter about text editors like vim/emacs instead of the other way around. That's all.

Again, I'm a beginner, so just trying learn the ins and outs. Thanks for your help.

came across all the features provided in IDEs

Maybe merely having a lot of features is not necessarily the most valuable thing when writing software. I suspect most truly great developers (I'm not one of those, but I've worked in the field long enough to know them when I see them work) just want the tools to get the hell out of their way. Stability, speed, predictability, consistency, generality; those are probably the most important features for a great developer. I like those features, too, and it's why I use vim.

Also note that I use vim for everything. I don't have to context switch when I go from Perl, to Python, to C, to bash, to sh, to configuration files, to HTML, to CSS, to JavaScript, to RPM spec files, to deb control/rules files, etc. It's always the same in vim (and vim has syntax highlighting for all of them). This is where generality has value. I don't have to think about how to copy/paste, how to find the end of a block, or how to perform a search/replace across the whole file or just a segment of it. It's always the same.

The greatest Java IDE in the world, whatever that is, is definitely not the right tool for editing files on a remote server. So, I would have to switch mental modes to use it. That would slow me down. I can use vim or emacs for that, no problem.

And, of course, as I mentioned, there is probably no feature in any IDE for which there isn't a parallel in vim or emacs. It is probably optional, it is probably not pretty, and it probably requires you to learn some new key sequences. But, it almost certainly exists, whatever it is. But, after spending a few years with a good editor, you'll probably find that simpler but more general solutions are superior to special purpose tools.

Which was when I became curious as to why I see a lot more chatter about text editors like vim/emacs instead of the other way around.

Age has it privileges. emacs and vi have been around for a long time. Assuming something is good and continues to get better, the longer it exists, the more users it will have. emacs and vi (in the form of vim) are both excellent and continue to get better. Thus they have a very large, very dedicated following. Which leads to faster improvement (though in directions that might not be immediately apparent if big IDE-style feature lists are what you think of as "improvement"), more third party tools and support, and more docs and examples.

You'll never hear any long-time practicioner of software development or systems management say that learning one of the two major editors is a waste of time. Knowing vim or emacs will very likely serve you well for the rest of your career. Knowing an IDE might make working in one language in one environment a little bit more awesome for year or two or three that you work in that language in that environment.

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