Comment by zo1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zo1 | Hacker News Reader

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>"So, no, great coder doesn't use powerful editors, if they can chose they use very simple one with the minimum level of features they need to help them think faster (syntax highlighting, autocompletion, indention) and stop. All other features of complex IDE are a disturbance rather than an help."

Says you, and your anecdotal evidence/experience. Sounds to me that you have more prejudice against "complex" IDEs than you do actual facts. Would countering your points by telling you of the countless bad "coders" I've worked with that use text-editors instead of IDEs convince you to change your mind? (I'm going to stop using your term 'coders' here) Or the absolutely great programmers that I've seen that use powerful IDEs to supplement and augment their abilities?

Do you write in a compiled language that can provide rich intellisense, or something more like Ruby/Python/bash that is a tad lacking in that department?

I use coder because that's the term used in the question. I prefer software engineer usually. I'm not a coder, or software engineer, for what it matters but I'm doing it now and I understand how it works and I use all sort of language, from C to Python. I have no prejudice against complex editor. In my opinion everyone should be able to choose without problems the editor/IDE that prefers and that's not always true. My anecdotal evidence is that, when free to choose, the better you are at a language the more you prefer an editor. Nevertheless, I could accept your point of view, but you should explain me something, if there are different point of view you should accept that the advantage of this so called "powerful tool" is less than clear.

Unrelated to the actual point, but I'm curious. You seem to be loathe to use the word "coder". Why is that? How is it different from programmer? Is there some sort of cultural shibboleth I'm unaware of here?

I don't think it's a broader cultural thing, or anything. And personally, I'm fine with the term. It's just there was something about the way the OP was using the word "coder" that didn't quite sit well with me. Reading back at his post, I can't quite put a finger on what it was that actually bothered me about it.

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