Choosing the Right IDE

Nerval's Lobster writes: Modern software development often requires working with multiple tools in a variety of languages. The complexity can give even the most skilled developer a nasty headache, which is why many try to rely on Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) to accomplish most of the work; in addition to source-code editors and automation, some even feature intelligent code completion. With so much choice out there, it's hard to settle on an IDE, so we interviewed several developers, who collectively offered up a list of useful questions to ask when evaluating a particular IDE for use. But do developers even need an IDE at all? When you go to smaller, newer developer shops, you're seeing a lot more standalone editors and command-line tools; depending on what you do, you might just need a good editor, and to master the command-line tools for the languages you use. What IDE do you prefer, if any, and why?

Comments

There can be only one.

[Just Some Guy]

Emacs. Next question.

Re:There can be only one.

[bhcompy]

That's not Borland 4.5

Re:There can be only one.

[g0tai]

Sigh.

You appear to be both wrong. :wq!

Re:There can be only one.

[Anonymous Coward]

Vi do you say that?

Re:There can be only one.

[Just Some Guy]

Longer answer: IDE? No thanks. At least, I've used Eclipse variants and various Visual Studios, but they map onto how I think about writing and managing software. I want a blank screen with lots of keyboard shortcuts, some basic autocompletion, perfect syntax highlighting, maybe some Git support, etc. I don't want code generation or any refactor-all-the-things functions; I won't be using them.

I used Emacs for years and years, only eventually switching to Sublime Text. ST was beautiful and fast but didn't have nearly the ecosystem of Emacs, plus its non-Freeness started showing when it went many months without an update. Life's too short for a proprietary editor, which is where I spent approximately 60% of my work life. I dependent on it more than any other tool and the prospect of my chosen tool dying on the vine wasn't appealing. I tried Atom for about a week, but it was slower than ST2, lacked a broad ecosystem, and, well... JavaScript.

So one day I decided to revisit Emacs. Hey! It grew a package manager! Since that afternoon, I've had zero desire to look back. Emacs will outlive me and my children, will support every new language and tool that comes along, and will always be Free. There's nothing out there good enough to make me consider switching.

PS, in concession: I could make the same cases for Vim and its grandchildren. Once you've learned them, if they do what you need then there's very little compelling reason to change.

Re:There can be only one.

[jlowery]

No, it was edlin.

Re:There can be only one.

[recharged95]

If emacs is an IDE, then Linux is a robot.

I choose the tools that are great at one thing and not at all things. I want tools that are not jack of all trades, master of none... as the saying goes. That because nowadays standard communication interfaces and formats are everywhere (we've reached parity).

Re:There can be only one.

[sconeu]

Great IDE. All it needs is a good programmer's editor.

Re:There can be only one.

[Anonymous Coward]

I want a blank screen with lots of keyboard shortcuts, some basic autocompletion, perfect syntax highlighting, maybe some Git support, etc.

Sooooo... An IDE. Granted a lightweight one - but that's not "just an editor" anymore.

Re:There can be only one.

[johnsnails]

shift zz

Re:There can be only one.

[cjb658]

:x is quicker and does the same thing.

Re:There can be only one.

[alexhs]

Actually, it doesn't do exactly the same thing.
:x writes only if the file has been modified (only the file's access time is updated).
:wq writes unconditionnally (creates an empty file if it didn't exist, updates the file's modification time).

Re: There can be only one.

[Anonymous Coward]

Emacs is lightweight? Wow.

Re: There can be only one.

[Anonymous Coward]

Refactoring tools are very handy, if you know how to use them. For things more complicated than global-search-and-replace, there is really no substitute.

I encourage you to go back to an IDE -- /any/ IDE -- and deliberately check-out the refactoring tools. You might be surprised at how effective they are, how much time they can save you, and how much it reduces otherwise error-prone hand-work.

Re:There can be only one.

[mattventura]

Yes. If you load up an editor enough, then the line between editor and IDE gets blurred. It's why I'd always start with an editor that is good at actually editing text, and build off of that, because that's usually easier than taking an IDE and trying to get it to edit text how you want. An IDE could make your breakfast and drive you to work but at the end of the day the main point is still to edit text.

Re:There can be only one.

[PPH]

vi is my editor. I shall not font.

Re:There can be only one.

[Zero__Kelvin]

"PS, in concession: I could make the same cases for Vim and its grandchildren. Once you've learned them, if they do what you need then there's very little compelling reason to change."

Sound reasoning and pragmatism. Very nice. I use vim and joke about the vim vs. emacs debate all the time, but in truth I don't care which you are proficient with so long as it is with at least one of the two. If you can't use vim or emacs proficiently, I immediately start to question your competence. I'm not saying everyone who is unfamiliar with emacs or vim is incompetent, just that the likelihood rises quite a bit when the person can use neither well.

Re:There can be only one.

[jrumney]

The difference between Emacs and an IDE is that with Emacs, you can adapt it to the way you prefer to work. With an IDE you have to adapt the way you work to the IDE.

Re:There can be only one.

[Zero__Kelvin]

Linux must be a robot then, because I guarantee you that emacs and vim are both IDEs. Perhaps you didn't know that IDE stands for Integrated Development Environment? That is the only way you could arrive at such a ridiculously stupid conclusion that emacs is not an IDE.

Re:There can be only one.

[UnknownSoldier]

/Oblg. "The Emacs operating system needs a better editor." :-)

I prefer Vim myself as I feel it is like an extension of my mind; it was written by a programmer for programmers.

Either way, you can't go wrong with Vim or Emacs.

Note: Only immature ob developers get into stupid flame wars over which editor is better. (Hint: They ALL suck; some just suck more.)

Re:There can be only one.

[Darinbob]

Aquamacs!

Re: There can be only one.

[GigaplexNZ]

Using Visual Studio 2013 here. The refactoring tools are near useless in our large C++ project. For example, using "Rename" on a member field called m_size will often rename m_size instances from other classes too. They intentionally dumbed down the "Find all references" feature as users complained it was too slow, and by default it now uses a text search based approach which isn't really any better than a dumb text editor. I find it's easier to just rename the m_size field in the class to m_size2, find all the build errors, then do a text replacement on m_size2, than it is to deal with the unreliable tools in Visual Studio.

Re:There can be only one.

[melchoir55]

Emacs is great. All it needs is a good text editor.

Re:There can be only one.

[exomondo]

I want a blank screen with lots of keyboard shortcuts, some basic autocompletion, perfect syntax highlighting, maybe some Git support, etc.

So you say you want an environment into which much of your development tasks are integrated.

Re: There can be only one.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've now switched from Visual Studio to vi. However, the unfortunate side effects mean that I now look like a prat standing at one of those stand-up desks, am required to grow one of those ridiculous hipster beards and have to wear my trousers around my knees.

Re:There can be only one.

[narcc]

Indeed. I just wish it had a half-way decent editor.

Re: There can be only one.

[shutdown -p now]

C++ is one of the toughest languages for tools to handle - it's crazy complicated even just to parse right. And in case of rename refactoring in particular (and anything else that might implicitly include that), it might not even be possible to do it right. Consider something like this:

struct foo { int x; };
struct bar { float x; };
template<class T> void baz(T t) { t.x; }
baz(foo());
baz(bar());

Now suppose you're asking the editor to rename foo::x to foo::y. Should it also update t.x in baz, since it's referencing foo::x in one of the instantiations? But if it does so, then the other instantiation, the one that takes bar, will stop working. Should it rename bar::x as well? But it's not really related to foo::x in any meaningful way, they just happen to be referenced by the same template.

Re:There can be only one.

[AmiMoJo]

Of you never you refactoring tools you are lucky. Clearly you are not integrating or maintaining other people's code.

The other big feature that IDEs offer is code browsing. One or two clicks to go to a function/variable definition. Compiler errors link directly to the line in question. I'd never want to go back to wasting time manually looking for stuff.

Re:There can be only one.

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference between Emacs and an IDE is that with Emacs, you can adapt it to the way you prefer to work. With an IDE you have to adapt the way you work to the IDE.

This is actually the problem. Have you sat in on interviews lately?
Half the people I interview are retarded. So, naturally I thought the Vim/Emacs users would be "power" users, and while stubborn, likely to be skilled.

Do you know what I found? They are skilled at exactly what they want to do, just like your post says. As a result, our company is littered with opinionated code.

At least with an IDE you get basic standards, and I don't have to sit in an hour long meeting explaining to elitists why they need fucking follow rules.

Re:There can be only one.

[bingoUV]

1. code browsing.
2. One or two clicks to go to a function/variable definition.
3. Compiler errors link directly to the line in question

These problems have been very nearly solved in vim and emacs environments for most popular programming languages. For C - for at least 15 years, for java - at least 5 years.

Re:There can be only one.

[sabbede]

WOAH!

Did you sudo that? You could be about to lose your changes!!

Re:There can be only one.

[hairyfeet]

He asked for help choosing an IDE, not an OS. As for the right IDE? The answer is simple....80 pin.

Re:There can be only one.

[wonkavader]

Bingo.

Re:There can be only one.

[Zero__Kelvin]

I have bad news for you bud. Unless 80% of the programmers you know are incompetent, you and your brethren are classic examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

"Really? You must not do much real-world programming then. "

If anyone had any doubt they need only look at that statement. No competent programmer is so lacking in logical facility that they would draw that conclusion. Period.

"Basically, your assumption smells like the shit hole you crapped it out of."

That smell is your breath. Later, moron.

Re:There can be only one.

[Zero__Kelvin]

But I bet they know what Pedantry means! (You clearly don't)

Re:There can be only one.

[Zero__Kelvin]

You make a great point! If I say I am a potato, not a man, then it is indisputable that I am a potato!

Re:There can be only one.

[paulpach]

I used emacs for years, and I invested weeks configuring it to work exactly the way I wanted. My .emacs was beautiful and people often copied it for themselves.

Then I tried eclipse, and realized it already worked the way I wanted out of the box. Never looked back.

It is not about how configurable the editor is. It is about writing code. If your editor helps you do that: great, if not, just try something else, don't get religious on it.

Re:There can be only one.

[CosaNostra Pizza Inc]

I don't want code generation or any refactor-all-the-things functions

You'd rather create getters and setters for a simple value object, yourself? You'd rather overload toString() manually? These are no-brainers that only consume time.

Re: There can be only one.

[shutdown -p now]

Generally speaking, refactorings are expected to produce error-free code if the input is also error-free.

Re: There can be only one.

[BadDreamer]

So the proper way is for the IDE to intentionally break the code?

I can't even begin to fathom such an approach. Worst of all, it's probably considered proper by a huge chunk of the people working with C++. Small wonder software projects are perpetually late, over budget and bug ridden.

Re:There can be only one.

[Bugamn]

Eclipse really ended the editor wars by uniting VIm and EMACS against the new guy.

Re: There can be only one.

[menkhaura]

Kids these days... Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping, and they call it lightweight! Bah, humbugh!

Re:There can be only one.

[david_thornley]

For Visual Studio, we rather hope (2) will work sometime before we retire or simply die at our keyboards.

Re:There can be only one.

[vilanye]

I disagree.

The worse thing a newbie can do is use an IDE. It gets in the way of learning by hiding important things, so they become magic.

If programming is a black box to you, you have failed to properly educate yourself.

Re:There can be only one.

[vilanye]

Those are programming language deficiencies and needing an IDE to get around language issues is a damning indictment on said language.

Re:There can be only one.

[vilanye]

To clarify, if your accessor and mutator methods do any sort of validation or transformations an IDE provides very little help and if not you are better off making them public or in a language where object variables are always private, use built in metaprogramming constructs like attr_accessor in Ruby and ditch the needless boilerplate.

But you are talking about Java, so there isn't much help for you and boilerplate is the order of the day, every day.

I have see so much nonsense in java like:

public void setMyVar(int myVar) {
this.myVar=myVar;
}

That is common, accepted and epically stupid.

Re:There can be only one.

[jeremyp]

There are several to choose from.

Re:There can be only one.

[davester666]

doesn't everybody just login and do all their work as root? I never get any problems with permissions.

Re: There can be only one.

[GigaplexNZ]

C++ is one of the toughest languages for tools to handle - it's crazy complicated even just to parse right.

You're not wrong, and I don't disagree with anything you said. I was just merely pointing out that, for a large C++ project, the value of the refactoring tools in an IDE is of little concern, so a smart editor is often sufficient.

Re: There can be only one.

[shutdown -p now]

Sure, but that's more of a problem with C++ (being a language that is not designed to be tool-friendly) than it is with refactoring in general - and it was the doubt about the latter that was the original topic of this thread. For languages like Java or C#, refactoring is very reliable, and very convenient because if that.

emacs

[Anonymous Coward]

C-x-C-c

Do most of the work?

[avandesande]

IDE's don't do any of the work- they take care of the things aren't actually programming.

Re:Do most of the work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. If you've never renamed a function in your life - then go ahead and code with an 'editor' alone. Otherwise pick a good IDE and enjoy the time you're not spending doing a search and replace.

Re:Do most of the work?

[TsuruchiBrian]

So you don't use syntax highlighting/validation?

You can also redirect all the compiler errors to /dev/null, because you should just be able to spot them by looking at the code.

Hell you don't even need a compiler. It should be obvious what machine code should be generated from a high level language. Just transcribe the machine code directly.

That's *real* programming.

Re:Do most of the work?

[avandesande]

Of course I do. I don't consider memorizing the methods of a unfamiliar library to be programming.

Re:Do most of the work?

[armanox]

I don't see how syntax highlighting and compiler messages have anything to do with an IDE. When I'm building to code to see if changes work, I regularly switch C compilers depending on the current platform. I haven't quite seen an IDE that works with MIPSPro....

Re:Do most of the work?

[suutar]

You appear to include a lot of things in the term "programming" that are not actually generating code, though they certainly make it faster/easier to generate code. GP apparently doesn't. Is that really such a big deal?

Re:Do most of the work?

[TsuruchiBrian]

Why would you use something that doesn't do any of the work?

Re:Do most of the work?

[avandesande]

My work (ie what I get paid to do) is to program things, anything else is a loss. If people were paid based on your definition of work, then ditch diggers would be millionaires.

Re:Do most of the work?

[TechyImmigrant]

Exactly. If you've never renamed a function in your life - then go ahead and code with an 'editor' alone. Otherwise pick a good IDE and enjoy the time you're not spending doing a search and replace.

I don't remember globally renaming a function in recent years. I often split or merge functions - two functions into one more general one, or one function into two more specific ones. This tends to require examining each case. So the search/replace activity isn't a large part of the whole.

Re:Do most of the work?

[phantomfive]

To be fair the trend in IDE's these days have been to get in the way of programming, they are starting to get more obnoxious than clippy.

The way I look at it, if your codebase can't be understood without a particular IDE, then you're doing it wrong.

Other than that, use whatever you want. In the past year, I've used Visual Studio, Eclipse, IntelliJ, VI, and Emacs. The hard part of programming is thinking, and if you can't do that, no IDE will help you.

Re:Do most of the work?

[TsuruchiBrian]

I think you are confusing effort with productivity.

Re:Do most of the work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad plain old text editors aren't context aware enough to properly rename that function in the multitude of files that may reference it.

If you have a text editor that is well then guess what, you have an IDE.

Can you do the same thing with global search and replace and some regex? Sure. By there's no point in doing it manually. Do plumbers forge their own custom tools every time they need one? No, so why the hell should a programmer?

It's called a shell script and you can programme it to recursively search each directory in the project for files containing the string to be replaced and actually replace it in-place.

Re: Do most of the work?

[pruss]

Renaming a field or method of a class is more tricky with an editor, though, since other classes may have a field or method with the same name and you may not want to rename those.
It's also nice not to have to remember or look up APIs, constant names, etc.

As a teenager, I used Borland IDEs (mainly Turbo C). Then I spent over a decade mainly using commandline tools (C and assembly). But then since starting Android development some years ago, I've gotten to appreciate IDEs enough that now sometimes I even write LaTeX presentations and articles in Eclipse and short python scripts in Visual Studio. (If only loading time were faster.)

Over my decade of commandline development, I also forgot how helpful a GUI debugger can be and only rediscovered it recently.

Re:Do most of the work?

[avandesande]

Does your job pay you to be productive or expend effort? I understand the physical definition of 'work', but when you go to work every day what are you paid for.

Re:Do most of the work?

[TsuruchiBrian]

I didn't include anything in the term programming. I think it is ridiculous to label anything that isn't "programming" as "doing none of the work". Either programming is narrow, and the job of a programmer includes lots of things that are not programming, and anything that helps with those no programming tasks is doing work (even if it is not programming), and is therefore useful. Or programming is broad and an IDE is clearly helping to do the work of programming.

My post was meant to illustrate that there are many things that do a lot of the work (i.e. freeing humans to be more productive), that are what I would consider equally as "non-programming" as what an IDE does. Compilers don't actually generate any source code either. They however do an immense amount of work. We didn't always have compilers. There was a time when programmers tediously wrote low level assembly code, and were relatively much less productive than programmers with access to compilers.

Re:Do most of the work?

[TsuruchiBrian]

It's an example of another technology that makes the job of programming much easier, but doesn't literally write your code for you. I don't think we should consider tools that don't do any "programming work" as not doing any work. I think we should value any and all tools which significantly increase productivity.

Re:Do most of the work?

[TsuruchiBrian]

IDE's don't do any of the work- they take care of the things aren't actually programming.

If an IDE takes care of things that I would otherwise have to do (programming or not), then it is doing work. It is freeing me to do other things. It is increasing my productivity.

The nice part about tools, is that despite the work they do, you don't have to pay them, so you should be using every tool that increases productivity.

Re:Do most of the work?

[twistedcubic]

Syntax highlighting and keeping track of start end end parenthesis is nice and all, but if you need it that is a good sign that your code isn't readable.

But I program in Lisp, you insensitive clod!

Re:Do most of the work?

[avandesande]

http://dictionary.reference.co...

Clearly the way I interpreted the articles usage is valid. You refer to a composers work as the concrete result, not the effort. I guess maybe I have an inflated idea of what I do.

Re:Do most of the work?

[TsuruchiBrian]

I can cut my lawn with toenail clippers and it would be a lot of work/effort. Is this the definition of work you are using?

Re:Do most of the work?

[BasilBrush]

People using simple editors rarely do. The work and the risk that you'll introduce a bug often isn't considered worth reconsidering the name of a function or identifier. Especially with OO code.

But if you're using an IDE with refactoring support, there's next to no risk, and it's fast. So there's no reason not to rename if clarification is needed, or the code was originally written by someone who's not good at naming things.

I do it quite often.

Re:Do most of the work?

[TechyImmigrant]

I think I don't do it often because I usually set out with a naming scheme and architecture before I start coding. A name is used because it's the right name under the naming scheme.

It's nothing to do with the editor.

Then again, I'm not often incorporating my code with other people's code. I'm usually creating original code to implement some crypto protocol or algorithm I'm developing, or to analyze data. If I was bringing in multiple name spaces from other places, I can see why I might want to prefix them to keep them separate. If I'm using python, it's not a problem. It does namespace separation well. If I'm using C, it's for performance or reference code, so again, it's not an issue.

Re:Do most of the work?

[Zero__Kelvin]

Your thinking of IPEs (Integrated Programming Environments - which as far as I know don't exist) not Integrated Development Environments. IDEs are helpful for development, of which programming is merely a subset. Unfortunately the industry is flooded with people who don't know the difference:

How long have you been coding? 7 Days you say? When did you start the project? 7 Days ago? Seriously?

Yes, alas, there are a lot of people who think that development starts with writing code. It doesn't. If you are doing it that way, you are doing it wrong :-(

Re: Do most of the work?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you use your brain for a sec, there are many reasons one would need to change function names. I honestly question your ability if you can't grasp this.

Re:Do most of the work?

[Darinbob]

You sound like the guy next door to me in the nursing home. Let's stop posting and go so we can still grab the best seats for Murder She Wrote.

Re: Do most of the work?

[Dutch Gun]

Functions are named in human readable ways, and are designed to reflect the function they perform. If that functionality changes, then it makes sense that the function name has to change as well. Leaving a function name alone when it's functionality change is terrible programming practice, because the name is now actively misleading anyone who uses the function or reads code that uses it. There may be other considerations as well, such as the name simply doesn't match the style of naming conventions elsewhere in the project. People make mistakes, and code often has to be reworked or refactored.

True, it's not something that happens often enough (at least to me) that it would affect my productivity if I didn't have automatic renaming tools, but it's not like this is some new-fangled fad. I'm pretty sure you can find some advice on good naming conventions in "Code Complete", published a few decades ago.

Re: Do most of the work?

[marko123]

What is with the modern obsession with renaming things? Does your boss measure your performance by the number of lines needlessly changed in the code or something? Before refactoring support was the must have feature of IDEs, we had stable APIs to program to. Now some kid that grew up with his attention span crippled by the internet and smartphones wants to change the names of everything every five minutes.

If you want to keep a changing source code base as easily understandable as possible over time without confusing future programmers who have to work with it, you will need to refactor and rename as you go.

As requirements and thus code changes, the names of your functions, classes and files will become less correct, and lead future maintainers on a wild goose chase.

Keeping names appropriate by changing them is protection against future confusion and wasting of time.

It's actually a long-term solution to a long-standing problem and has little to do with crippled attention spans. It requires concentration to keep the names of things accurately matching their content. This investment of concentration will pay dividends on non-throwaway code.

Re: Do most of the work?

[holostarr]

You have a class which was originally written by someone else which is doing too much or is not following single responsibility principal, so you refactor out the pieces into other methods and classes, you then find method and variable names no longer reflect what the original method was doing and requires update. Or simply because you felt like it and using an IDE you fucking can! Seriously IDEs are great! I don't understand people on Slashdot who think if its not hard, its not worthy! IDEs provide so many benefits I would not be able to list them all. Here are some: - Intellisense sorting and cleaning of unused of import/using statements - Jumping to declaration of a method or variable - Hover over variable to see type - Debugging and stepping through code with ability to add/remove breakpoints on a whim - Hover over variable during debug to inspect its value - Watch variables - Edit conditional breakpoints quickly - Add bookmarks to code and jump between them - Highlight code errors and jump to them quickly - Compare code side by side - Show code smells - Run/debug test cases with a single click - Code completion for those hard to type/remember method names

Re:Do most of the work?

[fahrbot-bot]

I think you are confusing effort with productivity.

How does that exchange go?

• Edison: Invention is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
• Tesla: If Edison had thought more clearly he wouldn't have had to work so hard.

Re: Do most of the work?

[euroq]

To name it correctly.

Re:Do most of the work?

[ArsonSmith]

If you're a consultant firm charging clients by the hour then yes, and it's your job to keep them convinced that toenail clippers do the best possible job for lawn maintenance.

Re:Do most of the work?

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about? An IDE doesn't force you to not use the command line. If you don't like the build system in the IDE, do it on the command line. Most IDEs, including Eclipse, let you run arbitrary commands within the IDE but you can always go outside the IDE. I've never seen an IDE that couldn't handle an external program writing to a file. The IDE just says "Hey this file changed, do you want the changes?"

People are missing some of the best points of IDEs and instead are focusing on rarer tasks like renaming. IDEs auto import the things you need when you need them. They inline documentation on whatever function you're calling or whatever variable you're using. They auto-generate your function docs so you don't have to write a bunch of @param or whatever you language uses. They'll tell you you're typing a bug before you finish typing it. They spell check your variable names and strings. They'll automatically reformat the code to whatever the team specification is when you save or commit and reformat it back to your format whenever you need.

Depending on how you use Emacs, it is an IDE. A lot of people claim they don't like IDEs when they've actually created one out of the tools they're using.

Re:Do most of the work?

[TsuruchiBrian]

...and hope that no one else offers to do the same job for much less money.

Re:Do most of the work?

[Dog-Cow]

Or you could use an IDE that won't mess up because your forgot to add a ? in the middle of your pattern. You can use an IDE that support multi-file undo, so it doesn't take 2 hours to sort out the mess. i.e. you could actually be productive instead of retarded.

Re:Do most of the work?

[Dog-Cow]

If you think that searching for myFun( is enough to be able to rename a function across multiple files, you have used a very limited set of languages.

Re:Do most of the work?

[serviscope_minor]

You can use an IDE that support multi-file undo, so it doesn't take 2 hours to sort out the mess. i.e. you could actually be productive instead of retarded.

You mean like git?

So far your argument seems to just be to insult what you don't understand.

Re:Do most of the work?

[BasilBrush]

OK, so you're lucky enough to be writing code from scratch, and you're not working with other people. And you're working on an algorithm in engine code, rather than applications. That cuts down how often you'd want to do it.

That's kind of similar to the students I mentioned that are the classic users of vi.

But in the commercial world, you're usually working on large, complex systems, with a lot of history, usually originally written by other people. And you know it'll be built on still further by other people in future.

IDEs help handle the complexity of big projects. Of which the refactor/renaming rather than search/replace is just one example.

Re:Do most of the work?

[luis_a_espinal]

Too bad plain old text editors aren't context aware enough to properly rename that function in the multitude of files that may reference it.

If you have a text editor that is well then guess what, you have an IDE.

Can you do the same thing with global search and replace and some regex? Sure. By there's no point in doing it manually. Do plumbers forge their own custom tools every time they need one? No, so why the hell should a programmer?

It's called a shell script and you can programme it to recursively search each directory in the project for files containing the string to be replaced and actually replace it in-place.

Coding something that one can easily get wrong (bad regular expression) and spending time debugging it when you have already built-in functionality typically coupled with a transparent mass undo? You are such a professional.

Re:Do most of the work?

[Hognoxious]

You simply can't compare a machine-cut lawn with an artisanally clipped one.

Re:Do most of the work?

[luis_a_espinal]

You can use an IDE that support multi-file undo, so it doesn't take 2 hours to sort out the mess. i.e. you could actually be productive instead of retarded.

You mean like git?

So far your argument seems to just be to insult what you don't understand.

You mean you do potentially mass commits before checking, or even before compiling or running unit tests because problems with compilation and unit tests can - and will - occur when refactoring/renaming of artifacts is done wrong?

Re:Do most of the work?

[worf_mo]

That won't allow you to rename class A's method shout() to whisper() while keeping class B's method shout() as is it.

There is a thing to be said for editors and shell scripts, but when code reaches a certain level of complexity a full-flexed IDE has its place.

Re:Do most of the work?

[serviscope_minor]

You mean you do potentially mass commits before checking, or even before compiling or running unit tests because problems with compilation and unit tests can - and will - occur when refactoring/renaming of artifacts is done wrong?

Sure, why not? git suppupports quick branching. I can make a branch, do mass commits, do the testing then squash the commits before merging if I like.

Re:Do most of the work?

[BadDreamer]

That is the whole point of git, that you're able to work that way. It's not like a centralized version control system. Using git you do indeed get multi-file undo, and the ability to keep your own version history on exactly what you did when, to a level which no IDE can match with its own built-in tools. All without affecting the branch you're developing against until you're ready to commit.

And when you work that way, you're not tied to any IDE or editor, and you can do all manner of interesting statistics and analysis on your change history. Heck, you can even work fully without an editor or IDE and just integrate code using git.

Re:Do most of the work?

[suutar]

Ah, my bad. I thought you were disagreeing with his definition of "programming", but you're disagreeing with his definition of "work". Gotcha.

Re: Do most of the work?

[rdnetto]

Seriously IDEs are great! I don't understand people on Slashdot who think if its not hard, its not worthy!

That's a bit of a strawman. IMO, the real issue is that people see it as a false dichotomy between a good text editor (Vim, Emacs, etc.) and a kitchen sink of tools attached to something little better than Notepad with syntax highlighting + autocompletion (e.g. Visual Studio). In that comparison, the text editors win because the vast majority of programming comes down to text editing (and possibly thinking, but you don't need a computer for that), and typical IDEs are pretty mediocre at that.

Note that it's a false dichotomy - you can get the benefits of both, either by integrating a proper text editor into your IDE (e.g. Eclim adds Vim to Eclipse) or by adding many plugins to your text editor - I use Vim with 53 plugins, and I have every feature on your list (although hovering over a variable is replaced with typing a shortcut while the cursor is over it). You only need about 10 to get most of the benefits though, especially if you only work with one or two languages.

Fuck you dice

[binarylarry]

This is a fucking microsoft ad.

Re:Fuck you dice

[ZipprHead]

mod parent +1

Re:Fuck you dice

[rahvin112]

Didn't work very well, the first half the thread is discussing emacs.

Re:Fuck you dice

[binarylarry]

Naturally.

Re:Fuck you dice

[phantomfive]

The article spends half the time insulting Visual Studio, just so you know.

Re:Fuck you dice

[FranTaylor]

how can you write an article about visual studio WITHOUT doing that? Truth hurts!

Re:Fuck you dice

[Zero__Kelvin]

I didn't pick up on it at first, but CTRL-Femacs and CRTL-Fvim both show no instances of either. Eclipse is mentioned, but M$ Visual Suck is mentioned in the same very small paragraph. How many times is M$ Visual Suck mentioned you ask? 21 times! Again, that M$ garbage 22 times, emacs and vim not once. Yep, it's an M$ ad.

Re:Fuck you dice

[Zero__Kelvin]

You must have read the wrong article. The one linked to in the summary mentions Vsual Studio no less than 21 times, and always in a way that is positive. Show me a single insult. I couldn't find it.

Re:Fuck you dice

[phantomfive]

Says someone who hasn't used Visual Studio since the late 90s

Or someone who's discovered the recent 'innovation' of Nuget. That thing is a monstrosity.

Re:Fuck you dice

[stephanruby]

Are you sure? I thought this was a pretty lame attempt at getting traffic to hit dice.com (from a writer who's non-technical).

It's not like C# developers on Windows don't know which IDE to use already.

Re:Fuck you dice

[tshawkins]

And has a free immeadiate segfault on linux...... lasted about 30 seconds on my fedora box before it blew up....

Re:Fuck you dice

[phantomfive]

I know this isn't a popular opinion here but nothing has been even close to VS in quite a long time.

It's not popular because it's not true. Without Re-sharper, VS is far behind in features.

Re:Fuck you dice

[fahrbot-bot]

Didn't work very well, the first half the thread is discussing emacs.

We could save a lot of time if we all simply used: <ESC>-x slashdot-emacs-vim-auto-religious-feud-mode

Re:Fuck you dice

[benjymouse]

Or someone who's discovered the recent 'innovation' of Nuget. That thing is a monstrosity.

Could you be a bit more specific about what it is that makes NuGet a monstrosity?

Re:Fuck you dice

[Zero__Kelvin]

So we are in agreement then that there is no insult to Visual Studio. Claiming there is is like claiming that saying "You might not like to drive your Porsche in beach sand, as it was not designed for that" is an insult to Porsche. What kind of idiot thinks that is a put down of VS?

Re:Fuck you dice

[phantomfive]

It's corrupted my project file, for one thing. Sometimes it adds weird warnings when it doesn't need them. The interface is crap and poorly thought out (especially compared to the cleanliness of Maven).

Re:Fuck you dice

[david_thornley]

As a guy who mostly uses C++, at least half the comments I make on Visual Studio are uncomplimentary also. I keep wondering if people writing C# or other .NET languages like it better.

Re:Fuck you dice

[orasio]

I used it in 2007 (VS 2005) and hated it. I hated it even more than I hated it when I programmed for Visual Basic 6, last century, though.

Severely underfeatured text editor, ugly looking, and subject to random lockups.

Of course, at some point they might even end up releasing something usable, but why keep trying? There are lots of IDEs out there, with a better track record.

Re:Fuck you dice

[phantomfive]

Right. Now imagine someone copied it, and made it worse. Then you would have Nuget.

When I want an IDE

[Anonymous Coward]

I use QtCreator a lot.

It's great for C and C++ even if you don't use Qt.

In term of useful features, I'd rank it above Visual Studio, because its features are actually fast and often handy in my experience.

Re:When I want an IDE

[AncalagonTotof]

An IDE made by developers for developers.
There's no fancy HMI going in the way, source code/other things ratio is always maximized. There's Git support (among some others I think).

I'm even using it for non Qt project.

The "worst" I've done is:
- make a project with STM CubeMX and generate the code
- using some bash scripts, I extract source files and parameters from generated file to produce a QtCreator project
- enjoy editing with syntax highlighting, completion, even a simple refactor function (ok, semi intelligent rename across multiple files)

Just be productive..

[MegOnWheels]

Use whatever makes you most productive and understand that it will vary from developer to developer. 99% of IDE / Editor debates make stuff all difference to the outcome. Instead focus on:1. Only implementing exactly what you need. 2 Testing the thing, then going back and reviewing the testing with a view to adding more tests. 3. Not let the implementation get ahead of the tests. 5. Get someone else to test. 6 .. Test.
Test.. test .. test

Re:Just be productive..

[Ripplet]

Testing ...testing...tests

I love you ....

"Nerval's Lobster writes: "

[ardmhacha]

"Nerval's Lobster writes: "

I'll bet it is a Dice article.

Re:Only one and it's vi not emacs. sorry

[lsllll]

Back in the days I used to use Windows I used PFE, a multi window editor. For the past 14 or so year I have been using Linux and Kate is my favorite editor now. Does syntax highlighting, tabs vs. spaces, tiled views, profiles for project management, and allows multiple windows on multiple monitors. I'm not sure what more I can ask an editor. It's funny how some of us make the editor our "IDE" and do everything else on the command line like you say.

anyone interested for some trendy punch cards?

[antiperimetaparalogo]

But do developers even need an IDE at all? When you go to smaller, newer developer shops, you're seeing a lot more standalone editors and command-line tools; depending on what you do, you might just need a good editor, and to master the command-line tools for the languages you use.

Oh, yeah, i remember "standalone editors and command-line tools" from the old days - now they are "trendy"? I have some punch cards to sell them, so they can be "super-fucking-trendy"...

Re:anyone interested for some trendy punch cards?

[Rufty]

No, they're retro, going on paleo.

Still use the most productive IDE

[bdhall1313]

Delphi. There is still nothing better.

Re:Still use the most productive IDE

[Ronin Developer]

I would agree with you as I prefer Delphi for my personal work or for prototyping a solution. Others here couldn't give a rats ass about a tool they consider obsolete.

As for IDE vs CLI? I prefer IDE. Others a text editor with, maybe, syntax highlighting. More power to them.
A good IDE brings everything together, such a code, device views, active debugging, compiler, UML design tools, etc., into a single environment. Managing things such as refactoring, unit testing, code analysis, documentation and other tasks is a big help.

I will not argue with those who prefer CLIs as some people are simply more efficient with the CLI over an IDE. Personally, I would give those in my shop the option to use alternative tools provided the code is properly written, bug free and able to be used, with ease, with the selected IDE.

I do require a lot of screen real estate regardless. One can never have too much screen real estate when debugging when using a text editor or IDE.

My favorite IDEs?
Java - IntelliJ (from JetBrains)
PHP - PHPStorm (derived from IntelliJ)
Android - Android Studio (derived from IntelliJ)
iOS/Mac - XCode, RemObject Silver (debate is out) and AppCode (derived from IntelliJ).

For cross platform, prototyping and personal work, I prefer Delphi / RADStudio with VisualParadigm for real UML work.

Re:Still use the most productive IDE

[An Ominous Coward]

For desktop application development, that's true, there has never been anything better than Delphi. Unfortunately, desktop application development appears to be dying off.

Re:Still use the most productive IDE

[OrangeTide]

Compared to a full SmallTalk environment, Delphi always seemed like the little brother who wants to do everything his big brother does, except can't because his arms and legs are too short.

Re:Still use the most productive IDE

[tshawkins]

+1

I also use cLion (based on Intelij) for c/c++,

Re:Still use the most productive IDE

[rastos1]

A colleague uses that. I always die a bit when I ask him to show me definition of some function and he does a full text search on all files in the project. Hopefully it is better in some newer version.

Re:Still use the most productive IDE

[Miamicanes]

One warning -- Android Studio != IntelliJ Pro

Both are forks of a common ancestor, but the core IDE code bases diverge enough that Jetbrains basically has to backport Google's changes to IntelliJ every time there's a new release.

Maybe my opinion was skewed by horrible bugs in IntelliJ Pro 14.0.x that no longer exist in 14.1.x, but my advice is to just forget that IntelliJ Pro exists (even if you own a copy) and use Google's official Android Studio instead.

I never managed to successfully import an Eclipse Android project into IntelliJ. With Android Studio, it effortlessly worked on the first try.

Ditto, for creating a new app that used the Google Maps API. I fucked around with IntelliJ for WEEKS trying to get it to work, and had little besides inexplicable Gradle build errors to show for it. Android Studio automatically downloaded the SDK files it needed, and even made it blatantly obvious where I had to paste the API key.

For Android development, at least, Android Studio just feels a lot more refined, polished, and streamlined than IntelliJ.

Re:Still use the most productive IDE

[shihonage]

It's nice to finally meet the other Delphi programmer.

Re:Still use the most productive IDE

[CockMonster]

> real UML work Is there such a thing?

Re:Still use the most productive IDE

[Ronin Developer]

Good info. I don't do active Android dev work right now. I would suspect that (and, your experience demonstrates), Android Studio is the preferred and most up-to-date Android dev tool.

I never ran into an issue with importing Eclipse projects in the past. Maybe a version 14 thing?

Thanks again for sharing your experience with the two products.

Re:Still use the most productive IDE

[Mr. Somey]

I think there are at least three of us left...?

Nothing to see here. Move along.

[grimmjeeper]

I guarantee that you're not going to find good advice about what IDE is best on a Dice "insights" clickbait page.

Re:Only one and it's vi not emacs. sorry

[techno-vampire]

Fi on vi, I say, fi! If I must use a CLI editor, I use Mork's editor, nano. Not only is it a full-screen editor (We all know that vi was designed to be used with a teletype as an input device and never outgrew its limitations.) it has the most important editing commands at the bottom of the screen, including the all-important ^G that brings up the rest of the program's help. IMAO, the only reason for anybody to learn such a user-hostile "editor" as vi is for the bragging rights of having done so, and the only reason to continue using it once you've mastered it is masochism, pure and simple.

IDE?

[PopeRatzo]

Real men don't need IDEs.

http://boingboing.net/2015/05/...

Re:IDE?

[techno-vampire]

Was I the only person who followed your link and immediately thought of this Margeret Hamilton?

Re:IDE?

[PopeRatzo]

Was I the only person who followed your link and immediately thought of this Margeret Hamilton?

How cool would it be if they were the same person?

Re:IDE?

[Darinbob]

That's exactly who I was thinking of.

Re:Only one and it's vi not emacs. sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

I second the love for Kate. It's beautiful and powerful.
Has anyone here tried KDevelop? It's built on top of Kate and supposed to be a great IDE.

GNU/Emacs on any platform

[amightywind]

Agreed. The Unix way is to use modular tools. IDE's are the antithesis of that. Eclipse is systemd of development, one size fits few and shitily. Completely inflexible. Emacs is by far the best option available, on any platform. Used to be you'd be laughed off this forum if you suggested anything else.

Re:GNU/Emacs on any platform

[Zero__Kelvin]

Bullshit. vim is an equivalent tool to emacs (except it has a decent editor :-)

Saying emacs is by far the beat option available is stupid. It would be equally stupid to say the same about vim. Both vim and emacs are similar, and you would never get "laughed off this forum" for using vim rather than emacs. While we always joke about which is better, you'd have to be a moron to believe that emacs is far better than vim, or vice versa.

Re:GNU/Emacs on any platform

[fahrbot-bot]

Both vim and emacs are similar, ...

Well... for some definition of the word "similar". Emacs is far - far - more extensible and, quite frankly, more powerful *and* the base LISP interpreter can actually be used for non-editing work. However, for many subsets of work that extra power and extensibility is not needed and vim is fine - especially for short, simple edits. As vi/vim usually comes with the base OS by default (especially Unix - i.e. non-Linux - systems), knowing both editors (as I do) is preferable. For most programming work or complicated file edits, I generally use emacs though - since the late 1980s - my current .emacs config file is from 1990 - and, yes, I'm old.

Re:GNU/Emacs on any platform

[Ulric]

As vi/vim usually comes with the base OS by default (especially Unix - i.e. non-Linux - systems), knowing both editors (as I do) is preferable. For most programming work or complicated file edits, I generally use emacs though - since the late 1980s - my current .emacs config file is from 1990 - and, yes, I'm old.

That's exactly why I switched to vi (not vim at that time) in 1995 after using Emacs exclusively since the 80s: I knew it would be available everywhere. I still use Emacs occasionally. I'm 50, that's not old.

Re:GNU/Emacs on any platform

[Ulric]

Actually, this program, if anybody remembers it, had Emacs keybindings just because that's what I was used to.

Re:GNU/Emacs on any platform

[bulled]

It is probably useless trying to reason with GP. As soon as the systemd comparison came out (and I know it is fashionable on /. at the moment) it was clear that GP wasn't interested in discussion.

Re: GNU/Emacs on any platform

[j127]

Emacs is better than Vim in many ways, but editing with Vim is faster than Emacs unless you're using Evil. (assuming experienced users) I'm a Vim user, but would consider Evil if it ran in the terminal everywhere as well as Vim.

Re:GNU/Emacs on any platform

[Zero__Kelvin]

Wow. You really are a frigging moron.

As long as you consider one...

[ndykman]

Moving past a text editor is a big help. Sure, it's good to understand the command line and all that, but having a tool that understands code and allows you to manipulate it is really useful. Refactoring support matters. A lot, actually. Safe delete, rename, extract method/parameter/etc. are all basic tools that can make a code base better. Code completion (intellsense, etc) support matters too. What does this thing do. Does it do what I think it should? Why or why not. Add in things like smart templates, etc. and even the most code aware text editors just look like nothing more than keyword colorers.

Personally, I can't recommend Visual Studio/Resharper or the IntelliJ product line enough. Worth every single penny and then some. JetBrains has a laser like focus on just getting things done. High DPI support was a problem for their IDEs, so instead of waiting on Java 8/2D to catch up, they forked it just to get it work, and they admitted it was not a great solution, but a workaround.

Re:As long as you consider one...

[NoKaOi]

Code completion (intellsense, etc) support matters too. What does this thing do. Does it do what I think it should? Why or why not.

Any code base that can't be understood without Intellisense is broken. If you need auto-complete to answer those questions, then you are programming wrong (as an antidote I suggest getting rid of your IDE until you learn to do it right).

Oh, get off your high horse and stop being so arrogant. I don't think he said he needed it to understand the code. It matters to some people simply because they find it faster to use, not necessarily because they aren't capable without it. I, personally, think code completion is annoying, but I fully recognize that for some people it's great. If somebody likes it, then they should look at IDE's that have it. If somebody doesn't like it, then it's not a factor - they can use a tool without it, and I think pretty much any tool with it has an option to disable it.

Re:As long as you consider one...

[phantomfive]

Oh, get off your high horse and stop being so arrogant. I don't think he said he needed it to understand the code.

IF you stop insulting me for a minute, and read what I actually wrote, I think you'll find you agree with me.

Re:As long as you consider one...

[NoKaOi]

Oh, get off your high horse and stop being so arrogant. I don't think he said he needed it to understand the code.

IF you stop insulting me for a minute, and read what I actually wrote, I think you'll find you agree with me.

Aha, I interpreted his "thing" to refer to the IDE, you interpreted it as the code he's working on. Since we're talking about what IDE people choose, I interpreted the questions to mean, "I like these features in an IDE. Does this IDE do what I want it to do?"

Re:As long as you consider one...

[Darinbob]

Visual Studio when I used in a decade ago, was one of the worst IDEs I've seen. Ie, screwing up the project files so I had to fix them by hand in an editor , but many IDEs screw that stuff up when merging from source code control, a fault of using XML for unnatural purposes (to be fair, any useful purpose for XML is automatically unnatural). Extremely slow start up, slow run time, slow everything. Once it stopped being mandatory because we got an alternate way to build the projects most people on the team stopped using Visual Studio except as a basic editor, many stopped using even the class browser. People are able to create GUIs that are usable, however Microsoft hasn't managed that trick yet.

Re:As long as you consider one...

[ndykman]

A lot has changed since the 2002/2003 versions, even the 2005 ones.

Re:As long as you consider one...

[ndykman]

Indeed. It's just a tool. You can refer back to the API docs, but it's right there. It won't make bad code any more understandable. It just makes it quicker to refer to all the capabilities of a object.

Re:As long as you consider one...

[Dog-Cow]

I recommend killing yourself after doing the same for any offspring you may have already spawned. Stupidity such as yours can be disastrous in the wrong hands.

Re:As long as you consider one...

[phantomfive]

I'm really interested in what you think is stupid about what I said.

Re:As long as you consider one...

[serviscope_minor]

Moving past a text editor is a big help.

Only if you consider a text editor and commandline tools to be a throwback to previous decades. They haven't stood still, you know...

Refactoring support matters

Euch: sure it would be nice, but last time I checked the status of C++ refactoring tools, they were far too buggy to be reliable. Things may have changed since then. Also, the refactoring tools tend not to work on half of the languages I use regularly...

Code completion (intellsense, etc) support matters too.

Editors have this now too. You can run it in vim variants. Personally I only like it a bit when I used it. I find I ended up coding to make intellisense happy (top to bottom) rather than than the way I preferred. When I went back to using an editor, I didn't go and enable it.

I find intellisense works nicely for massive and not awfully well designed APIs better than it works for algorithmic coding where you're using much fewer primitives.

Anyway that's besides the point: you can use it in editors too.

Add in things like smart templates, etc.

I don't know what they are, but the first link on google was for a text editor.

I've used IDEs and I've used the unix environment for programming. I know about all those things, but I still prefer text editors. Part of it is that they work on a lot of different systems, where as IDEs tend to be limited in scope (in practice). I've never seen an IDE that has good support for Octave/Matlab, shell, awk, C++, GNUplot at the same time for example.

They also have weird-ass build systems on the whole that do things in a much more complicated way but with no extra utility compared to GNU Make for example.

Integrated debuggers are nice---for certain kinds of code. By chance I happen to often work on the sort of code where printf debugging shines.

I also hate it when other people use IDEs because frankly most people who "know" IDEs don't and do stuff like check in projects with absoloute paths, so they fail to compile anywhere except the original user's machine etc.

Re:As long as you consider one...

[jeremyp]

It's not about what you need. Autocomplete is not necessary, but it certainly makes life easier. You don't need a chainsaw to cut down a tree, but you'll get the job done quicker if you've got one.

Re:As long as you consider one...

[phantomfive]

If your codebase can't be easily understood without intellisense, then your codebase sucks.

Wrong question

[msobkow]

The question is: "What language are you writing this project in?"

The language dictates the best IDE for the job.

Re:Wrong question

[grimmjeeper]

Not just what language but "What is your target environment?" That makes a big difference too.

Re:Wrong question

[Whiteox]

Yes. I had to interface with a well written driver once. It would only accept BASIC calls. So I wound up with a small notice board behind my monitor, thumbtacks+ A4 pages of reference data and both Apple and PC basic. Everything was done using the native BASIC on Apple (plus some assembler), compiled for speed then converted to PC DOS. Ran a treat too. And yes, test, test, test AND good documentation.

Choose your build system first

[Kahenraz]

What a lot of programmers don't realize is that an IDE is just a lens with a glamorous frame around it. Don't grow too attached or you'll risk going out of style along with it and that's when people start looking at you funny. No one should care what you program with as long as you keep to the style guidelines and the code you check in does the job.

I prefer Eclipse for Java, PyCharm for Python, Sublime/YCMD for C++ with Valgrind on Linux and WinDbg on Windows, etc; but requirements and individual tastes may differ. That's why I use cross-platform shell scripts and makefiles. This allows me and anyone else I work with to use whatever IDE on whatever platform they are most comfortable with without the fear of vendor lock-in.

Can I turn features off?

[Okian Warrior]

One question I always ask when evaluating a new whizz-bang high sparkle product is: can I turn the features off?

If you use more than one application in your development, you're always bumping into interface inconsistencies. Having to stop and look at the result of what you typed is annoying, time consuming and distracting.

I can type <tab> really, *really* fast, so it makes absolutely no sense to try to overcomplicate things by having the editor try to do some sort of indentation for me - it only means that I have to stop and look every time, and I can't get used to the feature because no other application does it the same way.

For emacs in particular, all the various "electric $LANG" modes have different ideas of which characters are electric, what their behaviour is, and what coding style I should be using. Selecting a coding style to use is about 2 hours of internet search, editing the profile, restarting, and testing. (And that's if you're using one of the approved styles, otherwise you're either stuck or forced to learn lisp. *shudder*)

(And for the record, turning off electric-mode in emacs is wildly difficult to actually do. One pitfall example: having "save state" turned on will override the profile file, leaving you wondering why the profile command from the online tutorial didn't work.)

You can't get used to it, you can't develop muscle memory or take your eyes off the screen because the minute you switch to something else (the browser, E-mail client, putty terminal, LibreOffice or anything else), muscle memory results in errors.

Lots of applications have these inconsistencies. Clicking in a text editor will place the cursor where the mouse is, while clicking on the address bar in the browser *selects* the line and places the cursor at the end. It takes 1 click to insert text normally, it takes 3 clicks to insert into the address bar. Muscles don't remember that.

People spend an inordinate amount of time fumbling the interface without actually thinking about it. Your "rich, user experience" isn't warranted and reduces efficiency.

Just give me a simple, direct interface.

Re:Can I turn features off?

[FranTaylor]

And for the record, turning off electric-mode in emacs is wildly difficult to actually do.

Can you follow along?

- click on the "C" menu
- mouse over the "Toggle" item
- click on the "Electric Mode" item

Is this really so wildly difficult?

Re:Can I turn features off?

[Okian Warrior]

And for the record, turning off electric-mode in emacs is wildly difficult to actually do.

Can you follow along?

- click on the "C" menu
- mouse over the "Toggle" item
- click on the "Electric Mode" item

Is this really so wildly difficult?

Was I complaining about manual control, or talking about setting this in the profile file?

Re:Can I turn features off?

[fahrbot-bot]

I can type really, *really* fast,

Great, you're *that* idiot with the deeply tab-indented code that everyone else has to reformat to make readable - thanks.

For emacs in particular, all the various "electric $LANG" modes have different ideas of which characters are electric, what their behaviour is, and what coding style I should be using.

And any setting of said modes can be customized to your liking interactively or in the .emacs config file. (I've carried mine with me since 1990) Stop tabbing and do a little research.

(defvar smart-newline-modes
'(c-mode lisp-mode emacs-lisp-mode lisp-interaction-mode cperl-mode perl-mode java-mode)
"*Major modes for (smart-newline) action.")

(defun smart-newline ()
"(reindent-then-newline-and-indent) if in a mode listed in smart-newline-modes. Otherwise just (newline)."
(interactive)
(if (memq major-mode smart-newline-modes)
(reindent-then-newline-and-indent)
(newline)))

;; Use (smart-newline) instead of (newline) -- "C-M"
(global-set-key "\C-M" 'smart-newline)

(setq c-mode-hook
'(lambda ()
;; Set `C' coding styles.
(setq c-argdecl-indent 4
c-auto-newline nil
c-indent-level 4
c-tab-always-indent t
comment-column 40
)))

Re:Can I turn features off?

[Dog-Cow]

In Xcode - cmd-A following by ctrl-I. Re-indents based on the built-in rules. No, they aren't configurable, but at least you know every Xcode user will see the same thing.

Other IDEs have the same sort of feature.

If you require your own idiosyncratic style, God help the poor fools who have to work with you.

Re:Can I turn features off?

[rthille]

because the minute you switch to something else (the browser, E-mail client, putty terminal, LibreOffice or anything else), muscle memory results in errors.

I don't understand this bit. Why would you switch out of emacs for such things? Emacs has web (eww, w3), email, tramp (remote editing/shells), TeX modes, etc.
No need to tax your muscle memory, it's all there in emacs.

Besides, on a mac, most things do Emacs keybindings :-)

Re:Only one and it's vi not emacs. sorry

[techno-vampire]

*Shrug!* I haven't done any programming since the Second Millennium ended. I only need a CLI editor for config files or shell scripts in Linux, and nano does what I want, the way I want it. If you find that vim (or even, Heaven forbid vi) works best for you, use it. Just don't think that you're earning any geek cred with the old-timers of programming because you aren't. I started out with punched cards, went from there to line editors and was very happy, TYVM, when full screen editors came along and I could recycle all the neurons I'd been forced to dedicate to those obscure, counter-intuitive commands.

Visual Studio + Resharper

[Rinikusu]

for .NET dev.

I like the IntelliJ family for other stuff.

Depends on the Language

[Maltheus]

If the langugage is Java (or even Python to a lesser degree), then I haven't come across anything that even comes close to IntelliJ. It's code completion and introspection are so good, that I find I don't need to test as often. And I rarely find any issues when I do.

I also use Eclipse and Netbeans, and everything seems to take an extra step or two and that really adds up, over time. Netbeans is good for C++ though, so I muddle through with it.

Syntax hilighting

[phantomfive]

According to the article: "Some people love syntax highlighting; others hate it with the fiery passion of a thousand suns."

Is that really true? I've never met someone who hated syntax hilighting.

Re:Syntax hilighting

[BasilBrush]

This is slashdot, there will always be someone who'll declare they prefer something primitive rather than something more modern and useful.

Re:Syntax hilighting

[Whiteox]

Ever meet a COBOL Report programmer? He was employed till ~2005 when he retired of old age. He never had a personal computer either. He would go to work, write code on a terminal to output a custom report (Banking btw), then go home to lead an ordinary life. He was paid well and in demand but knew nothing about any other programming languages, IDE or anything else. Just one skill set and that's it.

Re:Syntax hilighting

[Necron69]

Those of us who are colorblind often struggle with the default colors used in syntax highlighting. If you can (or bother to) adjust those, it can work, but colorized syntax highlighting on a white background can often be near invisible to me. It doesn't highlight at all, it HIDES the code.

Necron69

ps. Colorized 'ls' - red on black? Are you out of your f*cking mind!?

Re:Syntax hilighting

[phantomfive]

Good point.

Re:Syntax hilighting

[bingoUV]

Is there any way you like to highlight things? Do you see code better when different fonts / styles are used for different types of texts in the code? Underline / bold etc.?

About bad "ls" colour schemes, I have myself used "echo *" as a more readable alternative to "ls". Of course, you could change "ls" colour scheme or "ls --color=never"

Re:Syntax hilighting

[jeremyp]

And I bet he would have been more productive with a modern IDE assuming there is one that supports COBOL.

Visual Studio

[Anonymous Coward]

Visual Studio/C# with Resharper is my preferred environment. I've also had good experiences working in Zend Studio/PHP and Eclipse/Java.

Notepad++ FTW!

[jomcty]

Notepad++ is my daily driver.

If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad programmer

[mark-t]

While I have coded without an IDE in the past, and I still do it occasionally for one-off throwaway programs, when it comes to larger projects, I do find that having an IDE dramatically boosts my productivity. All of the things I do with an IDE could theoretically also be done with vi and an appropriate suite of tools, but for myself, the point of using an IDE is to really just have it all bundled in as one, and not have to switch to a different window just to show a call graph or function definition for what is at the current cursor, for example, when a simple hover-window can do the same thing, and since the window disappears as soon as I start typing or otherwise navigating, I don't even need to switch windows again when I resume editing.

A Computer

[OrangeTide]

My favorite IDE is a computer. When I wrote programs without a computer it was much harder. (I wish I was joking)

Re:A Computer

[drooling-dog]

My first programming class: Punch cards. Punch your deck, take it to the input window, wait around an hour or two for it to run, pick up the printout at the output window, debug. Rinse, repeat until successful. The IDE was long nights at the computing center with a thermos of coffee. Finally getting a terminal and 300 baud modem at home was a really big deal.

Re:A Computer

[timftbf]

I first wrote 6502 assembler by writing the whole thing out on paper, looking up the opcodes and working out the offsets for branches by hand, then feeding the result into the in-ROM BASIC interpreter with a READ / DATA / POKE loop to load into RAM.

Then I saved up my paper-round money and bought an assembler. Revelation :)

Re:A Computer

[BlackHawk-666]

I used to do almost exactly the same thing, except the computer I had (OSI C1P) had a mode to enter hex codes into sequential memory locations one at a time. I'd write the code, hand assemble it to opcode, work out the jumps (pray I didn't make a mistake), then punch it in and JMP to the start location.

Eventually I saw a magazine article that showed how to write an assembler in BASIC for a similar sort of machine . Some quick hacking later I had a pretty decent line editor (my own work) and an assembler that handler the opcodes and jump calculation for my machine. It was pure bliss! :D

Re:A Computer

[OrangeTide]

I used to write Pascal, qbasic, x86 asm, and C in study hall with a pen and paper instead of studying. Then type it in when I got home. It was good practice, my goal was usually to not have a lot of compiler errors so I could see the results of my program right away. Usually the graphics stuff is what tripped me up and needed a lot more debugging on a live machine, but getting the boiler plate and basic structure done in study hall was a good motivator.

Anyone use Joe anymore?

[Ramley]

Joe's Own Editor. I don't use a traditional IDE, but do still use JOE. Am I alone with this? *sigh*

Re:Anyone use Joe anymore?

[markmay]

I still use JOE. The reason is the same that most choose their preference. I've used it so long, my hands can type the editor commands without me having to pay attention to it. My concentration can stay focused on the program I'm creating.

Re:Anyone use Joe anymore?

[i.r.id10t]

Nope, use it for all command line editing, working on remote systems, etc.

But... if I have a desktop session, I'm probably using Kate/Kwrite. With the konsole package installed, so I can have a terminal window right there at the bottom of my editor. Where I sometimes run joe for a quick peek at another file.

Re:Anyone use Joe anymore?

[ADRA]

Joe rocks my Linux CLI editing world, but that's about it. The highest level of 'coding' I do with it is the occasional bash script. At least I can log into the latest centos and not have to spend 10 years editing the keyboard shortcuts anymore -- win!

For real work, I use Eclipse for Java. Frankly, if I did what I do in Java in any test editor, I'd probably loose close to 5-10x productivity. I know the tools and what they can do for me, and that's a lot.

Re:Anyone use Joe anymore?

[tigersha]

Have been using it since about 1992 or so. Linux 0.93. The first thing I install on any new system is joe. I sure won't use it for serious editing (Sublime Text r00lz!) but I do use it every single day for editing files on servers on and off.

joe's keyboard layout (^Kx and that stuff) is based on WordStar, a word processor back in the 80's.
I find the WS/joe idea of a modal selection where you explicity set the start end end of the block you want to work with very
useful.

I wrote a spreadsheet in 1988 that ran on DOS that had the same key combinations as joe. I really need to see if that thing still compiles.

Obviously..

[juanfgs]

When I log into my Xenix system with my 110 baud teletype, both vi *and* Emacs are just too damn slow. They print useless messages like, 'C-h for help' and '"foo" File is read only'. So I use the editor that doesn't waste my VALUABLE time.

Ed, man! !man ed

ED(1) UNIX Programmer's Manual ED(1)

NAME
          ed - text editor

SYNOPSIS
          ed [ - ] [ -x ] [ name ]
DESCRIPTION
          Ed is the standard text editor.
---

Computer Scientists love ed, not just because it comes first alphabetically, but because it's the standard. Everyone else loves ed because it's ED!

"Ed is the standard text editor."

And ed doesn't waste space on my Timex Sinclair. Just look:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 24 Oct 29 1929 /bin/ed
-rwxr-xr-t 4 root 1310720 Jan 1 1970 /usr/ucb/vi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 5.89824e37 Oct 22 1990 /usr/bin/emacs

Of course, on the system *I* administrate, vi is symlinked to ed. Emacs has been replaced by a shell script which 1) Generates a syslog message at level LOG_EMERG; 2) reduces the user's disk quota by 100K; and 3) RUNS ED!!!!!!

"Ed is the standard text editor."

Let's look at a typical novice's session with the mighty ed:

golem> ed
?
help
?
?
?
quit
?
exit
?
bye
?
hello?
?
eat flaming death
?
^C
?
^C
?
^D
?

---
Note the consistent user interface and error reportage. Ed is generous enough to flag errors, yet prudent enough not to overwhelm the novice with verbosity.

"Ed is the standard text editor."

Ed, the greatest WYGIWYG editor of all.

ED IS THE TRUE PATH TO NIRVANA! ED HAS BEEN THE CHOICE OF EDUCATED AND IGNORANT ALIKE FOR CENTURIES! ED WILL NOT CORRUPT YOUR PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS!! ED IS THE STANDARD TEXT EDITOR! ED MAKES THE SUN SHINE AND THE BIRDS SING AND THE GRASS GREEN!!

When I use an editor, I don't want eight extra KILOBYTES of worthless help screens and cursor positioning code! I just want an EDitor!! Not a "viitor". Not a "emacsitor". Those aren't even WORDS!!!! ED! ED! ED IS THE STANDARD!!!

TEXT EDITOR.

When IBM, in its ever-present omnipotence, needed to base their "edlin" on a UNIX standard, did they mimic vi? No. Emacs? Surely you jest. They chose the most karmic editor of all. The standard.

Ed is for those who can *remember* what they are working on. If you are an idiot, you should use Emacs. If you are an Emacs, you should not be vi. If you use ED, you are on THE PATH TO REDEMPTION. THE SO-CALLED "VISUAL" EDITORS HAVE BEEN PLACED HERE BY ED TO TEMPT THE FAITHLESS. DO NOT GIVE IN!!! THE MIGHTY ED HAS SPOKEN!!!

Re:Obviously..

[phantomfive]

Do you have a tl;dr?

Re:Obviously..

[bidule]

tl;dr Ed is a talking horse. All praise Mister Ed!

Re:Obviously..

[Whiteox]

OH GREAT ED!
So they stuck me in front of a terminal way back in '75 with a pile of printouts, checking to see if the data got input correctly WHILE they went off to play Star Trek.
I finished a few hrs later and entered @@XCIO to end the session. The command wiped out the whole data set off the tape, no 'Are you sure you want to do this?" or 'Really? You want to delete the file?".... just a few seconds of blank before the cursor re-appeared flashing happily.
As I didn't know any better, I wandered off, but they found me in the uni library and frog marched me to the BIG GUY. He explained what I did and how those thousands of punch cards that have to be re-read. I got banned from the computer room for the rest of the semester.

Re:Obviously..

[real gumby]

vi is, of course, just ed.

The original Emacs (for the PDP-10) had a special mode for slow terminals and even teletypes. It worked surprisingly well assuming you had some internal model of what you were editing anyway, but in such situations I found it easier to simply edit directly in TECO (which is what Emacs was written in).

Re:Obviously..

[tigersha]

My dad seriously still uses a Xenix System in his shop. Occasionally with vi.

No modem though.

A few weeks ago I helped them use a Raspberry Pi as a terminal server because they could not boot their DOS terminals anymore. Why? No-one sells floppies anymore.

Re:Obviously..

[0dugo0]

Oh sod of with this interactive editing nonsense, real men just cat>file.

I'm not a "coder", so....

[Noble713]

In the past few years I've largely use Eclipse. I tend to write small programs in C, C++, or CUDA C. I like Eclipse because it's free, has easy support for all these languages and others that I expect to use (Python, Java), runs on Debian/Ubuntu/etc., and there's tons of support online.

IDE slows me down

[sjames]

Personally, I find Vi to be a fast and efficient text editor. The ones built in to an IDE are inevitably inefficient for me.

Some languages have so much boiler plate that it makes sense to start in an IDE (I'm looking at YOU Java), but I generally prefer languages that don't need that. Vim handles syntax highlighting just fine. It doesn't help that so many IDEs seemingly want 12 terabytes of ram.

Re:IDE slows me down

[TeknoHog]

I also found that IDE slows me down, and I'm now using mostly SATA, some of them even SSDs.

Eclipse

[X10]

So far I used Eclipse for Android development, but that's coming to an end. Google forces me to use Android Studio, which is terrible. Which makes me think: how can so many developers prefer AS over Eclipse? What does that say about developers? About me?

Re:Eclipse

[alcmena]

Yeah, I'm holding on to Eclipse until the last possible moment. Android Studio is horribly slow for what I'm doing. The UI editor is much nicer, but I almost never use that aspect. Simply typing spikes AS up to 100% CPU and kills my laptop's battery when I try to code off A/C power. The compilation process is even worse. No errors until you compile, as opposed to Eclipse's immediate error-on-save feedback. I find it funny that people consider Eclipse "slow" for Android development. In my experience, Eclipse runs like a coked out rabbit in comparison to Android Studio's three-legged sedated turtle.

Re:Eclipse

[UnderCoverPenguin]

For me, at least, Eclipse provides decent support of the languages I need to code in. If all I coded in was C/C++ and/or Fortran, I'd probably use Code Blocks. CB's support of other languages is mostly because it uses Scintilla as the core of its editor. Maybe in time CB's plug-in ecosystem will provide better support for more languages, but, for now, Eclipse is doing a much better job of meeting my IDE needs. At least for an open source IDE. If you include proprietary IDEs, then Slick Edit is the one I like best. Used that at work until recently. (After finance demanded we reduce our recuring tool support costs, the company directed us to use open source tools as much as possible, so good-bye Slick Edit (despite the fact its license is perpetual for the specified version).

Re:Eclipse

[Miamicanes]

Android Studio beats Eclipse for Android development like an unloved child in a trailer park.

Seriously. Night-and-day improvement. No more times when you have to cut something into the clipboard, save the empty file, and paste it back to make Eclipse realize that it's imagining all the errors it thinks were in it. No more "type a semicolon, then have the cursor inexplicably move back so that the carriage return a moment later pushes the semicolon to the next line and breaks the code." No more situations where the IDE forgets what R.java is, where it came from, or how to regenerate it.

Just make sure you use the official Google version of Android Studio, and NOT IntelliJ. As I mentioned in an earlier post, IntelliJ 14 with the Jetbrains Android plugin is neither directly-equivalent nor a consequence-free superset of Android Studio.

Re:Eclipse

[toofast]

The Eclipse Andmore project takes off where ADT left off. It's still in infancy, so don't hesitate to get involved:

http://projects.eclipse.org/pr...

Sublime Text 3

[Anonymous Coward]

I work mostly with Go and HTML/JS so my "IDE" of choice is Sublime Text 3 + GoSublime/TernJS/SublimeGit+HTML-CSS-JS Prettify plugins.

Re: Only one and it's vi not emacs. sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

Omg pico/nano/etc are really awful unless all you are doing is typing text and saving it. If you can't even minimally script it, it's worthless.

Vi and emacs are the kings of text editing, and every programmer should know how to use them both even for just simple editing.

Whenever I use a new system and EDITOR gets set to some shitty version of pico or nano, I just want to uninstall the effing package. It actually enrages me when it runs because it's literally a waste of disk space.

de gustibus non est disputandem

[FranTaylor]

you can argue all day about whether chocolate ice cream is better than vanilla and there is really no possible way that anything interesting will result from the conversation

Re:de gustibus non est disputandem

[gravel tubes]

tl;dr, vi or emacs. article totes bates.

Re:de gustibus non est disputandem

[dmbasso]

and there is really no possible way that anything interesting will result from the conversation

People might inform you of a flavor you have never heard before. And you try it. And it is the best motherfucking ice cream of your life.

Btw, if you go to Italy, look for Grom... it will be the best motherfucking ice cream of your life.

That's easy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Visual Studio 6 for lyfe

Re: no command line for me

[Anonymous Coward]

Using the command line on Windows is a truly painful experience, even for those who live on the CLI like I do. The difference is, when you are on UNIX the CLI can actually do things instead of being mostly useless like in Windows.

Try UNIX from the command-line some time. You'll like it; I promise.

Or try using Cygwin... though it's not nearly as nice as a real UNIX environment, because it's gotta bridge the gap over to all that awful Windows garbage...

Re:If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad program

[BasilBrush]

No, using an IDE means you are a productive programmer. I swear most of these vi/emacs hipsters are still students or are unemployed.

Re:Only one and it's vi not emacs. sorry

[Zero__Kelvin]

Don't be an idiot. I am a vim guy, but claiming that vim is better than emacs, or vice versa, is great for meme style joking around, but to say it in an actual serious discussion and mean it is a sign of shear stupidity.

Re:Only one and it's vi not emacs. sorry

[Zero__Kelvin]

"*Shrug!* I haven't done any programming since the Second Millennium ended."

Hey! Then guess what?! You are completely off topic and in the wrong story thread! If we ever need the opinion of a layperson with almost no skills on the subject and limited and outdated experience we will be sure to contact you immediately!

Monodevelop...

[AmazingRuss]

... because I like to be a white hot ball of rage before noon.

Re:phpstorm for php developers

[tshawkins]

+1

Bet you can't have just one

[Murdoch5]

VIM for C, Scripting, PHP and all command line work
Intellji when I need to do larger web development work.
Xaramin when I need to do C# / GTK#
Visual Studio when I need to do raw C# on Windows
MPLAB X when I have to do Microchip development
Atmel Studio for Atmel development

I'm sure I'm missing a bunch, but you can't just have one, you need the right IDE for the right job and none of them do it all.

Re: Only one and it's vi not emacs. sorry

[techno-vampire]

It actually enrages me when it runs because it's literally a waste of disk space.

That's exactly what I think of vi. I have no use for scripting inside an editor; I just want it to work in the way I find natural, and vi doesn't.

Re:Geany

[Bent Spoke]

I second that. Geany is everything other IDE's are not. The closest experience to it's speed? Turbo Pascal on CPM in 27 Kb. I kid you not.

Re:no command line for me

[Darinbob]

There's your problem DOS command prompt is a stretch to call it a "tool". Windows was not designed to make doing work easy. Switch over to Unix or Mac and get real work done with a real command line designed to get stuff done. Or install Cygwin on your system.

I've seen several embedded development systems for Windows out there that come with Cygwin or MinGW tools, even if they're under the hood.

IBM VisualAge

[ahoffer0]

IBM VisualAge. Its heir, Eclipse, is a worthy IDE. I got to watch the whole evolution. Eric Gamma and others in Zurich morphed the VisualAge Smalltalk IDE into VisualAge Java. Then Eric and Kent Beck morphed that into Eclipse. IDEs derived from Eclipse are still the shin dizzle, AFAIAC.

Re:If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad program

[Darinbob]

Does the editor allow you to see multiple windows of code at the same time? The thing I hate most about IDEs I've used is that they're using this bizarre MDI model, big file list or class browser on one side, command output or such at the bottom, menu bar and icons at the top, and one big space wasting code window in the middle. I want to see file A on the left and file B on the right while I'm editing file C in the middle.

The perfect IDE for me that might get me to use one:
- multiple code windows simultaneously
- not written in Java so it's fast
- does not try to second guess me
- lets me configure it fully, I want emacs keybindings dammit, not mock-emacs
- let me plug and play different components from different vendors. Don't force the vendor lockin or tool lockin. I want to replace the editor or the debugger or whatnot. And do not suggest that Eclipse can do this because it can not.
- get the pointless windows and GUI fluff out of the way when I am not using them. If I have a modern high resolution monitor then I want to get more stuff on the screen rather than just higher resolution fonts.
- don't force me to use its lame project management system, use my own Makefile or set of scripts (because no one's yet come up with a suitable replacement), don't do something moronic like assuming every file in a directory is a part of the project, don't insist on a directory layout style, let the user be in charge.
- make it easy to program instead of making me struggle locating obscure hidden menu entries
- don't make me point and click.

Get a good hint from Genera on the old Symbolics Lisp machines. A GUI designed by smart people for smart people.

[shrugs]

[Tyrannosaur]

In my beginning CS classes the professors all were using eclipse. Which was frustrating until I tried Netbeans. Which makes eclipse feel nasty. I have tried several IDEs, but netbeans works the best for me. My only problem with it is that sometimes it takes a lot of memory...

An editor

[jtara]

Currently, Sublime Text.

Re:If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad program

[mark-t]

It can... although usually I dock all my editor windows to one pane, and use tabs.... but the IDE I use allows me to add any number of panes.

It's interesting that many of the things you've mentioned are ideal for you actually are preferences of mine as well, and in fact, why I use the IDE that I do. It's written in Java, but it performs adequately on my hardware, which for me is all that really matters.

Re:If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad program

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the people I know that use vim as their main text editor have it pimped out to a full IDE anyway. They just don't realize it.

Re:Eamcs and Vi

[etinin]

people can't ever post this kind under their own account without being bullied and/or losing karma.
/.ers being /.ers.

Re:If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad program

[BasilBrush]

Go on then. Demonstrate it.

The one that works, is free and cross-plattform.

[Qbertino]

The IDE that works, is free/FOSS and runs cross-plattform is the best for me. That would be Netbeans for me, since I mostly do PHP. QtCreator looks neat aswell. And after Anjuta, CodeBlocks and whatnot crashing on Ubuntu for me or not being supported for OS X it seems like a good candidate for C/C++.

In fact, I'd go as far and say that not having a good IDE that runs on Mac, Linux and perhaps Windows is actually a dealbreaker for a new programming language for me.

Example:
Yesterday I came across Dart again and clicked through a few websites on it. I still have it in the back of my head and haven't dismissed it yet because - Tadaa! - Google offers a chrome based IDE for it. ... Couldn't say though that I'm all ready for this cross-compiled for JavaScript fad that's going on right now, so I'm not gonna hold my breath.

That's my take on IDEs.

Editor == VIM, IDE == UNIX

[snake_case_hoschi]

That's it.

Well, since just about everything I write

[sabbede]

is for Windows or Office, Visual Studio Community. Plus, I'm not that good so I rely heavily on intellisense.

Re:Well, since just about everything I write

[sabbede]

Wait, did I lie? The powershell IDE is, technically, an IDE, and I use it more than anything else.

But I'm not a developer, I'm a jack-of-all-trades in a small IT department for a rather large Real Estate company.

Re:Well, since just about everything I write

[neminem]

Why is intellisense only for people who "aren't that good"? Why *should* you have to have every system call, every function and property of every API you use, and everything in your possibly-enormous codebase that was written by someone else on the team, memorized? How does that help? Knowing where it all is and what it does, yes, but how does it make you a "better" programmer that you remember that a function is called GetData() instead of RetrieveData() or whatever?

I absolutely don't understand people who think they're better because they don't use tools that would increase their productivity, and that includes intellisense. Intellisense is awesome.

Re:Well, since just about everything I write

[sabbede]

Oh, well that makes me feel better. Thanks!

Best IDE for OS development

[sclark46]

I wonder what IDE the developers of MS Windows use? I wonder what IDE Linux kernel developers use. Which one is more robust?

Re:Only one and it's vi not emacs. sorry

[BadDreamer]

Must be nice to only work with systems having plenty of resources and huge default installs. and always over high bandwidth low latency connections. Not all of us have that luxury, and the one editor you can always count on exists on a limited system, and the best editor for use over high latency connections, is vi.

If you know it well, that is. Otherwise you simply can't work efficiently under those conditions. Which you evidently never have to do.

Vim plus plugins

[gabbleratchet]

If you start with Vim you'll get a great text editor with a focus on actual text editing. You can then add plugins to add IDE-like features.

My favourite plugins:

* fugitive
* dbext
* syntastic
* YouCompleteMe
* Command-T
* Unite
* multiple-cursors
* gundo
* sparkup
* easy-align

Mostly Visual Studios, but occasionally Eclipse..

[modi123]

I'm a .NET guy working in a .NET shop, and Visual Studios is part and parcel for my days. Occasionally I'll flip to Eclipse for php and java work, but any more VS is getting better about dealing with the those too so, hopefully, in the near future I won't have to.

At home it's VS as well - typically for my python and other side work.

With the wave of plugins and templates available - as well as an ever expanding reach for new languages bolted in - Visual Studios is becoming hard to beat. Unity support, Minecraft mod support, actual python, web dev, etc. Heck - the Community Edition is now supporting localized reports (for free!) so that's a major plus. Also the snippet system is nice to fill in with repeated code chunks.

Re:If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad program

[serviscope_minor]

Go on then. Demonstrate it.

http://stackoverflow.com/

Fucking Dice.com

[bigsexyjoe]

Slashdot, please stop posting stories that come from dice.com. Thanks.

IDE and code complexity

[Gestahl]

you’ll want to be able to set the language for the file type. In the case of Web development, you’ll often have three languages in one file, such as PHP, HTML, and JavaScript; if you do, and you need syntax highlighting, you’ll want to make sure that the tool can handle all three at once. If this is how you organize your code, with three languages intermixed in one file, your choice of graphical tool set is irrelevant to your success. An IDE is not a substitute for good code organization and separation of concerns. Yes, it will help you untangle code. Good. Even better to not tangle it up in the first place.

I use...

[CosaNostra Pizza Inc]

Eclipse for Java and Scala. Notepad++ for SQL, HTML and javascript.

Let me count the ways...

[__aaclcg7560]

If I need a full-featured IDE, it's typically NetBeans. That was the first IDE I used while learning every flavor of java for my associate degree in computer programming. (The school couldn't afford to renew the Microsoft site license for a few years.) Otherwise, it's Notepad++ for Windows and Text Wrangler for Mac.

Re:Only one and it's vi not emacs. sorry

[techno-vampire]

The reason I picked nano is that it's strictly text-based, needs nothing more than an xterm, but still doesn't force you to pretend you're using a teletype or remember obscure, unintuitive commands. Just because you can point to one or two rare corner-cases where vi is convenient for you doesn't mean that it's best for everybody; it just means that you've persuaded yourself that you like it because it's so old-school.

Re:Only one and it's vi not emacs. sorry

[BadDreamer]

Are you trying to make the case that embedded systems requiring text file reconfiguration and low bandwidth connectivity to such systems is something *rare*?

Indeed you are.

Remind me never to pay attention to your quite uninformed opinion.

Oh, and anything on a command line is "obscure" and "unintuitive" until learned. I don't find vi to be either. That you do speaks more of you than of vi.

Re:Only one and it's vi not emacs. sorry

[techno-vampire]

Are you trying to make the case that embedded systems requiring text file reconfiguration and low bandwidth connectivity to such systems is something *rare*?

For the average user, yes, they are. Just because you work with them daily doesn't mean that everybody else does. And, nothing I've written in this thread means that I give a rats ass about what tools you use to do your job because it's none of my business. All I've been doing here is stating why I dislike vi and prefer nano. YMMV, and obviously does. If it makes you happy to pretend that you're still stuck in the 1970s, go for it; I lived through them, as an adult, and I'm glad that the rest of the world has moved on.

Re:Only one and it's vi not emacs. sorry

[BadDreamer]

The "average user" does not use an IDE, does not do programming and will use neither nano nor vim, and thus has no relevance to this /. posting. The average *developer* is quite likely to find the need to perform changes or updates on embedded systems or over dicey connections, and therefore has quite valid reasons to use vi which has nothing to do with your dislike of anything well tested.

"The rest of the world" tends to use vi and emacs. You're the one stuck in some form of rut, and posting to get that rut validated. Get with the times, vi today is not what you remember from back when you (possibly) had a valid opinion on the subject.

Re:If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad program

[Just Some Guy]

Why do you assume that your IDE has features that Emacs doesn't? It's been in active development for 39 years to be a great, productive programming environment. Do you honestly believe that it's had 4 decades of worldwide contribution and not become reasonably good at helping people write software?

Without exception, everyone I've heard decry Emacs and Vim as "just text editors" has never used them beyond "open file / type / save" and has no idea what they were working with. It's like dismissing Linux because you've only used it as an AWS shell, and you feel sorry for people who won't upgrade to Windows so that they can use a web browser.

Re:Only one and it's vi not emacs. sorry

[techno-vampire]

"The rest of the world" tends to use vi and emacs.

If all I had to choose from were those two, I'd go back to using emacs. The only reason I don't use it now is that I ran across nano and found it more to my liking. And, on a side note, I find your zealotry and insistence that there's One True Editor amusing. Maybe, by the time you're half my age you'll have grown out of it.

Re:How to do it professionally?

[perryizgr8]

4GB RAM on a dev system is seriously deficient.

Re:Only one and it's vi not emacs. sorry

[BadDreamer]

Where have I "insisted" there's "One True Editor"? Your arguments against vi grow out of some kind of small minded misunderstanding you acquired back when I was selling my first software commercially (if, indeed, you used it during the 1970's), and that is what I reacted against. Nothing else.

Maybe by the time you act your age you'll realize how absurdly you're acting, spitting venom on an editor you last used as intended decades ago (if ever) on a /. thread where using IDE's and editors as intended is discussed. But I won't be holding my breath. Keep pushing your opinion on what is the best editor for occasional one line edits on a thread discussing heavy duty programming as if it's relevant, no skin off my back.

IntelliJ IDEA

[mattstorer]

While any developer worth their salt should be able to write code in a text editor, any developer worth their salt will also know that it can easily become a slow, error-prone process when dealing with larger or more complex code bases. Using a decent IDE can dramatically speed up development and reduce the likelihood of introducing errors.

Myself, I've used a number of IDEs in the past - Eclipse, NetBeans, IntelliJ IDEA - and I have to say that IntelliJ IDEA is really hands down (in my opinion) the best one out there.

A few reasons why:

It's fast. It's extremely customizable, and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of plugins available to extend the IDE's functionality. It supports dozens of languages and file types. It's got an excellent debugger. Git and Maven integration are fantastic. Refactoring can be done perfectly in seconds or minutes instead of potentially hours if done manually. Navigating the code base is made super easy with "Find usages" and "Go to source."

Also, because the company (JetBrains) is in the business of making money, they actually sell their products instead of just giving them away for free (although there are free, reduced-functionality versions available), they have a lot more money to pour into their products than other options out there, and it shows.

Basically, as a software developer, I want to spend my time writing code, not dealing with associated peripheral tasks, i.e. noise. Using a good IDE can help you do this.

Good luck with your decision making process!

Re:Only one and it's vi not emacs. sorry

[techno-vampire]

Keep pushing your opinion on what is the best editor for occasional one line edits on a thread discussing heavy duty programming as if it's relevant, no skin off my back.

At what point in this discussion did I ever insist that nano was the best editor for anybody other than myself? My whole point in commenting has been to explain why I personally like it and why others who's tastes are similar might like it. And, for that matter, this entire thread started off as a remark that with the proper CLI tools you don't need an IDE and it's drifted (as threads often do here) off into a discussion of the merits of various editors. You like vi. Fine; use it if it makes you feel empowered. I've outgrown the need to use obsolete programs just because I can, and use whatever serves my current purposes best, be it GUI or CLI.

bash and vim

[cbybear]

Anything more and you are far too pampered.

Re:bash and vim

[david_thornley]

C'mon, using emacs doesn't mean you're too pampered. It means you're a heretic.

Re:Only one and it's vi not emacs. sorry

[BadDreamer]

The editor you use is just as obsolete as vi. This is what you fail to comprehend and acknowledge. You make this into some form of "newer exists so the older is inherently inferior", and this is precisely wrong. Just because something does not fit in your brain does not mean it is obsolete. If anything, it is likely to mean *you* are obsolete.

I refuse to believe you use whatever serves your current purpose best because you present a dogmatic attitude. That means you will choose based on incorrect criteria. That you do not even realize this makes your position worse.

Re:Only one and it's vi not emacs. sorry

[techno-vampire]

you present a dogmatic attitude.

If anybody's being dogmatic, it's you. I, OTOH, keep telling you that I don't care what editor you use while you keep denigrating my choice and making ad hominem comments about me because I dare to differ with you. Why does the fact that I don't agree with you make you feel so threatened, especially as I keep telling you to use whatever editor you want?

Re:If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad program

[BasilBrush]

If your Emacs has all the features of my IDE, then it's an IDE.

Re:If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad program

[BasilBrush]

So you can't.

Re:If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad program

[Just Some Guy]

Then why am I a vi/emacs hipster to you?

jEdit

[paradisaeidae3616]

The right balance of close to the metal, clean edit functions, extension manager is good. Like the vertical editing function. Some extensions get a bit behind. O well. jedit.org Zero dollars. Thanks jEdit!

Re:If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad program

[serviscope_minor]

Jesus Christ I thought you were *JOKING*.

Are you honestly so stupid you think any drooling moron placed in front of an IDE is productive???

I can demonstrate it by pointing to a few of the drooling morons I know who have somehow become employed as programmers, or you know the legions of idiots on stack exchange.

Re:Only one and it's vi not emacs. sorry

[BadDreamer]

I am quite curious how it's dogmatic to simply use the best tool for the job, without trying to make the claim that one or the other is "obsolete".

You've got a serious maturity problem, kiddo.

Re:If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad program

[BasilBrush]

You're obviously an amateur, or someone who works on very small projects.

Re:If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad program

[serviscope_minor]

You're obviously an amateur, or someone who works on very small projects.

And you obviously lack a basic understanding of logic. Let's say we accept your absurd premise that one needs an IDE to be productive.

That makes an IDE necessary but not sufficient to be productive. If you put a monkey in front of an IDE, you wouldn't have a productive programmer.

The fact that you seem to think an IDE makes even very bad people productive is a strong indication that you either don't work in programming at all or you only ever work with the bottom 20% so you don't know what a productive programmer actually looks like.

Re:Only one and it's vi not emacs. sorry

[jeremyp]

Our sysadmin once made a Linux VM unusable with nano. He used it to edit the pam.conf file and nano helpfully wrapped a long line by putting a line feed in at the last space before 80 characters. After that, nobody could log in anymore, not even the sysadmin who had logged out to test the change he had made.

We got the system back with a Linux live CD and the sysadmin started the vi tutorial the same day.

Re:Only one and it's vi not emacs. sorry

[techno-vampire]

The dogmatic part is insisting that everybody uses that tool just because you like it best.

And how, pray tell, do I have maturity problems simply because I don't like the same text editor that you do, but don't insist that you use the one I like?

Re:Only one and it's vi not emacs. sorry

[BadDreamer]

So where do I insist on anyone using any particular tool?

You have a maturity problem because it's not enough to dislike something; you have to justify it by calling it obsolete, and insulting people who disagree with your attempt at justifying your opinion.

Maybe when you get to be half my age you'll know better. But I'm not holding my breath, youngster. Now git off my lawn!

Re:Only one and it's vi not emacs. sorry

[techno-vampire]

We got the system back with a Linux live CD and the sysadmin started the vi tutorial the same day.

That's one way to prevent that from happening again. Another way, of course, is turning off line wrapping in whatever editor you prefer to use. Personally, I have nano aliased to include -w to disable wrapping. The fact that one sysadmin managed to misuse nano doesn't mean that it's a bad editor; it's just a tool like any other.

Re:Only one and it's vi not emacs. sorry

[techno-vampire]

Maybe when you get to be half my age you'll know better. But I'm not holding my breath, youngster. Now git off my lawn!

Unless you're more than 130 years old, I'm at least half your age, and am possibly older than you are. Hint: I was on the Gun Line in Tonkin Gulf in 1972 doing shore bombardment during the Easter Offensive, before leaving the Navy and going back to computers. Before I joined up, I'd been using an IBM 1620, with punched cards. Want to try a different ad hominem attack?

Sounds like

[mundlapati]

McDonalds versus Homemade

Re:If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad program

[BasilBrush]

You're not fooling anyone. You gave it away with the lazy slashdot stereotype of StackOverflow. Spending 3 hours on an issue that a StackOverflow search would have found you the key to in seconds is not being a productive programmer. And it's certainly not being a professional one.

You're a poser, not a programmer. You don't do this for a living. You have far too much to learn.

Re:If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad program

[serviscope_minor]

Ducking and weaving, ducking and weaving. Oh and invective and ad homenim too.

All to avoid admitting your original point was flat out wrong and illogical. Still if it comforts to do so, please be my guest and keep on fooling yourself :)

Re:If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad program

[BasilBrush]

You're stil not fooling anyone. Your comments are as foolish as a carpenter saying he only ever uses hand tools. When you're learning to be a carpenter, then of course you'll learn to use hand tools. But professional carpenters in this day and age are using power tools for most of their work.

Re:If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad program

[serviscope_minor]

Your comments are as foolish as a carpenter saying he only ever uses hand tools.

Oh analogy time. Firstly, my comments are nothing like that. If you think so then your reading comprehension is so low then there's little chance of you ever understanding this post. But whatever, I'll use your analogy, because bits of it work (also carpentry is a hobby of mine as it happens---though I'm not especially good).

Your original claim is like saying that sticking anyone in front of power tools will make them a productive carpenter.

But professional carpenters in this day and age are using power tools for most of their work.

This is hilarious. Remember your claim that "anyone in front of an IDE is productive", translates to "anyone in front of power tools is productive". If you let someone completely incompetent into a good woodworking shop with actual proper power tools, you're more likely to end up with a pile of fingers on the floor and broken machines than anything coherent made out of wood.

Because tools alone are not sufficient to make someone productive.

That last line is really the crux. The fact that you appear to not understand it is quite frankly astonishing. I do hope you're not in charge of any hiring decisions. Because according to what you're espousing here, you can hire literally anyone, stick them in front of an IDE (or powerful woodworking tools---why not) and have a productive member of the work force.

Anyway your analogy still sucks, because all of the IDE related tools are available with equal or more power outside the IDE.

Re:Emacs and Vi

[El Rey]

I pretty much use the same tools for Windows / Java / OS X/ iOS and started my career about the same time. Pick the best IDE for the target environment / source language rather than one to rule them all.

I started my professional career writing Windows apps in C++ and never saw the point of the 80 character per line limited text mode editors that were available on Windows / DOS at the time. After college it was a long number of years before I saw Unix again, and by then I was accustomed to GUI based editing. I will never forget fighting with folks in the early 90s who wanted to impose a 80 character line limit as part of our coding standards because that's all they could see in their text mode editors. Bogus!

I have to say though that the worst IDE I have used is Eclipse. I spent about 6 months in Eclipse 3 years ago before a more senior Java developer showed me IntelliJ and I never looked back. Major gripes:

When you start Eclipse, the UI is already in a bad state. The toolbar buttons are enabled as if you are debugging. If you click the "Stop the Debugger" button, you get a dialog telling you that the button you just pressed is not enabled. Uh, yeah it was otherwise how did I press it to get this dialog? If you can't even get the initial UI state right, it doesn't inspire confidence! I still saw this in the last version I tried. I'm assuming that the design of the code must be so bad that this must be very hard to fix so it stays broken in version after version. And no, I'm not going to pull down the code and try to fix it when the community version of IntelliJ is free of cost and works fine.

So many times Eclipse would show all these red underlines in my code but when I compiled the code from the command line there were no warnings or errors. Deal breaker! Absolutely unacceptable waste of my time! All of the files had been saved. If it has no errors from the command line compiler it shouldn't be showing errors in the IDE. It's like the IDE is senile or something...

When I was developing servlets, every month or so the integrated Tomcat would just stop working for no apparent reason. I never had a problem with IntelliJ and standalone Tomcat.

Having to reset your font and color settings for each workspace is tedious. Having the IDE forget some of your key mappings when you start it, even if you haven't changed workspace is downright annoying. Another waste of my time. The whole thing just feels so brittle.

Re:If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad program

[BasilBrush]

You really are an incompetent. Your entire argument is based on a misquote.

Anyway your analogy still sucks, because all of the IDE related tools are available with equal or more power outside the IDE.

You're showing your ignorance again. An IDE is about productivity. You can for example type a complex command in a CLI to do a refactor, but there's no usable interface there to examine preview of the refactor before you do it.

The IDE user leaves you and your primitive tools in the dust.

Re:If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad program

[BasilBrush]

BTW, I see you are still waiting for a single person to agree with your dumb argument.

Re:If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad program

[serviscope_minor]

You really are an incompetent. Your entire argument is based on a misquote.

lolno

Do you deny you actually said precisely this:

No, using an IDE means you are a productive programmer

Because the meaning is entirely clear. I like how you have now admitted that you've lost (by claiming I've "misquoted" you even though the quote is entirely clear). Well done. Nice to see you admit defeat with honour and good grace.

Re:If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad program

[BasilBrush]

Do you deny you actually said precisely this:
No, using an IDE means you are a productive programmer

Do you deny that you made precisely this incorrect quote: "anyone in front of an IDE is productive"

Obviously tools like cut'n'paste are beyond you. You're also too stupid to realise they don't even mean the same thing. You lose.

And I see you're still waiting for a single person to agree with you.

Re:If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad program

[serviscope_minor]

And I see you're still waiting for a single person to agree with you.

Ah I see you're using sociallogic. It's not about the reasoning it's all about the number of likes!

You're right, what I was giving wasn't s direct quote, it's a logical conclusion of what your quote means. If using an IDE means you are a productive programmer, then an idiot who caan't even figure out fizzbuzz using an IDE is, according to your reasoning, a productive programmer.

End result: you said something stupid. Stop trying to defend it, just own it and move on.

Re:If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad program

[BasilBrush]

Nope. It was the answer to the question "If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad programmer". Implicit in the question is whether that particular tool makes him a bad programmer. Everything else is out of context (context, something you'd understand if you were a programmer). Returning the answer in the same framing (context) means that that particular tool makes him more productive.

Everyone else got it. Hence the +5 Insightful. And hence your downmods.

Now, are you going to continue being an ignorant arsehole?

Re:If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad program

[serviscope_minor]

Nope. It was the answer to the question "If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad programmer".

And your reply was that it makes him a productive programmer. Which it doesn't: if he's a bad programmer (irrespective of IDE use), using an IDE won't make him productive. It will make him a bad programmer with an IDE.

So your assertion that an IDE will make him a productive programmer is vapid.

Returning the answer in the same framing (context) means that that particular tool makes him more productive.

MORE is the crucial word there. You didn't use it. So basically this entire thread is due to your inability to actually write clearly and say what you mean. You've as good as admitted it there when you subtly modified what you said to change the meaning entirely. Of course you don't actually have the good grace to come out and say that, but I'll accept what you write as an admission of defeat.

Everyone else got it. Hence the +5 Insightful. And hence your downmods.

Why not take the argument over to facebook to see who gets the most likes, or twitter to see who gets the most retweets? Do you really feel populism is a substitute for reason?

Now, are you going to continue being an ignorant arsehole?

Now I know I've won :) :) :)

Re:If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad program

[BasilBrush]

Now, are you going to continue being an ignorant arsehole?

Now I know I've won :) :) :)

That'd be a yes then.

And still not a single person agrees with you.

Re:If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad program

[serviscope_minor]

I'm glad and surprised you conceded. Well, props to you for admitting it.

And still not a single person agrees with you.

You seem to believe I care.

You should try using your mind for logic and reason than using it for worrying about how popular you are, especially with random people on the internet.

Re:If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad program

[BasilBrush]

What an imbecile you are.

Re:If I use an IDE, does it mean I'm a bad program

[serviscope_minor]

What an imbecile you are.

If you think so...

Bear in mind, I'm not the one making illogical statements and then judging their value on how many "likes" I get.

Semantinc patching

[DrYak]

If you don't like it, you can also try to play around with semantic patching (like coccinelle)