When people love an IDE product so much that they can't work without it, they have overspecialised to their detriment. And possibly to the detriment of the code itself.

> As for terminal IDEs

The GNU/Linux terminal is the killer app. Multiple terminals in a tiling window manager is peak productivity for me. (Browser in a separate virtual workspace.)

And modern scaling for a big display is unbeatable for developer ergonomics.

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EbEsacAig 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> When people love an IDE product so much that they can't work without it, they have overspecialised to their detriment.

I think you are wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memory

Being extremely good at something increases the gap between said something and everything else. That doesn't mean being extremely good at the first thing is "over-specialization to detriment". If someone is equally mediocre at everything, they have no such gap, so no "over-specialization to detriment"; but is that really worth desiring? I think not.

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jancsika 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Being extremely good at something increases the gap between said something and everything else.

You're also potentially over-specializing at one level while at the same time neglecting other levels.

Musicians run into this problem when, for example, they rely solely on muscle memory to make it through a performance. Throw enough stress and complicated music at them and they quickly buckle.

Meanwhile, a more seasoned performer remembers the exact fingers they used when drilling the measure after their mistake, what pitch is in the bass, what chord they are playing, what inversion that chord is in, the context of that chord in the greater harmonic progression, what section of the piece that harmonic progression is in, and so forth.

A friend of mine was able to improvise a different chord progression after a small mistake. He could do this because he knew where he was in the piece/section/chord progression and where he needed to go in the next measure.

In short, I'm fairly certain OP is talking about these levels of comprehension in computer programming. It's fine if someone is immensely comfortable in one IDE and grumpy in another. But it's not so fine if changing a shortcut reveals that they don't understand what a header file is.

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mxkopy 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What if the IDE is a LeapFrog 2-in-1 Educational Laptop

	▲	johnebgd 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If you make usable products that solve problems for others from that then it’s a great IDE…

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pjmlp 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

As someone that started when only rich people could afford GUIs, I don't understand what is killer app about it.

We used text terminals because that is what we could afford, and I gladly only start a terminal window when I have to.

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eikenberry 12 hours ago | parent [-]

The killer thing about it is that it is a gateway to the shell, all the command line tooling and the best cross-platform UI.

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pjmlp 11 hours ago | parent [-]

Xerox PARC, Atari, Amiga and many others had shells, without needing to live on a teletype world.

It is only cross platform as long as it pretends to be a VT100.

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eikenberry 10 hours ago | parent [-]

It's not about needing to live in a teletype world, it is about how language/text is just a better interface for a general use computer. Computers primary feature is that they are programmable and an interface that allows you to take advantage of that is superior to one that doesn't. The programmable GUIs all failed to gain traction (smalltalk and like), that left the shell (and maybe spreadsheets) as the best UI for this. Though as AIs mature we might see a shift here as they could provide a programmable interface that could rival shell scripting.

	▲	int_19h 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The reason why GUIs became so popular so quickly after they were introduced is because text is not "just a better interface for a general use computer". Like OP, I remember the days when command line was all you had, and even then we used stuff like TUI file managers to mitigate the pain of it.

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wat10000 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why is it to their detriment? It's not like they're stuck with it forever. "Can't work without it" is really "won't work without it because they prefer installing it over going without."

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rpodraza 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Good luck writing Java with notepad.

	▲	pjmlp 13 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		We did that back in 1996, however the sentiment applies to most languages. Example Notepad versus Turbo C++ described on the article.
	▲	int_19h 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Was literally a thing in some colleges.
	▲	anthk 13 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Tons of people did that but with nvi/vim and calling javac by hand.