Ask HN: What modern “legendary” programmer prefers IDE other than Vim or Emacs?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33713015

by mattewong • 4 years ago

8 25 4 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

By "modern" I mean, started programming around a time when emacs, vim AND other (e.g. Visual Studio) were available to choose from

themodelplumber2• 4 years ago

I remembered this Geany example.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePZEkbbf3fc

Bio:

My name is Kamil Dębowski (or Errichto) and I'm quite good at competitive programming. I'm a finalist of multiple big programming competitions like ICPC, Facebook Hacker Cup and Google Code Jam (even got 2nd place in 2018). I also organize competitions, which means inventing and preparing problems.

Not sure if they still use Geany, or if you consider this person legendary (some people really gatekeep around words like that), but there's at least a data point for you.

mattewong6• 4 years ago

Had not seen that before thank you!

yeputons2• 4 years ago

That's for competitive programming, you really want to stick with the most common tools there. Otherwise you have to learn different set of stuff for each on-site competition. Common as in "included in the standard OS image at competitions".

For example, I use Far Manager/Kate for competitive programming and small scripts (sometimes Vim), but not way I use any of these for professional development.

themodelplumber2• 4 years ago

Trying to understand this--are Far Manager & Kate included in the standard OS image at competitions, but your favorite work IDE is not? Or is it more that your work config files & plugins are not available/needed in competitions?

mattewong6• 4 years ago

interesting, had no idea of those limitations / considerations in competitive programming

smoldesu• 4 years ago

I dunno. Mark Zuckerberg?

mattewong6• 4 years ago

From what I gather, Zuckerberg used emacs, so unless that information is wrong, then he would not be a responsive answer to this question. Thanks anyway

mattl2• 4 years ago

So anyone programming in the last 25 years or so?

25 years ago I was using a mix of Visual Studio and Emacs. 25 years later I use Emacs a bit but don’t write much code. I use BBEdit more than Emacs now.

mattewong6• 4 years ago

That's another one I hadn't seen before. thanks!

mattl2• 4 years ago

BBEdit is about the same age as vim both came out in 1992.

athielking• 4 years ago

I know John Carmack prefers an IDE. I believe he talks about it in this interview with Lex Fridman

https://youtu.be/I845O57ZSy4

mattewong6• 4 years ago

Great resource, thank you!

karp7732• 4 years ago

Spoiler: He mentioned the old Visual Studio (not VS Code).

orf2• 4 years ago

Honest question: what’s the point of this question? what does it matter?

If “legendary programmers” all chiseled bits into a disk with a scalpel would that make it a good idea?

Use whatever makes you comfortable and allow others to do the same. Don’t emulate or even care about “legendary programmers” tooling.

karp7732• 4 years ago

Let me respectfully disagree. Tooling is super important in any trade but in programming it can make be multiplier (all other things being equal).

orf2• 4 years ago

It's like saying "What modern olympic gold medal runners prefer Adidas shoes over Nike?", with the implication that Adidas shoes are inferior in some way.

They are olympians, you're not. Use whatever shoes you want to use.

Tooling does matter, but what "legendary programmers" tooling looks like doesn't outside of a professional curiosity.

ano88888• 4 years ago

if you don't learn from the best, how do you improve?

pjmlp• 4 years ago

If IT would actually learn from the past it wouldn't be a fashion driven industry.

nequo• 4 years ago

Legendary programmers don’t become legendary because of their text editors but because of the code that they write.

Linus Torvalds has used a janky version of micro Emacs that he picked up as a university student in Finland.[1] Will it make you a better programmer if you switch to his editor? No. Just use whatever you are comfortable with, like he has. He has used this editor because he got used to its peculiar keybindings. He rather worked on the kernel than to learn new keybindings.

[1] https://github.com/torvalds/uemacs

tails4e• 4 years ago

Andreas kling of serenityOS uses clion, and makes good use of its features. He's an awesome programmer, and no doubt proficient in vim if he needs to be, but seeing him interact with the IDE does shown its use, especially with the speed he operates at.

mattewong6• 4 years ago

Thank you, had not heard of him and found some useful info in various places including: https://usesthis.com/interviews/andreas.kling/

wilg2• 4 years ago

emacs and vim people write code that is as confusing as their editors. change my view

jasonjmcghee• 4 years ago

Seems short-sighted to jump to conclusions about people's output based on the tools they use.

wilg2• 4 years ago

well, yes, true. but the design of your environment affects your design sensibilities

Ask HN: What modern “legendary” programmer prefers IDE other than Vim or Emacs?

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