So, you’ve never known any Unix hackers? I worked for a student datacenter when I was at university, and we were mostly vim users; as far as text-editor diversity, we did have one guy who was into emacs and another who preferred nano. After that, I went to work at Google, where I continued to use vim. As far as fancy IDE features, I do use syntax highlighting and I know how to use the spell checker but I don’t use autocomplete. I’ve heard of neovim but don’t have a good reason to try it out yet; maybe next decade?
I’m one of those nano weirdos. I mean, I get why people use vi/vim, but I’m a lazy man who has the nano shortcuts hardwired into my muscle memory. It’s definitely not as full-featured as vim, but it does what I need it to do quickly and easily. If I need to just quickly drop into a file and do a find/replace, takes me maybe 3 seconds.
Also, to share an ancient joke from the dawn of computing: emacs is a great OS, I just hope someone makes a decent text editor for it eventually.
I admit I haven’t known any Unix hackers! I guess my type of work had me assuming they would still prefer an IDE. What is it about this kind of development that makes you prefer text editors, if you don’t mind my asking?
Everything is interoperable, extensible, scriptable, and more. CLI tools are designed to run fast/instant, have keyboard shortcuts for everything, and be deeply customizable. The openness and variety cannot be overstated, Google “CLI file explorer” and you’ll easily find at least 10. Nobody has the same exact setup because it gets molded to match how your brain works. Go for popular tools, niche setups, or both.
Graphical IDEs could also run fast/instant and have keyboard shortcuts for everything, but their users don’t demand it. If you wished the file explorer/git integration/debugger/etc worked a bit differently, there might be a plugin, if you’re lucky. Many operations can only be invoked manually via sequence of dialog boxes or mouse clicks or both.
So, you’ve never known any Unix hackers? I worked for a student datacenter when I was at university, and we were mostly vim users; as far as text-editor diversity, we did have one guy who was into emacs and another who preferred nano. After that, I went to work at Google, where I continued to use vim. As far as fancy IDE features, I do use syntax highlighting and I know how to use the spell checker but I don’t use autocomplete. I’ve heard of neovim but don’t have a good reason to try it out yet; maybe next decade?
I’m one of those nano weirdos. I mean, I get why people use vi/vim, but I’m a lazy man who has the nano shortcuts hardwired into my muscle memory. It’s definitely not as full-featured as vim, but it does what I need it to do quickly and easily. If I need to just quickly drop into a file and do a find/replace, takes me maybe 3 seconds.
Also, to share an ancient joke from the dawn of computing: emacs is a great OS, I just hope someone makes a decent text editor for it eventually.
I admit I haven’t known any Unix hackers! I guess my type of work had me assuming they would still prefer an IDE. What is it about this kind of development that makes you prefer text editors, if you don’t mind my asking?
Consider the shell itself to be “the IDE”
Everything is interoperable, extensible, scriptable, and more. CLI tools are designed to run fast/instant, have keyboard shortcuts for everything, and be deeply customizable. The openness and variety cannot be overstated, Google “CLI file explorer” and you’ll easily find at least 10. Nobody has the same exact setup because it gets molded to match how your brain works. Go for popular tools, niche setups, or both.
Graphical IDEs could also run fast/instant and have keyboard shortcuts for everything, but their users don’t demand it. If you wished the file explorer/git integration/debugger/etc worked a bit differently, there might be a plugin, if you’re lucky. Many operations can only be invoked manually via sequence of dialog boxes or mouse clicks or both.