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Comment by reitanqild | Hacker News Reader

To be clear, do you think a "good IDE" is inherently better than Vim/Kako for most people?

Right now, for most people: very much yes.

Personally i don't see a difference in a GUI based editor and a text based editor. In fact, i quite prefer text based, because it forces an editor to treat the keyboard as a first class citizen - GUI IDEs can get lazy and revert to mouse whenever they please.

Fair point. However: Between the default keybindings of Netbeans on Windows or Linux and the simplicity of customising it to my hearts content I haven't found any reason to abandon it.

I can see the argument that Vim might not be inherently as good as a "good" GUI editor, but i don't think that is a negative towards the potential of text based editors. It just means that we need new editors to focus on the UX, imo.

Here is where I'll argue that the main advantage of the big IDEs are that they have focused on UX for years.

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> Here is where I'll argue that the main advantage of the big IDEs are that they have focused on UX for years.

Yea, i definitely agree there. It's also that GUI IDEs tend to cater towards.. well, a different crowd. What that means in real world terms in often a product with rough edges, confusing patterns, and a horribly steep learning curve.

I enjoy seeing products and languages (programming) focus on learning as core feature of the product. It really is inherently important to a projects success.

Meanwhile, Git has taken over all source control for development despite being possibly one of the worst applications ever created. (Hell, even Lotus Notes tried to be usable-- it failed, but it tried.)

It's a lost cause in this industry.

> Here is where I'll argue that the main advantage of the big IDEs are that they have focused on UX for years.

You say that, but somehow I still find the UX of every IDE I've tried to be lacking. I much prefer the UX of Emacs.

You spent (likely) years learning Emacs. How much time did you spend learning each of those IDEs you've tried?

You have to realize that psychologically: you like things you're familiar with, and dislike things you're unfamiliar with. That's how top-40 radio works. That's why everybody bitches over every new software update, even when the new version is provably better.

So of course you like the thing you spent years with over the thing you tried to learn for a week and a half then gave up on because Emacs is better. That has nothing to do with UX.

I've spent years in Eclipse as well (and still use it every day at work for Java stuff), and I appreciate a lot of the functionality it offers, but I definitely find the UX lacking. It's klunky. Yes, it's maybe more discoverable (although, at least in the case of Ecipse, that's debatable) and some of the keybindings are probably more familiar to most people, but I find that even though Emacs has a bit of a learning curve, once you've gotten past that, the experience of actually using it is very fluid and productive.

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