Hacker News Reader

> The IDE can be the “Swiss Army Knife of features” and I’m glad it’s there, just like the Victorinox I keep in my backpack.

I feel like it's the opposite, vim is my swiss army knife for working with rust or cpp or python whenever I want whereas the IDE is something I open to work on specific, more complex projects where I just care about getting something done (like my homework).

View on HN

IMO neither of them are really "Swiss army knives". Multitools are pretty bad as actual tools, we just use them because carrying around an entire toolbox is nuts. It's not the versatility that makes them good, it's the form factor.

If I had to compare tech to real life tools, then IDEs would be food processors: heavy, extremely good at what they do, make some things possible and other things trivial, best at scale. And vim would be, I dunno, a really nice chef's knife? But you can't serrate a chef's knife. Whatever, analogies are dumb.

(Emacs of course would be a smart fridge running emacs as an OS.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com