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Comment by offtop5 | Hacker News Reader

I like C# simply due to the tooling. I legit left a job since they made me use Eclipse with Java.

The more experience I gain as professional software developer, the more I begin to appreciate that what matters is the entire "ecosystem," rather than what language I'm programming in.

What's the IDE like? How are dependencies managed? Is there a solid framework, as opposed to "move fast and break things" frameworks or "scores of amateurish third-party add-ons to choose from" to solve everyday problems? What's the programming community like? What kind of companies use these solutions, and what's the culture like there?

Tools a big part of what we do. If I were a mechanic, I would rather work on Hondas with a good set of tools than I would Ferraris with tools bought at WalMart.

Personally, I've done only a tiny amount of C# development. I'd have no problem going back to that.

Yeah, C# and Python are my two daily drivers. I think a good case can be made for C# due to excellent tooling and sitting in the sweet spot for statically typed languages: less enterprisey and more practical than Java and less painful than C++.

I never understood why a company would enforce the use of a specific IDE. If they can’t set up .gitignore files and formatting properly, they should not be doing IT.

To be fair eclipse and IntelliJ do different things to set up run configurations. Although I'll agree this is a very very bad sign, I left that job as soon as I could. I will say socially they did a lot of fun stuff, we had tons of parties and everything. Felt almost like a college campus, the actual work environment was horrible though.

Standardized IDEs are incredibly important for productivity in complex software projects. Large applications can get to the point where the build system and IDE kind of meld together, and custom IDE plugins are required to navigate or build the code base.

I've worked at a place where developers didn't do any IDE configuration. The IDE (Visual Studio) was customized by another department then was pushed out to developer machines. This meant that developers could focus on building software and not messing around with configuration and plugins. It also ensured that everyone's code compiled the same, ensured library compatibility, etc.

IDEs may not matter so much on small web apps, but one cannot extend that fact to all of software development.

That’s a huge liability/red flag. Builds should be deterministic, and reproducible. An IDE should have no say in that, that’s what build tools are for. That’s just all around terrible. Also, a sane IDE should be able to make use of the config files of the build tool.

I mean, if you say so. Said project has been around for 25+ years, survived a dozen acquisitions, is actively developed by 1000s of developers all over the globe, and has revenues in the $100s of millions. So clearly they are doing something right.

Personally, I loved never fucking around with IDEs.

Just because one aspect is questionable, doesn’t necessarily effect all the other good ones! So good luck with the project!

My experience with build systems tied to specific IDEs is that they 'foster' homogeneity through fear and ignorance of the build process. Any changes along that axis become impossible in practice. On the other hand, text-based build description languages under version control provided a path to understanding and mastery. Even autotools has been better than weird bespoke IDE build integrations.

Also in my experience, "compatibility" is best enforced by API/ABI/FFI contracts, and commitments to support released versions for a given length of time.

>The IDE (Visual Studio) was customized by another department then was pushed out to developer machines.

Even though that may make sense in some large environments it's not something I could put up with. I'd never take a job somewhere like that.

If you're using Java, definitely give IntelliJ a try. I think it makes writing Java a pretty enjoyable experience.

Agreed, I like IntelliJ. I said since I never know if a Java shop will make me use eclipse again, I tend to shy away from java. Of course I do have a price, if we're doing 200k up I'll put up with Eclipse

I agree. One reason I think people hate VBA so much is because the tooling is abysmal. If you've ever had to work with VBA code in the Excel code editor, you'll understand what I'm talking about. Ironically, both that and Visual Studio are made by the same company.

>they made me use Eclipse with Java.

I mean I do use them quite voluntarily. That's the thing that annoy(ed) so much.

Doesn't Eclipse feel a bit dated to you ?

Like they wrote the UI in 1999 and never updated it

> Doesn't Eclipse feel a bit dated to you ?

I wonder what you'd say about the command line. The interface has not changed for like 40y+.

I 1st started using eclipse in 2006 or so, while writing some plugins (post compilation byte code editing) in 2003-2004. The UI has been updated somewhat since, not drastically, though. I've got pretty decent understanding how it works internally and what functionality is available.

Truth be told, updating the UI just to look modern might find some fans but to many it'd make it less usable for no good reason. For instance I don't want my hand drill to feature an OLED display, coupled with bluetooth just b/c it's cool and dandy.

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