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Comment by fartcannon | Hacker News Reader

In Linux, it often feels like the whole OS is the IDE. In the same shell, you can edit source files, compile, debug, execute, rename, search, create and execute scripts to do literally anything with any language, use git, surf the web, update, reboot, launch a game, etc, etc.

An IDE on top of that always felt restricting to me. Like why limit yourself? But maybe that's a windows/Mac thing.

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> the whole OS is the IDE

This view is exactly the view esposed by Brian W. Kernighan and Rob Pike in The Unix Programming Environment from 1984:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unix_Programming_Environme...

What about refactoring tools? What about integrated debugging, stepping right into the code you're editing on your screen? What about hot reload?

If Unixheads would stop pretending their stone-knives-and-bearskins development tools were equivalent to full-fledged IDEs, development would have advanced much more than it has decades ago.

I use both, one method is just less restrictive.

The whole "real men use vi" type superiority complex failure mode is intensely annoying (and I say this as somebody who often has original ex-vi installed) but the inverted version where you just have a superiority complex from the opposite direction isn't actually any better.

It continues to amaze me that "it's worth becoming familiar with a wide range of tools and then pick the one that's going to work best for you in any given situation" is a concept so many people have trouble with.

Def. Just be careful not to read passion as a superiority complex, or a recommendation as condemnation.

This is why normally I err on the side of complaining at "anti-IDE" people since my setup is way more minimalist than most of theirs so at least I'm complaining about people who're theoretically on the same side :)

We have that to. We even have post Mortem debugging. Did you know you can load a core dump into gdb? To me it seems like a new generation of developers is reinventing the wheel because they don’t know about what tools are available.

> What about refactoring tools?

The old unix editors have had rename across project, find references, go to definition/implementation for several years at this point via lsps (the same way vscode gets its functionality).

> What about integrated debugging

Those are usually (slightly ecosystem dependent) wrappers around a terminal debugger.

> What about hot reload?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but these are also wrappers around cli functionality (once again, might be ecosystem dependent). And you're probably just saving yourself the trouble of writing/running a script.

>>What about integrated debugging

>Those are usually (slightly ecosystem dependent) wrappers around a terminal debugger.

And, in my experience, are vastly more convenient than terminal debuggers alone.

Running an IDE doesn't stop me interacting with the shell, why would it?

In fact lots of IDEs have a nice little terminal baked in to use. Just depends which way you wanna go about using these tools, yah know?

The whole system is the IDE in the sense that it's meant to be an "integrated development environment".

But that's not really a good thing: you only have one system, therefore only one environment.

For example:

How do you use multiple versions of the same library for different project? It's not an easy thing to do if you rely on the system paths for libraries.

It's much better if libraries are just a thing you install to the current project rather than being a system wide thing.

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