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Comment by frant-hartm | Hacker News Reader

> Or am I just confessing ignorance and this isn’t a thing and it’s no more complex and magical than Rust or JavaScript or Python?

This is it. There are things which are better in Java than in the other ecosystems you mentioned (e.g. dependency management) and there are things which are worse (the language is more chatty, maybe the designs tend to be more convoluted, but this differs project to project). Even enterprise Java has come a long way, it's different to what it has been a decade ago, it's definitely more lean.

Every sane developer uses either Jetbrains' product for JS, Python or Rust, or they use VS Code, which, after installing all plugins to reach the same productivity as with Jetbrains, becomes an IDE as well.

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> Every sane developer uses either Jetbrains' product for JS, Python or Rust, or they use VS Code, which, after installing all plugins to reach the same productivity as with Jetbrains, becomes an IDE as well.

You seem to vastly overestimate the usage of IDEs with scripting languages. In my experience, the vast majority of developers working with scripting languages such as JavaScript, Python or Rust, still use plain text editors such as Vim or Sublime Text. They find these editors to be more convenient and faster than IDEs.

Even people who are on VS Code seem to be using only the built-in language support for scripting.

The Python Software Foundation did a survey (in partnership with JetBrains) and found that 66% of Python developers use VSCode or PyCharm.

https://lp.jetbrains.com/python-developers-survey-2021/#Deve...

State of JS doesn't seem to include the question any more, but it found in 2019 that about 70% used one of the two (mostly VSCode).

https://2019.stateofjs.com/other-tools/

VSCode may not be a full IDE without extra plugins enabled, but it's a far cry from a plain text editor.

> scripting languages such as JavaScript, Python or Rust

one of these, is not like the others :)

> They find these editors to be more convenient and faster than IDEs.

FWIW, survey responses from 2021 imply that 54% of Rust devs use VSCode, 28% use a vi variant and 21% use IntelliJ[1].

[1]: Page 19, https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rust-lang/surveys/main/sur...

They counted 103% of users and couldn’t find a single one using emacs!!! /s

Probably people like me who use either vsc or vim depending on circumstance

> In my experience, the vast majority of developers working with scripting languages such as JavaScript, Python or Rust, still use plain text editors such as Vim or Sublime Text.

Definitely not in my experience, most people I know use VSCode, which I wouldn't call a plain text editor (not necessarily an IDE either though). Most people will use the plugins for each language since those are auto-recommended when you open a new file in that language, such as Pylance for Python, and most people will click "install recommended plugins" and call it a day.

Vim users are few and far between in my experience, and Sublime Text even more so, most everyone has migrated to VSCode at this point that I know of.

I tend towards simple GUI text editors (Sublime and gedit), but I'm not really a developer. That said, I do use VSCode for anything that has to touch a git repository because screw trying to manage that on the command line. I wonder if that's what tends to push people towards an IDE if they weren't already using one.

I use VSCode, but still use the command line for managing git. Old habits die hard, I guess.

Me too! Although I am playing with Sublime merge lately - it is pretty handy for creating branches off of specific commits, looking at diffs across branches etc.

Most vimdevs (myself included) have a plethora of plugins cobbling together a custom and comfy IDE. Almost no one is using a plain text editor now.

And emacs users never had a plain text editor, never claimed as such, and woe be to you if you call it such in front of them. Lol.

I don’t know, I can count on one hand all the websites that still just sprinkle a bit of vanilla JS written in notepad.. JS frameworks absolutely need an IDE, so does python frameworks.

But surely, for advent of code scripting you don’t need it, but neither does Java.

The nice thing is being able to use the IDE or a simple text editor and be productive. There are times where a text editor is just right. There are times where the IDE is just right. And with Java... well, very rarely does the text editor fit.

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