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Comment by RyEgswuCsn | Hacker News Reader

Getting better equipment (larger screens, faster computers, licences) would solve most of your concerns with the IDEs. And getting better equipment usually soon becomes a non-problem for professional programmers.

Having an IDE is like hiring a side-kick --- if the side-kick is component enough and you can afford them, why wouldn't you hire one?

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Not everyone who codes is a professional programmer.

> if the side-kick is component enough and you can afford them, why wouldn't you hire one?

Because it doesn't provide anything actually useful for me.

Also, I don't want to use proprietary software for moral reasons.

Then the problem isn't IDEs cripple productivity, it is simply that one may not be operating at a scale that benefit from using them.

There are many decent open source IDEs (e.g. NetBeans and Eclipse for Java).

... and IDEA community edition is also free. There's no reason to not choose any of the major IDEs on the basis of cost. You can get free and quite workable editions of all of them, and they're open source as well, so the "moral quandary" is avoidable unless it's artificial.

What's your definition of "proprietary?" All of the major IDEs are open-source in their free editions.

I mean, more seriously, I get it: you have a bee in your bonnet and you will find any reason possible to avoid it. VIM 4EVA and all that, raise your fist and yell.

But I wouldn't even bother with Java as any serious endeavor if I were you; a lot of employers will ask your preference of IDE just to get a sense of who you are as a programmer, and will hide their giggles when you say "I use emacs/vim/notepad++ like a BAWSSSS!" and move on to the next candidate who'll get the performance magnifier of a common and free tool.

> “I use emacs/vim/notepad++ like a BAWSSSS!”

What a strawman. I don't use Neovim with the intent of looking cool or something, but because it makes me highly productive, gives me complete control over my editing experience and I can use it anywhere, not just on powerful desktop computers with a large screen.

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