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Comment by alexmuro | Hacker News Reader

Stuff like this makes me wonder what % of devs use IDE's vs text editors. Personally I can't see myself going over to an IDE, and I would have thought that most 'non traditional microsoft developers' wouldn't consider it either but maybe I am way off base.

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I've done development both with and without an IDE and I find debugging vastly easier with an IDE. How do developers who don't use IDEs do debugging other than with print to console statements? Do they all use tools like gdb and lldb?

I've pondered learning how to use a tool like gdb or lldb and then using SublimeText for editing the code, but it looks like a lot more work than just clicking to set a breakpoint in an IDE. I'm curious to hear what non-IDE developers are using for debugging.

Of course there are debuggers outside of the IDE world. For instance in Ruby we usually use a debugger as a library (gem) and we call it as a method call wherever you would put the breakpoint in your IDE.

Typing in a method call on the line where you want to debug isn't much of a leap from clicking a breakpoint.

I am sure the situation is similar in other languages.

The big difference I'd point out is that breakpoints can be added and removed at runtime. Sounds like what you're describing is a situation where you have to modify your source code to add a breakpoint (similar to a "debugger" statement in JavaScript or C#). To me, the big value of an IDE is that it lets you set/unset breakpoints, step, inspect arbitrary data, and modify application state, all at runtime. Now, I still typically work in VIM and pop open an IDE/debugger only when I hit a hairy problem, but I still find them really useful in those cases.

gdb on single threaded C code wasn't bad. I tended to put all the "static" data for a module within a structure, usually called "m", and would have the debugger do a "print m" and a "locals" automatically whenever it hit a breakpoint. This showed you pretty much the same data that a Java or C# GUI debugger does when you stop, albeit wrapped on a long line instead of one per line in a scrolling list. If you were really hard core, you could run gdb inside of emacs, and the edit window would follow along the right source files when you stepped and hit breakpoints.

Honestly, back in 1994, gdb (as well as Borland Turbo Debugger) did way better auto-formatting of data than the MS C IDE did.

I have not used VS since 2005, but it's debugger seemed no better than Eclipse or NetBeans. I started using IntelliJ this year, it's portable, and it rocks. But it costs money, just like Visual Studio.

I can't understand why people wouldn't use an ide. I mean, an ide is a text editor, plus lots of useful extras. It's an objective fact, not an opinion. (Where is the line drawn between ide and text editor anyway?)

Performance has not been a valid argument in this question for the past 5 years. And just because an ide has project wide refactoring and semantic search doesn't automatically mean it doesn't have good hotkeys or text transformation tools...

There's a /great/ video to watch - Programming with Hand Tools by Ewald. The ending is a twist. It's actually not about IDEs. You expect it to be... but then there's a twist at the end and he talks about something completely different. Great presentation. It has a cool star wars reference too.

  > Where is the line drawn between ide and text editor anyway

When people say a text editor, it tends to imply having a single powerful general-purpose editor as your go-to for most work.

I've used Vim for about 19 years, and Visual Studio for about 15.

There really isn't much difference between typing :make and hitting F5. Both have syntax highlighting.

Where Visual Studio beats all others is:

- Debugger

- Intellisense

There are lots of other nifty features, but those two are what make me choose to use Visual Studio for some projects over Vim/shell tools.

The JetBrains IDE's (e.g. - IntelliJ, WebStorm) are pretty good, and they run on Windows, Mac and Linux. To me, JetBrains seems like the new Borland (in so far as they are focused on the stuff Borland did well - programmer edit / debug / profile tools), only without the language lock-in. (I started using the JB stuff a few months ago, and I am hooked now)

Like NetBeans, JetBrains also have a vi[m] plugin, so you get both vim style rapid edit commands AND auto-complete, lookup, debugging, etc.

Does Visual Studio have the "Awesome Edition" on all 3 major platforms?

Nope, but it has edit-and-continue debugging on windows.

I recall having trouble with a library crashing under Linux. I looked over the build scripts for it, created a corresponding Visual Studio project for it in Windows, and got it compiling. I then stepped through it with the debugger, edit-and-continue to fix the issue, and then copying the working source code back over to Linux.

I probably could have used gdb, but the debugger in Visual Studio is so good it was worth it. Debugging in gdb is more work than it was to port the library over, and that sucks.

Visual Studio Code has Intellisense for Javascript. I never want to go back.

To what? Notepad? Just kidding, but you didn't state the alternative :-)

Other IDEs have auto-completion (even for Javascript) as well.

Some also have vi[m] plugins for edit keys, so it's the best of both worlds.

Many do static parsing. I found even Atom's Autocomplete+ is far too primitive to be of much use. Whereas VS Code doesn't even support JSX and yet it does a better job at autocompleting.

My two cents on this is that IDEs work better for me personally on large projects. If I just banging out some JS or HTML, then any old text editor will do. If, however, I'm knee-deep in dozens or hundreds of Java classes there is simply no substitute for a project-oriented IDE that supports things like project-wide refactoring, dependency awareness, and type checking (among many other features). Personally, VS has long been my favorite IDE, but I've only gotten to use it on a handful of C# projects. Most of the time I'm coding in Eclipse, and I've learned to really appreciate all that it offers. It's not the most intuitive IDE, but it sure is flexible.

The post is all about cross-platform development with the Visual Studio Online service for source control (e.g. git) and project management. You use the text / code editor of your choice, no IDE required.

If you work with a strictly typed language with large libraries, there is just no way you can be efficient without parameter help (intellisense) and so on. Having to lookup method signatures in a web page just isn't feasible. Sure, most of the large text editors such as sublime/emacs/vim can integrate a debugger, compiler/autocompleter and so on. At that point they are IDE:s!

If you work with a dynamically typed languages and/or web things then things aren't so black and white.

The best is Eclipse, millions of downloads for the current version: https://eclipse.org/downloads/

I use vi for files no larger than a page or two unless it's Java then right into Eclipse. I guarantee whatever you think you can do fast without a good IDE, even Visual Studio or NetBeans, I can do 5 to 10 times faster and better and more bug free and prettier and more stable and more maintainable.

Some devs are infinitely more productive with an integrated debugger. They use an IDE. I'm one of them when the situation is right (C++).

I use the VC IDE for debugging, but not for anything else. There is still no text editor on the market that pushes all the buttons that BRIEF did in 1990.

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