
Ask HN: Why don't you use IDE? - sahinyanlik
I&#x27;d like to know why you don&#x27;t use editor for java or any strong,static type of language ?
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CyberFonic
My experience with IDEs is limited to Visual Studio and Eclipse. Have toyed
with IntelliJ - but didn't go deep with it.

For me IDEs are slow, complicated and the screens cluttered. There are so many
panels, options, buttons, etc. All I want to see is the code. With vi and
multiple screens I can have more than enough windows open. I let the compiler
generate warnings and errors. With a fast machine running make I hardly ever
have to wait too long.

Besides, cutting code is only about 30% of the effort in a project.
Documentation, testing, support, meetings and more meetings take up the bulk
of my time. I actually enjoy the time I get to do real work! Being more hands
on feels good to me.

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sahinyanlik
But when there are lots of packages,classes interfaces how do you live without
ide intellisense ?

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cyphar
Because VIM works so much better for me than any IDE ever has. It just works,
it's installed everywhere, I don't need graphics to use it (so I can use it on
remote machines), it's fairly scriptable (this is the only thing I have to
give the Emacs guys -- they have a proper programming language for scripting).
Most importantly, I only need to know how to use one text editor, as opposed
to some languages where you need to change IDEs to actually do anything (see:
Xcode, Eclipse, Visual Studio, etc).

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mattkrea
I know this will not be a popular answer but if your program is too
complicated to understand in a text editor I think you might have a problem.

I will however use an IDE if I'm inheriting a project that I can hardly make
sense of.

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davelnewton
My sometimes-use of an IDE has zero to do with ease of understanding, but for
the tools it provides that text editors don't, refactoring being the biggest
one.

Efficacy depends on the language being worked with, of course.

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gamedna
Nothing against IDEs as i have used many in the past. Once i started working
with a large number of distributed systems, having VIM or Emacs foo became
sufficient.

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crispytx
I like to keep it simple.

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davelnewton
I use both.

