
Show HN: Vy – a powerful but retro and minimalist IDE - iogf
https://github.com/vyapp/vy
======
nine_k
What I love about this project is that a lot of it is glue code.

It is an _integrated_ development environment because it takes existing tools
and integrates them, not rewrites.

I also like that you can develop plugins in the core language (like elisp +
elisp, unlike C + vimscript), this removes some of the "impedance mismatch"
between "native" and "scripted" parts.

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AndrewOMartin
You may be interested in the significance of the repo's "aggressive
militarized snake smoking a pipe" avatar.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_Expeditionary_Force#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_Expeditionary_Force#Nickname)

(Avatar here: [https://github.com/vyapp](https://github.com/vyapp))

~~~
tutuca
I don't understand what could that mean in this context. How do you read it?

~~~
AndrewOMartin
I don't think it has a link to the repo, I guess they just liked the cool
picture with a snake, and a Python is a type of snake.

I just wanted to draw attention to the fact that an aggressive snake smoking a
pipe has a particular symbolism.

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rtpg
One "truly retro" experience I had recently at the Computer History Museum was
messing around with QBasic. The instant feedback of the documentation, in
particular, was really powerful.

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psv1
This looks interesting. On editors in general - if I'm working with an
interpreted language, what I need from a code editor is:

\- decent autocomplete and inline documentation

\- good REPL which can send a block of code to the interpreter and preserve
state so I can work interactively

\- to have a variable inspector

\- to work with plain text files

RStudio has been by far the best IDE ticking all the boxes for me. Still
haven't found anything that comes close for Python - RStudio's support for
Python simply isn't reliable, VSCode's Python extension has a bad REPL,
Jupyter doesn't use plain text, Spyder's REPL isn't great either, PyCharm's
scientific mode isn't free, I gave up on setting up Emacs several times
because of how frustrating the whole process was. Any suggestions?

~~~
m712
Emacs + company-mode + lsp-mode + pipenv-mode (for virtualenv packages) work
great for me. What was your setup and what kind of issues did you have with
it?

~~~
psv1
Thanks, I'll have a look at these.

What I tried last time is following this - [https://realpython.com/emacs-the-
best-python-editor/](https://realpython.com/emacs-the-best-python-editor/) and
I ended up with a glitchy autocomplete which was filling a big part of the
screen without showing any text.

~~~
m712
I recommend using Emacs Prelude, which already auto-configures most of what
I've described. You just need to enable a few modules for it and you're good
to go.

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misterdoubt
I like the idea. The scrollbar jail bars are pretty jarring with regard to
'minimalist' sensibilities.

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yuchi
Engineers tend to misuse “minimalist” when they mean “brutalist” or “spartan”.

Minimalist in the code doesn’t reflect on minimalism on the interface, and
when you apply an adjective to the description of your product you are
characterizing the overall experience and visible surface (UI)… not the
“backend” that makes it possible!

You can have very baroque UIs without writing that much code, and it would
still be considered “minimal” on the code side.

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Bnshsysjab
I’m an emacs user, but barely know lisp, know python very well, and feel there
are some limitations to emacs extensibility (namely wrapping external
applications and debugging).

Convince me to switch

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lytedev
What? Why? It sounds like you convinced yourself to try it...

~~~
Bnshsysjab
What features make it the editor or choice?

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mdszy
Why don't you just try it instead of asking someone to convince you that you
should?

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mattl
Why would you call it Vy? Doesn’t that seem a little self defeating?

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lucasmullens
It's just a portmanteau of vim and py(thon). What's wrong with it?

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jdmichal
Because `vi` pronounced as "vee eye" (/vi ai/) and I'm assuming `vy`
pronounced as "vie" (/vai/) are extremely similar.

~~~
notduncansmith
Funny, I’ve always pronounced “vi” like “vai”

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jstrong
lost me at 'python'. if this is still fast in another year I will be amazed.

~~~
eximius
I wonder if you could add a `python --fast` mode that disables certain rarely
or uncommonly used dynamic features that enabled the python runtime to JIT or
do something clever.

Alternatively, doesn't disable, just does unwinding like speculative execution
on processors.

Alternatively, is basically just adding PyPy to CPython.

I guess no new ideas here.

~~~
Asooka
Yep, it was tried. See: Unladen Swallow - an experimental CPython fork trying
to speed up execution by removing some of the least used dynamism. It started
10 years ago and was abandoned 8 years ago. Retrospective at
[http://qinsb.blogspot.com/2011/03/unladen-swallow-
retrospect...](http://qinsb.blogspot.com/2011/03/unladen-swallow-
retrospective.html)

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jonny383
Does the world really need another retro "IDE" (especially one written in
Python).

Just use VIM, NeoVIM, or Emacs.

~~~
dang
Can you please read the Show HN guidelines and follow them in Show HN threads?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

Note this also from the site guidelines:

" _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A
good critical comment teaches us something._"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

