IDEs, static linters, and syntax highlighters aren't designed to replace any part of the problem solving process, but rather augment them. It's impossible to become dependent on any of these tools to the point where your cognitive skills begin to atrophy, unlike LLMs [1].
IDEs, static linters, and syntax highlighters aren't the cause of a global microchip shortage, immensely increased energy demand, or the destruction of rare works. They have not, at any point, been the cause of effectively DDoS attacks in an effort to slurp up all of the internet's data, or the extensive proliferation of hallucinated content on the internet.
The development of IDEs, static linters, and syntax highlighters has at no point employed low-paid labor from third world countries for data labelling or safety filtering, exposing thousands of people to violent and abusive content for multiple hours a day.
Any of these issues alone would be a reasonable cause for adopting a policy to avoid using such tools. Calling it equivalent to not using IDEs or linters is bizarre to me.
Yet nevertheless, both e.g. syntax highlighting and intellisense have been heralded as things that "fry ur brain". So have high level programming languages by the way.
To give you a particularly specific example, Rob Pike really wants you to know that if you use syntax highlighting, he thinks of you as a child.
And the human beings who use them to produce code don't produce deterministic results either. Current harnesses have come a long a way to make non determinism not be a problem for quite a few areas. And the scope keeps increasing every day.
AI is as deterministic as a human programmer. A programmer who is burned out and has not slept well produces code of a different quality than a programmer who has slept well and is highly motivated. That's hardly deterministic. AI can be made deterministic enough if you have strict quality gates, just like with humans.
There were many folks rejecting IDes for long while and also RAD. They kept doing assembly and C with macros’ all over.
Still I’m quite alright with people kneading on one hand while there’s the big bad Jacquard Loom.
BTW I vividly remember there was the older non-programmable loom at my grandmas place and it was huge. Like one room big. People used both techniques though and nobody hated it. Eventually there was also a foot powered Zinger and eventually the electrical one. All these coexisted and I’ve never seen a printed manifesto against any of them.
more on the insane side - sure, very little on the reasonable and constructive side. unless im mistaken, but yes. they did more than print shit, they actually were menacing aggressive rude docker folk.
Also there are already non-VC subsidized hosted open weights LLM providers which should give you a very good sense of the marginal cost.