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>Massive build instructions […] would never happen when using a plain editor.

How many non trivial projects do you compile by hand rather than using an automated build system (make etc)? How does autoconf or cmake prevent or discourage you from using 'massive build instructions'? Why is turning on more warnings or other compiler options a bad thing?

>Probably Java has a part of its verbose reputation due to the abuse of IDEs. It's just so easy to use 60 letter function names, if you used a regular editor, people would not do this because their hands would start to hurt.

You are talking about code-completion. What 'regular editor' do you use that doesn't have at least basic support for code-completion? pico/nano? Notepad?

When these arguments/rants come up, it seems that the definition of 'IDE' changes to fit the argument being made. If somebody suggests they prefer to use an IDE because it has code-completion, they are quickly told that plain editor X also has code-completion. Then it is argued that IDEs are bad because they have code-completion which encourages you to write verbose code. This seems to extend to many other 'IDE' features: I've seen people argue against inline documentation lookup, against syntax highlighting, against a 'build' or compile command in the editor, against 'jump to definition', against interactive debuggers. I've also seen people argue that all those things are available in 'plain editors' and thus there is no need to use an IDE to get them.

At this point I've no idea at all what the difference is between an IDE and 'plain editor'. Other than truly basic editors that hardly anybody uses to code, I think just about everything could be called an IDE.




Agreed, my workflow is basically the same whether I use an editor or IDE.

The only difference being that sometimes I wish the editor had more features and sometimes I wish the IDE had less stuff on the screen so I could just see the code.

It is however a lot easier to configure an IDE into a dumb editor than it is the other way around.




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