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Discussion on: Why Are Some Developers so Allergic to IDEs?

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nepeckman profile image
nepeckman

I think one reason some developers look down on IDEs is that IDEs offer an abstraction away from the reality of building and maintaining an codebase. It's possible to write in a language like Java and never really understand how the Java language builds and runs. I know some older IDEs even handled the deployment of code, so you could build a whole app without leaving the IDE.

I remember seeing some data from coding interviews that compared performance by the tools a person used. IDE users were much more likely to fail than Vim or Emacs users. I think this is because on average, IDE users are more likely to let the IDE do everything for them, and less likely to learn the platform intricacies. That said, this doesn't mean any individual IDE user is not smart, and I do use intelliJ when writing Java (though not for anything else).

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waterlink profile image
Alex Fedorov

That is an interesting thought.

In some platforms/languages that would be definitely the case. So to be a well-rounded professional a developer needs to be able to proficiently wield both types of tools: a simple one and advanced one.