• @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    73
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    I REALLY hate articles like this

    Saying we “lost” this software just shows that people don’t understand what software design/engineering is.

    Basically every screenshot of the “lost” TUIs look like a normal emacs/vim session for anyone who has learned about splits and :term (guess which god I believe in?). And people still use those near constantly. Hell, my workflow is generally a mix between vim and vscode depending upon what machine and operation I am working on. And that is a very normal workflow.

    And that is what we want out of software development. The good ideas move forward. The less good ideas become plugins for sickos. Because everyone loves vscode right now but… Microsoft is shitting that up REAL fast with copilot and just wait until every employer on the planet realizes that and ban it.

    And the rest just ignores the point of an IDE. Yes, taking your hand off the keyboard to touch the mouse LOWERS YOUR EFFICIENCY*. But it also means you can switch between languages or even environments trivially. Yes, it is often more annoying to dig through twelve menus to find what you want or talk a co-worker through how to do basic git operations that would be three commands. But holy crap I hate the people who “can’t work without my settings” that mean they are incapable of doing any “live” debugging or doing any peer programming where they aren’t driving.

    Back in the day we had plenty of people who were angry that not everyone was using vi and a bunch of tcsh scripts to develop because it clearly meant they didn’t understand what they were doing and were too dependent on compilers and debuggers. And it was just as stupid then as it is now.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        63 months ago

        If you need an “off the shelf, low effort” IDE then you pick whether you are using VSCode or Vim/Emacs and then go to youtube and google “best plugins for ${LANGUAGE} in ${EDITOR}”. And you get basically a minute of copy pasting to have it set up to about the same level of optimization.

        Aside from that? The reality is that everything takes time to learn. It took you time to learn your preferred emacs config. It took me time to learn default vim and then what my preferred vim config should be and how to take advantage of it. Just like it took time to learn the editor that came with python on windows for years (still might?).

        Which gets back to this being a boomer ass article.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        43 months ago

        Emacs had some “premade IDE” project I recall that I tried and wasn’t that enthusiastic about.

        Doom Emacs, spacemacs, etc.

        And there are plenty of nvim “distros” like that (lazyvim for example).

        They make getting started pretty easy. I’ve been using Doom for years and never bothered to make a full config of my own.

    • @[email protected]OP
      link
      fedilink
      53 months ago

      Yes, the title the author chose is a bit err, clickbaity. But there were still decent introductions to few old IDEs. Maybe if he had covered more(maybe some niche ones?), it would have been better.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        73 months ago

        Yes. A much less boomer-coded article would be better.

        But as someone who has actually used a lot of the various IDEs over the decades and keeps coming back to vim (and is already expecting to go back to vim within a year because of invasive copilot shit…): Those niche editors? They are either genuinely bad ideas (think TempleOS levels of insanity) or they became plugins for every other IDE. I like vim a lot but emacs is the same (actually emacs is an OS with a text interface but…). And many of those plugins ALSO exist for vscode and atom/sublime and so forth.

        Because good (uncopyrighted…) ideas propagate. That is development and design.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            23 months ago

            It has Evil if that’s your thing :)

            I dislike that it takes way too long to boot, but IMO the defaults are just fine.

            • @[email protected]
              link
              fedilink
              23 months ago

              I dislike that it takes way too long to boot

              1. Use the Daemon, it starts a new client in a fraction of a second
              2. Improve your config and it’ll start in under a second anyways
              • @[email protected]
                link
                fedilink
                43 months ago

                TBF, I don’t even remember why I stopped using the daemon. But it’s currently 3 seconds, so I dislike it… but not so much that I’d prioritize solving the problem versus complaining about it on the internet…

                Anyway, I’m adding the server into my DE’s startup. Thanks for the reminder.

  • @leftzero
    link
    47
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    You might not like it, but Borland yellow on blue was peak IDE design.

    Nostalgic!

    Personally, I have downloaded Borland themes for all my IDEs. I don’t use them, of course, because I’m not entirely insane and I value my eyesight too much, but I have downloaded them.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      6
      edit-2
      3 months ago

      I have Borland based themes because I want contrast. I hate all these pastel dull themes where all the colors are a similar hue or shade. Who uses them? How do they use them?

      Turbo Pascal was my first proper IDE. I remember our school had a new Ibm Ps/2 which ran dos 4.something, it had the text ui based editor, but it was just an editor. Turbo Pascal is where I spent 3 years of college, day and night.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        53 months ago

        I have a colleague who is really into Rick and Morty and has colorful hair. He’s one of those who has a pink/purple theme with little to no contrast. I keep my distance.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        43 months ago

        I use the cyberpunk theme in visual studio professional and it’s pretty easy to read the text.

        • @leftzero
          link
          43 months ago

          Gah! A bit too much for me, but if you want contrast it’s certainly got it.

          Cyberpunk, chooms!

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            23 months ago

            Yeah some of my coworkers are not keen, but each to their own.

            The only thing that sucks is the search box above the solution explorer kinda is invisible when not in focus which is strange.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          23 months ago

          Yeah I found one forJetbrains Goland. So I have my Borland one in webstorm and the Cyberpunk in Goland so I can tell which editor I’m in.

      • @leftzero
        link
        23 months ago

        I want contrast

        Sure, but you can also have contrast with a dark background that isn’t constantly shooting a third of the photons your screen can generate (or more, since in some screens blue pixels are the largest), and the most energetic at that, at your eyes… high contrast themes tend to have a black background (not a gray one like most dark themes) precisely as a way to maximise contrast…

        (It was even worse when we sat all day in front of a fucking particle accelerator, of course; frankly, as much as I loved CRTs’ ability to work with multiple resolutions I don’t know how we didn’t all end up going blind…)

  • TomMasz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    313 months ago

    I was developing 30 years ago and I love what’s available today. Nostalgia is fine, as far as it goes, but things change and sometimes for the better. This is one of those cases.

  • TunaCowboy
    link
    fedilink
    113 months ago

    I was using emacs then, I’m using emacs now, and I’ll be using emacs in another 30 years.

    • @leftzero
      link
      33 months ago

      Nostalgically atrocious.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    83 months ago

    I used Borland Turbo Pascal and C++ all through school and I have to agree, these were the most intuitive and efficient IDE’s I’ve used.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    73 months ago

    I used the Borland Turbo Vision based UIs a LOT back in the day. They were very good for their time, but they can’t hold a candle to modern user interfaces.

    • Neo
      link
      fedilink
      123 months ago

      Vim is mentioned 5 times in the article!