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Wednesday, May 18, 2011

How can you not use <insert favorite IDE here>?!

This is one of those subjects that really bugs me is when people promote an IDE to the point that they are insisting that you are a complete failure for not using that IDE. So I realize that people always have an IDE that they really like. Mine is Eclipse for Java development; however, for C based applications I prefer to write in a text editor (vim is my poison). I have my own reasons, which I will outline below, for why I like these two setups.

Eclipse I like for Java style development, it has some really great auto-complete. However, I also like the simplicity for adding external jars and linking projects together as dependencies. Also there are quite a few good plugins for things like Ivy and Subversion that give tons of extra functionality. Why not Netbeans? I've never been impressed with the auto-complete and the auto-populate for import statements. Also I hate the fact that most class names will be fully qualified which bugs me (this may have been changed in a more recent version but this is how it was in a previous version).

Vim I like for C based applications because I've never found that any IDE that gets out of the way and has a good built in debugger. Frankly when I'm writing in C I really don't need that much help since with Vim I get CTags. This gives me the ability to investigate a function on the fly as well as investigating structs.

I realize that I am putting forth these statements and it sounds like I am breaking the rule that I put forward. Well not quite, I'm not stating that anyone else should work the same way that I work. Instead I am stating the reason(s) why I am doing something. The thing that I cannot stand is when I say "I use Eclipse for Java" and someone else goes "you should really use NetBeans, it's the awesomest and you are an idiot for not using it." I've also heard the argument "well you don't use an IDE anyway (for C development) so why not use something?" Why not? Because I'm more effective in vim, I have very few problems within my type safety so I don't need an IDE checking my type safety everytime I finish a word.

So what exactly is my point? Well, I'm not saying that you shouldn't propose someone using an IDE that you are used to; instead I'm stating that you can propose an IDE, just don't push that idea to death. It annoys me when I am working in a specific environment and doing well with it; and someone comes along and goes "well boys, we're going to change things up and go with this IDE, everyone should now be using it." Get off my back, I do more work in 2 days than you do in a week; maybe you should adopt my environment because it seems to work. Oh wait, you have problems working in my environment? Then why would you push me into an environment that I might have problems working in?