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0 pointsstackbutterflow3y ago0 comments

That's the go-to example whenever IDEs are discussed on HN but I...almost never do that?

I don't think I can count on two hands the number of times I have to do that in a year. As for undoing it I don't think I've ever done it at all. Anyway it doesn't matter because vim + CoC can do it. And for undoing it I guess I simply rename it back to the original name. Actually I just tried and yeah, it works.

One of these day I'd like to sit with a JetBrains user and see how they work. I'm sure it's a great IDE but so far I haven't heard about anything life changing.

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5 comments · 4 top-level

worldsavior3y ago· 1 in thread

Or you don't see the potential, or you're not comfortable, or you don't have energy for this. If you did get the hang of it (vim for example), you would probably use it in some kind of way.

8ytecoder3y ago

There are definitely two kinds of coders - once that think through everything or at least when it comes to names, method definitions and such they just know what they want. Then there are people like me who is never satisfied with the name or the parameters or the order in which they are passed or the name of the parameters or how the function is structured and want to split it further...etc. So I'm constantly reaching for the refactoring tools of IntelliJ.

OR, as you said, since I have mostly used IDEs all my life, I've learnt to leverage these tools and so I don't always aim to write something to perfection the very first time. Instead I use my IDE as a whiteboard and see where it goes.

aussiesnack3y ago

When I used IntelliJ, for the languages it understood best (then Java and Kotlin), it felt very little like editing text. The sense was much more like interacting directly with an AST. I rarely had to use standard 'text' editing features (oriented around word/sentence/para entities). This was an emergent affordance from all the many language-oriented facilities (all available via keyboard shortcuts) offered, rather than one specific feature.

I actually don't use IntelliJ now for reasons not germane here. I'm on neovim, mostly with Rust and javascript/typescript). This is great in many ways but the ergonomics of editing, even with LSP integration, are much more like editing text, which is more distant from my mental model of the code.

mattmanser3y ago

I do it all the time. That's the thing, once you can do it without hassle, you do it. Regular scenarios:

1. Refactoring

2. You are experimentally coding and changing names of methods and variables as you realize you need to split stuff up

3. One of your colleagues can't name stuff for shit

The IDE I use makes it so easy it's just a thing I do without even thinking about it.

Another great thing is just highlighting some code and with a simple keypress extracting that code to a new method, with the right return type, params, etc. all done automatically. Not quite right? Highlighted the wrong rows? Press ctrl-z.

mehphp3y ago

This has been my take as well. I can drill-down into third-party packages, rename stuff across files, and use the debugger.

I'm not saying JetBrains isn't fantastic, their products certainly are, but the examples given as to why I should switch are less than convincing. Just use whatever works for you.

It's similar to the flak I get for using an iPhone instead of Android. "You can't customize it!"... I don't want to.. I just want it to make phone calls and browse the web.

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