Which IDE is Best For Developers?

About this Episode

This week, the panelists discuss the best Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for beginners. Eddy emphasized the importance of an IDE being ready to use post-installation, reducing the need for additional configurations or extensions. Steve advocated for a minimalist UI to help beginners, suggesting simpler interfaces are more approachable. The conversation covers various IDEs, with Visual Studio Code holding a significant market share. Notepad++ was humorously mentioned as a practical option for beginners. They also touch on the suitability of IDEs for different types of development, such as mobile or game development, highlighting the specialized needs like managing assets in game development.

They also delve into the trends in technology adoption, using TypeScript as an example. Tad mentioned the typical hype cycle where new technologies are quickly adopted and gradually lose appeal. This leads to a broader discussion about the evolution of programming languages and frameworks, like Ruby, influenced by user preferences and industry trends. They also discuss the importance of features like Live Share in Visual Studio Code, especially for collaborative programming and mentoring newer developers.

Towards the end, the conversation shifts to personal experiences with different editors. Panelists share their first and second editors, reflecting on their transitions and experiences. This part of the discussion underscores the diversity of preferences in development tools shaped by individual comfort, project nature, and programming language. They conclude with a light-hearted debate on the merits and challenges of using various editors, encapsulating developers' varied perspectives and experiences in choosing their ideal programming tools.

Transcript:

TAD: Hello. Welcome to the Acima Dev podcast. I'm your host today, Tad. Joining me is Eddy. Will you introduce yourself?

EDDY: Hi, guys. Been in here a couple of times. I'm a developer for Acima.

TAD: And Ramses.

RAMSES: Hi, everyone.

TAD: And Steve.

STEVE: Yeah, I'm a developer here at Acima. Steve.

TAD: And Kyle.

KYLE: Yeah, DevOps engineer here at Acima.

TAD: I like that we get a little bit of a mix because sometimes DevOps is a little bit different than regular development. So, they sometimes get some different tools that work well for them. Welcome, everybody.

Today, the question is, which IDE is best for someone starting out with development? Maybe to start off with, let's establish some criteria. What do you think you would be looking for in an IDE or just, like, a code editor if you're starting out? What do you think are some good features?

EDDY: I want to just premise by saying I think the closest the IDE can be ready to go by just natively being installed in your computer, the better. Because, like, you necessarily don't know what extensions or stuff you're going to need in order to progress and, you know, make your productivity better. So, like, the closest out-of-the-box configurations that you can get, you know, when you're installing, I think, is a huge win.

TAD: Okay, so Notepad?

EDDY: Yeah, definitely. I think Notepad's the best one. It's always installed.

TAD: Yeah, I think that's a good point, though. If you don't have to go through a lot of setup and configuration, that definitely gives you a head start, right?

STEVE: For somebody who's brand new, a minimalist UI kind of helps with the learning curve. When you have something that's very feature-rich, and you're just dipping your toes in the water, sometimes something simpler is more approachable. So, I guess it depends on where they're at. Like, are we talking about somebody who's never seen code before, and this is the first thing they're doing? Or is it somebody who's dabbled but they're not a professional, they want to land a programming job, and they're just kind of doing their thing on their own? I just think it depends on where you're at.

TAD: What if we assume that it's someone pretty new to programming overall?

STEVE: Yeah, in that situation, I would lean towards something like Sublime. I haven't used Notepad, so I don't know what that's like. But something really minimal but still feature-rich. That's my --

EDDY: You know, we joke around about Notepad. And I actually used Note++ as my primary IDE for a while.

TAD: Right. You know, I'm joking, too. But the first web page, like, HTML file I ever wrote, I think it was in Notepad. I mean, like, putting an HTML tag at the beginning, an HTML tag at the end, head tag, head tag, body tag, body tag. I think I wrote that in Notepad.

STEVE: I didn't even realize you guys were joking because Notepad++ is, like--

EDDY: [laughs]

STEVE: It's not like TextEdit. Like, if you had said TextEdit, then I'd have been like, yeah, obviously a joke. But Notepad actually has formatting, or at least Notepad ++.

EDDY: Well, I used --

RAMSES: [inaudible 03:14] have syntax highlighting too?

EDDY: It does. Yeah.

RAMSES: Yeah, that's [inaudible 03:19]

STEVE: I think it's actually usable on, like, something like text editor.

EDDY: Again, like, a few days ago, I was curious sort of because I knew this topic was coming, and I just looked worldwide top IDEs. And I don't think it's surprising to anyone when I say that 27%, almost 28% of the market share for IDEs is taken out by Visual Studio Code.

STEVE: What are the other market shares, and where are you getting that number?

EDDY: So, this number is coming from Github.io.

STEVE: Microsoft.

EDDY: Yeah. [laughs] Github.io, yeah, so it's Microsoft. So, there is some sort of bias there, right? But 27%, assuming that that's correct, is one-fourth of the market share, which is tremendous, right? To give you other context, right? Others coming close at 11% is Eclipse, and PyCharm, Android Studio, IntelliJ, NetBeans, Xcode, and Sublime, and Atom. So, those are the top 10.

RAMSES: Atom is still in the top 10?

EDDY: I was surprised.

TAD: That's surprising to me, yeah.

RAMSES: Yeah, that's interesting --

TAD: And that GitHub kind of discontinued it and said, "Feel free to continue to use it. But we're not going to be adding new features or fixing things."

EDDY: I would advocate for Visual Studio Code in the sense that, like, I use it on a day-to-day basis, and I know my way around it pretty well. I know which extensions I like to use, cater it to my productivity, et cetera.

TAD: You've had some experience now, right? And you didn't start with VS Code as your first editor, I imagine. So --

EDDY: No. I used Notepad for a bit and then transitioned to Atom because it was, like, the hot thing. And then Visual Studio kind of just came in guns blazing [laughs].

TAD: Yeah. I think it's kind of funny that we keep mentioning Notepad because, really, you've said minimalist UI. It's certainly got that. We talked about easy-to-use, easy-to-understand, something that comes native with your laptop. I might throw out there you don't have to learn magic key chords or special modes or anything. It's just, you know, CTRL + X CTRL + V to cut and paste.

Do you think it's valuable if you have something that feels kind of like, I mean, Word or one of these other, like, document editors? Because you might have some of those keyboard shortcuts memorized, and you might have some familiarity with something like that. And if those transfer over to your first IDE, that might be useful.

STEVE: Yeah, I think it definitely makes a difference. One point I was going to bring up about Sublime, which is the one that I've used for most of my development career, which isn't terribly long, but I've used that and VS Code. And the thing that I loved about Sublime was the file explorer looks just like the native one on Mac, or it feels similar to it. And it's very easy to use.

Whereas VS Code, it's really not usable, practically. I mean, you can't really see the indentations, and they throw these gigantic icons in front of all of the files as if they're catering to, like, a toddler. Like, this is a Ruby file, or this is a file or a directory. Here's a huge folder icon, you know.

So, I think stuff that looks like your native system, stuff that you're familiar with, just means less learning, which means that you can focus your attention on things that are kind of new concepts that are more important to you in the beginning. So, minimalism and familiarity are things that I would look for, you know, if learning something, but that's my [crosstalk 06:59]

EDDY: So, let me ask you this: so, is Sublime scalable in a sense where, like, you can continue to use it as your knowledge increases and your tech stack goes up?

STEVE: Yeah, definitely you can. The thing is, you have to add extensions, of course, just like you do with any editor. And I'm not really sure why I switched. I didn't have any problem with Sublime. There was nothing that was really slowing me down. I think it was just, out of curiosity, I wanted to try something else. And then once you make the switch, then you're kind of like, all right, I'll just stay here.

EDDY: [laughs]

STEVE: Like, it's not bad, you know. And in the case of VS Code, VS Code isn't bad. Actually, it's very good. I would rate them probably the same. But since I've switched to VS Code, I just stick with it for now.

TAD: So, Eddy, are you suggesting that another criteria would be something that you can start with but also continue with, right?

EDDY: Yeah, well, like --

TAD: You know, integrating it with GitHub.

EDDY: Yes.

TAD: Or adding themes and extensions and things like that, that you want something that you can start with, but you can also continue to use even as you gain more advanced skills and get more experience.

EDDY: Yeah, exactly. Well, I don't want to go on record to, like, sound like, I'm bashing Sublime in any way. I did try it for a few days. My biggest problem I had with it installing packages or extensions were a lot more difficult than they had to be. And, like, VS Code just gave you [laughs], like, a really nice intuitive UI that you can search and install, right? Like, that, for me, was a game changer.

STEVE: Yeah, I agree. I think that's a strong point for VS Code.

TAD: Discoverability might be an important characteristic, right? Because Sublime code was great. I used it for probably a couple of years. But yeah, it's, like, installing things is just, do you know the right key combination to bring up the magic menu that lets you install something, right?

KYLE: So, as you guys have been conversing about this, I was thinking about the question and how broad it is. And I'm having an issue kind of answering it myself just because there's a lot of unknowns in it, right? Like, okay, where do you start? Are you starting alone? Are you starting with a team? Because if you're starting with a team, they're going to have recommendations, and that's going to affect it. What kind of development are you doing? You know, what language? Where are you starting?

And then, like, are you starting in development, or are you starting in systems? Like, where are you starting? Because that can change whether or not you're going to be using Sublime, Visual Studio, PyCharm, even Vim, or Emacs, you know. Like, maybe somebody's really familiar with the terminal, and it's just a lot easier for them to use Vim.

TAD: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. Like, if you're doing Swift, you probably want to be using Xcode, right? I mean, certain languages have very opinionated tooling, I think. I think that's a great point, Kyle.

KYLE: I mean, the other one is, are you on Windows, or are you on Mac? Because that's going to sway you one way or the other as well.

EDDY: Are you actively...in DevOps, are you guys coding?

KYLE: So, we have scripting languages that we utilize. So, that's going to be HCL for, like, Terraform and Bash, and we do Python, or we do Ruby. So, for us, in this question for us, we need more of a generalized IDE, something more like Sublime, Visual Studio, right? Something that's not specialized.

TAD: Do you guys have some Go code? I think I saw some Go the other day.

KYLE: Yeah, we do Go, too. Yep.

TAD: Yeah. So --

EDDY: And so, why do you guys use them, if you use any?

KYLE: So, we have a couple of members on the team that really prefer to use Vim, and then the rest of us will use Visual Studio Code.

TAD: This question is actually timely for me. There's another developer that invited me to volunteer with a local group called Tech-Moms. And they're women who are learning to code for the first time. They're just starting out, and, you know, they're moms. I don't know that's a requirement or anything, but they're pretty new to it.

And I volunteered for a couple of hours this last Saturday. And most of my time was spent trying to get them to understand how to clone their GitHub stuff, how to find that cloned repo with Visual Studio Code, and then make the changes, and then push those changes up. And I was talking with some of the people afterwards, and one of the things they really struggled with is it's bring your own machine, right? So, some people bring a Chromebook; some people bring Windows, some people bring Macs.

And I was actually wondering, since VS Code is basically built in a browser with all the Electron stuff, you can actually go to vscode.dev and run it in a webpage. And I was looking at that this past weekend. And I think that might be what I recommend to people right now because you don't need to find it on your machine. You know, something like that works even on a Chromebook, something like that.

And you can get that developer experience just by going to a web page, which is pretty easy to do for most people. Most people know how to type in a URL and go to a page, and then hooking it up with a GitHub repo is also pretty easy. And you can just edit your code from there and just push it from that page. And you don't have to find anything. You don't have to install anything. You just go to a page and install maybe a theme or some extensions, and you're good to go. And I thought that was pretty compelling.

KYLE: I'd second that. Just because about a year and a half ago now, I was actually helping somebody, you know, because I should be paying attention at church. But I was helping somebody with their code on their phone at church using the online Visual Studio editor. It makes it really easy.

EDDY: Doesn't github.dev technically use Visual Studio on the surface?

KYLE: Yeah, it does now, I think.

EDDY: So, that's just another prime example of, like, the market share for Visual Studio [laughs].

STEVE: Yeah, I mean, honestly, Eddy, I don't doubt that it's 27%. That wouldn't surprise me at all. I mean, you just look around; everybody's using it at the office. Again, it depends on the language and what you're doing. But I wouldn't question that statistic. Sounds like all of us on this call, except Ramses, is currently using it, so...But being mostly Ruby developers, Ramses, you use RubyMine, right?

RAMSES: Yeah, currently. I've used VS Code for a while. Most of my time I've spent using Vim, and I still use Vim. But I think it's the best tool for Ruby on Rails development. Also, it's just great. It's made for the language. I don't know, like, [crosstalk 14:03]

TAD: Well, it's a true IDE. Like, it's a true integrated development environment, right? Whereas if I'm doing Ruby development, I might have to open the terminal, and that's kind of part of it, and drop in some terminal tools to, like, investigate some stuff. But I have to install a bunch of extensions, maybe have some command line tools and things like that before I get to the same level that RubyMine gives you out of the box.

EDDY: You know, I'm trying to recall, way back when I did pairing sessions with my older brother, he had me use NetBeans for a bit. And that was super intuitive and really friendly with JavaScript at the time. I don't know if it's still the case, but I almost never hear anyone talking about NetBeans. And from what I recall, it was just a great experience.

TAD: I think people still use NetBeans.

STEVE: I've never heard of that. Okay.

KYLE: I haven't used that in a long time.

EDDY: Yeah, it was great. Especially, like, I want to preface by saying, like, being a web developer, especially with Ruby, you're going to be writing a bunch of templating stuff, so, like, some sort of HTML template, you know, in Ruby, in even JavaScript. And I feel like of all the other IDEs that I've used; JavaScript just works really nicely with VS Code. Am I wrong in that statement? Like, do you guys disagree?

TAD: I'd have to look at the stats. But I've done a few of these, like, JavaScript state of the language surveys and things like that. And I want to say it's maybe... I hope I'm not exaggerating, but I think it's, like, 90% of JavaScript developers use VS Code. And when I say JavaScript, I'm also going to lump TypeScript in with that, just because they've really done a great job of tooling it for JavaScript and TypeScript.

KYLE: The only thing that I've even used that compares is WebStorm.

TAD: Wow, I haven't used WebStorm in a while.

EDDY: You know, and this is kind of a side topic, but you mentioned TypeScript, and you lumped it in. But all I'm hearing now is, like, big projects are ditching TypeScript, right? [laughs] There was, like, a big boom and suddenly...

TAD: I think there's a hype cycle, right? Where it's the cool thing, it's the new thing, and a lot of people adopt it. And then some people realize, oh, I didn't really adopt it for the right reasons, or this promised me things, but in my particular case, the promises are unmet, right? Like, it's like, you're going to write better code and safer code, and it's going to be so much better. But sometimes people don't see that, right?

And so, a lot of times with these technologies, I think you'll see a big early adopter rush. It cycles through the hype cycle, and then it kind of loses its shine. And so, people are, like, eh, I don't...whatever, and they kind of go find the next big thing. But still, a lot of people who are just happy with it and want to continue using it they're probably not going to write a blog post that says, "Yeah, I'm still happy with this technology [laughs]. And I'm going to use it again tomorrow."

I've seen a lot of that in the Rails community when the hype was really high, and now it's just a well-known framework. And it's not going to get your picture on the front cover of any magazines or anything. I think DHH was featured on a bunch back in the day, right? But people still use it. And it's just kind of typical boring technology now. And I'm not going to write a blog post that, yeah, I still like Ruby, right? It's usually the things that, like, we tried TypeScript, and we didn't like it after all, and we're switching. That's a more interesting blog post.

EDDY: So, I have a genuine question, and I haven't actually looked much into it. But I feel like if you're going to be a web developer, the default is always Visual Studio Code. But what happens if you want to be a mobile developer or, like, some sort of scripting language? Is that still, like, work neatly with VS Code? Or does that sort of mentality shift a little bit depending on, like, the stack? Or even, like, [crosstalk 18:13] game development, right? So, like, Triple-A games that are being developed actively, like what IDEs do they use? Like, is it still VS Code, or is that just a given with web development?

SERGIO: I just developed two video games in the past; one was released in Steam. And I used to work with C++ and also with C# on game development stuff. But when working on Unity, Unity has their own IDE, which is cool. It's good enough. But also, I've been working lastly with Visual Code. I think Visual Code is still missing some stuff like all IDEs has.

But lastly, I've been testing compiler with Visual Code, and it looks really nice. It's very useful when I work in unit tests in many stuff with JavaScript, with HTML, with Ruby, and even, I guess, with C#. So, I can say that's my answer. It's kind of it's really cool right now. But other IDEs like Unity built-in IDE is nice enough as well.

EDDY: I didn't know Unity had its own built-in UI or, like, IDE. That's [laughs] really cool.

TAD: I mean, I think it depends on the game framework because you might have something that helps you...and I haven't done a lot of game development myself, but from what I've seen, you have to manage a lot of assets and things like that. And if you've got Visual Studio, then you're just kind of left to whatever tools you want to, like, manage your assets, or edit your sprites, or do those sorts of things. But there are integrated development environments for game development that have all the tools that you need to build the game in one place. And you don't have to add additional outside tools to get that same experience.

SERGIO: Yeah, yeah, that's the way it works right now. So, it's kind of integrated all the things you need. And essentially, when you're working with 3D and 2D assets, it's really complex. You know, you have a scenario where you have to import assets and also, you have to modify code at the same time, so you need something really custom. So, it's cool.

I'm working a lot of time with C#, and I'm working with Visual Studio. At this point in time, I do prefer Visual Studio Code instead of Visual Studio. It's lightweight. And also, you can extend, you know, many things. Like I mentioned before, [inaudible 20:59]. I have plenty couple of things that worth testing. And also, one extension that I like so much is when we do pair programming. Do you remember that one, Eddy? I just learn many things from many people from --

EDDY: Live Share.

SERGIO: Yeah, Live Share. Yeah, that one. Awesome. Yeah, you can do that with...I guess Visual Studio doesn't have that functionality, but instead, Visual Studio Code it does. I am not sure about this, but I'm almost sure that you have to pay the MSDS subscription. So, you have built-in functionalities that the normal Visual Studio doesn't have on this. You pay for it. So, that's cool.

TAD: Yeah, I think, for me, Live Share is a killer feature, especially for pairing and especially when I'm pairing with somebody who's new to coding, where I can get them to send me their session string, and I can join their session. And I can explain to them what I'm doing as I'm doing it, as it appears on their screen. I can kind of stub out or kind of trace out some things and then have them fill it in.

Like, yesterday, Damon and I were pairing, and we couldn't get the Live Share working. But something that I desperately wanted to do was I had kind of outlined all our tests, right? Like, the context, and the blocks, and things like that. And then to be able to hand it over to him and say, "Okay, I've outlined this; now fill it in for me," I find that really compelling, especially the fact that it has built-in chat. I don't know that we use that much. We chat through other things.

But it tells you who's editing which file, and you can either follow them and see what they're doing, or you can go off and do your own thing. I mean, those kinds of features I often call it multiplayer programming. I think that's probably one of my favorite features of VS Code, especially when it comes to helping newer developers.

EDDY: Yeah, that's awesome. That's super cool to know that you, like, outlined it for them in the live session [laughs]. That's so cool. It's also cool...when was it? Like, Sergio, myself, and Jonathan would pair in a ticket, and, like, one of us would, like, be writing the specs at the same time the other person's writing the code. It's also another way to be super productive because you get things done much quicker, which is another compelling thing with it.

TAD: Yeah, I don't know if you guys were familiar with the old XP things. But there used to be, like, these hardware setups where you'd have, like, two separate keyboards that both fed into the same thing. And you could type, and you could do these things. And Live Share is basically living the dream where I don't have to hand off my laptop to someone else.

I don't have to have some crazy setup where we have two keyboards plugged into the same computer that we're looking at. I mean, basically, when I do it, the thing I'm looking at is what they're looking at, and what I'm talking about is what they're looking at. And that's, like, the dream of the guys that really kind of pioneered the XP movement back in the, gosh, '90s.

SERGIO: Hey, Tad, you did XP before. It's kind of the old-school way. Yeah --

TAD: Yeah, kind of. To be honest, we did it in college. And I don't remember what distinguishes XP from some of the other things. But we did have times where it was basically two people sit down at the same computer and team up and pair and work on stuff.

SERGIO: Yeah, I tried that in the university when we have this project. And we have a big monitor and everything else. People working is kind of [inaudible 25:04], I guess, and only one main programmer. It's kind of the other people is only seeing you. But that's weird, you know, it's kind of odd.

I like to do stuff. So, this extension, Live Share, is kind of cool because everyone can write code at the same time. It's kind of you are not alone just seeing the code. You can interact directly with the code and write your own things. So yeah, many times, we broke things because watch people is doing one thing, and the other is trying other stuff [laughs]. But it's part of the coolness, you know [laughs].

TAD: Right. Are there any other needs that maybe a newer developer would need that we haven't talked about yet?

EDDY: I guess also, like, what operating system? Should they use Mac, Windows, or [laughs] Linux distro?

TAD: Linux? Well, that's why I'm thinking about pushing the browser because then it doesn't matter. You know, start out with the editor in the browser and learn how you like things, and then graduate to something else.

EDDY: Yeah. But will the browser sort of compile the code for you if you needed to?

TAD: I don't think so. But I don't work with a lot of compiled languages nowadays, so I don't know. I tried going to vscode.dev, and I noticed that some of the extensions I like don't work in the browser, which makes sense, you know, so that's the thing. Like, it's probably a good place to start. But, ultimately, most people shouldn't stay there. So, for my own maybe curiosity, but of the people here in this call, what was the first editor that you used? And what was the second editor that you used for actual developing and writing code?

STEVE: My first one was Sublime, and I stuck with it for a long time, I think four years. And then VS Code. I think I've tried something else along the way. I don't remember what it was, but I wasn't impressed, obviously, if I don't even remember which one it was.

KYLE: I started out with Visual Studio as my first one, and my second was actually Vi.

EDDY: What's Vi?

KYLE: Precursor to Vim.

TAD: [inaudible 27:21] Vim.

RAMSES: Just the original.

EDDY: Okay [laughs]. I know now. I use it from time to time when I shell into an environment.

TAD: Was Vi just because that's easier to use remotely on, like, servers and stuff?

KYLE: Yeah, it was part of a networking class. And we had to do all of our development on a remote server in the professor's office, basically.

EDDY: It's actually really funny how Sergio joined halfway through the call, and he mentioned Notepad, even though we were kidding initially. It just goes to show, you know, like, how embedded Notepad really is.

TAD: Well, there's Notepad, and then there's, like, Notepad++, which is different, but it's still a very simple but very intuitive editor.

STEVE: I didn't even know you guys were joking [laughs]. I was under the impression Notepad++ was just, like, a normal editor.

TAD: It is. Eddy, what did you start off with, and what did you...

EDDY: I started off with [laughs] Notepad and then...but it wasn't Notepad++. It was the Microsoft Notepad, you know, all the do-do that is given to you pre-installed to write notes. Like, that's how I initially started writing, like, HTML. And then, like, I opened the file in my browser, you know, and the file--

TAD: [inaudible 28:45]

EDDY: Yeah, it was great. It was super cool.

And then the next one, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, was Atom. Because, like, I joined forum groups and Reddit threads and, like, people talking about this whole new thing called Atom. So, I installed it, and it was, like, a full 180 for me because it was like, oh crap, going from black and white to, like, suddenly, like, my code is linted [laughs], you know. And so --

TAD: Syntax highlighting: so good.

EDDY: Yeah [laughs]. You're like, oh, your brackets know, like, if you have, like, nested statements, or whatever, you know, like, suddenly, your open and close brackets are aligned by color and stuff like that, which made it much easier and more intuitive. And using Atom for me has a warm place in my heart.

TAD: Ramses, what did you start with, and what did you pick after that? Or did you start with Vim and stayed forever with Vim?

RAMSES: No, I started with Atom and then went to VS Code, actually, for a little while. All of my professional development experience has been in Vim until now, that I'm in RubyMine. Outside of that, yeah, Vim all the way.

EDDY: Dude, you started out using Atom? That's awesome.

RAMSES: Yeah, that was probably, like, three years ago when I started using it. It worked out pretty nicely. I actually don't know why I stopped using it, just did. I've always been curious about different editors, so I've tried a whole handful.

TAD: Sergio, what did you start with, and what was your second editor?

SERGIO: Notepad ++ recently. Probably Notepad, the normal one, like Eddy. I used to learn in Notepad ++. Later, I tried many, I guess, most of the [laughs] IDEs out there. But I used to work with Java, and Java has their own IDEs like Eclipse and NetBeans. And also, that one included in Android, which is JetBrains with supercharged Java stuff built-in, I don't know, some mixing of things.

And lastly, I ended up with Visual Studio Code. It's kind of my favorite out there because lightweight. And I used to remember when I tried to open Eclipse on my computer, it was kind of, oh my God, it's draining all the resources in my [laughs] machine. So, oh gosh, that time was hard. And right now, I have a computer that is, yeah, better, and it's not draining all the resources. And that's cool. So, the only one that is draining resources is Unity because the nature of being greedy 2D and whatever else is kind of resource demanding. But everything else works fine in almost any computer out of there. But Eclipse is a nightmare [laughs] [inaudible 31:45].

TAD: Yeah, with great power comes great resource usage, great hardware abuse [laughs]. Yeah, it's funny that for some people, VS Code feels light. For other people, VS Code feels very heavy because it's basically a mini browser just to edit text, right? And so, if you're probably somewhere at the Emacs or Vim end of the spectrum, VS Code feels like a ton of resources and very heavy. But if you've worked with some of these bigger IDEs, VS Code is probably refreshing.

SERGIO: Yeah, yeah, I agree. I do have a question, maybe. Why I will use Vim? It is kind of new for me. I never worked in that before. It's kind of complex because you have to learn about when you have to use SS, or you have to edit, or something like that. I didn't know why I will use Vim. Can you answer that? Can you tell me someone that is actually using Vim why I will use this? Well, I understand it if you work on serverless stuff, you have to use it, and that's fine. But someone who is not using that for serverless, why I will use Vim?

KYLE: Their approach to modal editing is just fantastic. I find myself to be a lot more productive. Once you learn the Vim motions of editing text, it just becomes much more fluid. But the problem with it is it requires a steep learning curve, so, you know, not great. But once you get a hang of it, you just want Vim everywhere.

TAD: Yeah, I don't use Vim, but I know people who do and, basically, once they get really good, you're editing code at the speed of thought a lot of times, where your fingers are just moving automatically, and you're moving lines around. You're editing things across multiple lines. And, you know, the joke is you never have to pick your fingers up from the keyboard. You never have to touch that mouse.

But yeah, like, I tried Vim for about a month because I figured that I needed to give it at least that long. And I just don't think in that way. So, it didn't work for me, but people who think in a very Vim way they can be really productive, and it feels really elegant to them.

STEVE: I think you also mentioned one of the key things with Vim. And I'm not speaking from experience, but people that I've spoke to about it tend to not like using a mouse, so there's that. I think Vim is kind of is the go-to if that's you.

SERGIO: Cool. Okay.

EDDY: Yeah, some people are religious to not using a mouse, and I'm not calling anyone out, but I am looking at that person. Some people just refuse to use a mouse. And they really do try their best to never lift their hands off of the keyboard if they don't have to. And Vim does facilitate that [crosstalk 34:45].

TAD: Well, it's unnecessary motion, right? If you can keep your hands practically on the home row and move everything around, suddenly, excess motion feels inelegant, right? It feels like unnecessary wasted behavior.

EDDY: I feel like we can't end this topic without mentioning Emacs because Emacs is also a really strong competitor against Vim. And it's really solid out the gate.

TAD: Yeah, it's interesting because we all have mentioned that we develop Ruby, and Ruby was actually shaped by Emacs, meaning Matz, who's the original creator of the Ruby programming language, uses Emacs in his day-to-day editing of everything. And the elegance of Lisp, and how Lisp kind of did things, and the interpretation of it, and things like that, really influenced what he wanted in the language and really added to Ruby's development.

So, one maybe final question for you guys: is there an editor that you've tried that you absolutely hated? Like, you're just like, "Oh my gosh." You know, you tried it for, like, 10 minutes or something, and you just realized this absolutely is not the editor for me. And if you've had that experience, I'm curious: what was it about that particular editor that really you found so off-putting?

STEVE: Vi [laughs]. Because why would I use that? There's no reason for it. But every time I'm stuck having to use it just by chance, like, I don't enjoy it at all.

TAD: Is it the modal nature of it? Is it the fact that there's nothing discoverable about it? Like, what's the --

STEVE: Well, it's just I don't know how to use it, so I have to look it up every single time. Depending on how my environment is set up, I might find myself in a Vi session and, I don't know, maybe during a rebase or something if I haven't set my editor yet. And that always annoys me [laughs].

EDDY: I think there's benefit learning Vi, especially where we work, right? Because, you know, you shell into a certain cluster and then, suddenly, like, you need to modify some code. But you're like, ah, I don't want to, like, wait for my build to be ready again in order for me to make sure that this would have worked. And so, using Vi to go in there in your session and being able to change that on-demand is super cool.

KYLE: I think I run into the same things as Steve, just with Nano.

SERGIO: I have to say Eclipse a long time ago. But something I tried recently is Vim, and I didn't like it at all. But maybe I need to give it another chance to try to really understand why it was built that way, so maybe.

TAD: Yeah. The angriest I think I've ever gotten is using VS Code. This is way back in the day. And I was taking a class on UI development, and the first half was Java. We created, like, these Java apps with Swing. And the second half was with Microsoft, and we had to use these things called Microsoft Foundation Classes. And they were so complicated that the editor tried to fix things for you behind the scenes.

But sometimes you really wanted to have a certain thing in a certain place. And I would say, I need to make this button blue, right? So, I'd go into the code, and I'd change the attribute to make my button blue. And Visual Studio didn't think that was the right place. And it would take it out and try to do other things for me behind the scenes. I would stare at things, and I'm like, oh my gosh, I don't know why this isn't working. I don't know what's going on.

And it turned out that the editor was actually moving my code around without me knowing it. And I spent, like, hours sometimes trying to figure out what the heck was going on. If VS Code was a person, I'd punch it in the face [laughs], oh my God. It made me so angry to have an editor changing my code on me behind the scenes without my knowledge or permission.

Well, it looks like [laughs], I guess, maybe we're ending on that note. Anything else we should mention before we wrap this up?

RAMSES: What I gathered from it was that we should all use Vim.

TAD: [laughs] That's an excellent takeaway.

STEVE: Yeah, that's it.

TAD: If you have someone that comes to you and says, "I want to get into programming. Where do I start?" You point them at Vim [laughter] or --

EDDY: And if they still stick around, they definitely want to be a developer, is what you're saying.

TAD: Yeah. Or maybe you just point them at Notepad or vscode.dev or something like that and then see what they lean to. And then find a better tool for them later when they settle into something.

STEVE: Just ask them the question, "Are you a masochist or not?"

TAD: [laughs]

STEVE: And then adjust accordingly.

TAD: How's your self-esteem? Do you like yourself? [laughter] Cool, awesome. Well, thank you, everybody.