Re:Ask HN: I'm done with the IDE. What's a good alternative?
by jules on Sunday October 03, 2010 @10:47AM
(#1752791)
It isn't about the size on disk or in memory or about the CPU cycles. It's about the complexity of using it. With millions of menus, commands and configuration options modern IDEs are hard to use. The complexity in menus, toolbars and panels is a distraction and uses up valuable screen space.
IDEs are not optimized for the common case. For example adding an interface to your project in visual studio takes the same steps as adding a "ADO.NET Self-Tracing Entity Generator": right click on the project in the solution explorer, choose Add, choose New Item, choose Interface, click Add. At every step in this process you have to choose from a list of about 10 options. So by choosing something else when you're given these options you can probably reach about 10000 different end results. Surely adding an interface is what you want more than 1 out of 10000 times, so why bury it under so many steps?
IDEs are not optimized for the common case. For example adding an interface to your project in visual studio takes the same steps as adding a "ADO.NET Self-Tracing Entity Generator": right click on the project in the solution explorer, choose Add, choose New Item, choose Interface, click Add. At every step in this process you have to choose from a list of about 10 options. So by choosing something else when you're given these options you can probably reach about 10000 different end results. Surely adding an interface is what you want more than 1 out of 10000 times, so why bury it under so many steps?