Just registered to say that IDE stands for Incompetent Development Enabler.

Your tags could also see improvement though: the devrant tag is only for stuff about devrant.com itself. There are only devs here (no finance and HR folks) so that every rant is a "developer rant".

...said the wannabe developer who can't work out how to use an IDE effectively. Or at all.

Sure, if you're just punching in a few Python scripts here and there with no practical purpose, you do you. But I've yet to meet any developer who uses this argument while making use of refactoring tools, debugging, Docker / Kubernetes / whatever integration, linting tools, test integration etc. all from the shell. Usually this stuff all just confuses them, so they prefer to feel superior by saying they don't need to use it.

"Tools that help me bad!! I am stronk dev, I need no help!!"

Tell me you wanna go through the hassle of doing it all yourself. Writing your own build configs, tests, integrating everything by yourself.
If you can prove to me, that you'd do it yourself for a year alright.
Otherwise, please unregister.

I don't use IDEs, and in particular no graphic debuggers. But those who do, yeah take whatever you need to do your job.

With one exception: I absolutely hate it when the IDE is the only way to build the release. I've been bitten way too often by old projects that I had to touch after ten years. IDE abandoned, superseded, newer versions unable to import old projects, that kind of shit.

The release should build only using standard stuff like build scripts or makefiles or something like that.

@AlmondSauce that you can not imagine effectively using these tools without an IDE is precisely the reason why IDEs enable bad development practices.

@Fast-Nop I strongly disagree. Of course one can bash a screw in a wall with a hammer, but if a construction worker needs that to perform its job then they are clearly incompetent. A developers' hands should not move off the keyboard unless its to post on devrant or to enter a search query somewhere.

Most, if not all, tools that a developer needs are already included in POSIX and GNU, and competent software development means mastering these tools.

@forcepushfixall Dude, I was using everything on that list (that existed at the time) before IDEs even existed 😂 There's zero reason to do that now though, and no-one actually using those features would ever make that argument 😉

@forcepushfixall what do you work on as a dev?

@AlmondSauce mastering your toolchain is reason enough.

@RememberMe software projects in C/C++, Python (and Cython), PHP, Ruby, Go, JS, Groovy, Lua; CI/CD projects with GitLab, Jenkins; infrastructure on GCP, Azure, AWS (Terraform, Ansible).

Sticking with the software projects, in no case an IDE was ever needed to develop the software. Most features provided by IDEs are available as command-line tools, and developers who actually know how to use these tools are more competent than developers who do not.

Engineers who work from the command-line, as we've noticed during hiring, are more likely to also understand concepts such as the OSI model, networking, resource management and design patterns, while the medior IDEot programmer does not even know what a process exit code is.

We theorized from this that IDEs actually dumb developers down, and takes away the incentive to fully understand what they are doing.