Comment by norir

Counterpoint: I programmed exclusively in vim for a decade, switched to intellij for scala, did find it more productive (although I found intellij annoyingly sluggish relative to vim -- especially at startup), but then realized that scala itself was limiting my productivity even with the help of an IDE. I abandoned scala, went back to vim and wrote my own language in the most minimal way possible. I don't even use simple tab completions. Yet I am more productive in my language than in any other that I've previously used with or without an IDE.

I don't doubt that you are more productive with an IDE than without, but I personally think the magnitude is reflective of poor language and system design rather than the magic of IDEs (which I believe is relatively minor compared to using a fast compiler with good error reporting). In fact, I sort of think IDEs lead to a kind of trap where people design systems that require their use to be effective which then makes it seem as though the features of the IDE are essential rather than perhaps a source of complexity that is actually making the system worse.

I also will say that your horse vs flight example raises something for me. It's a bit like saying I could drive the Camino de Santiago in a day which saves me an insane amount of time. Sure, it's true, but it misses the entire point of the journey. I basically think the vast majority of programming efficiency boosting tools (ides and llms alike) are mainly just taking us faster on a road to nowhere. I live in San Francisco, supposedly the mecca of technology, and almost never encounter anyone working on anything of truly significant value (according to my personal value system). But I do find a lot of people slinging code for cash, which is a fine and understandable choice, but deeply uninspiring to me. Which also reflects how I feel about LLMs and the like.