Comment by dools

I've never used an IDE, perhaps it doesn't matter because I don't write Java. I actually find auto complete annoying in places where it can't be turned off like Google Apps Script or the BigQuery console.

Over the past few years I rarely write code anyway I just use ChatGPT and then edit the code.

I tried using the new canvas/project features last night and I think it slowed me down versus a copy/paste workflow. I think those formats could be good but they're not fast and polished enough and I've gotten used to tricks and hacks for working in chat style.

I've never used a LLM that has actual access to the codebase, so I kind of take chunks of code and put them where they need to be. Even if I have like 6 lines of code and I want to change the logic I past that into ChatGPT and say "change this to do XYZ". Even though that sounds dumb I actually gain massive advantage in concurrency. I can be working on lots of tasks at once because ChatGPT kind of toils away and I'll then jump over to something else and come back 90 seconds later and the code is there, I read it over, maybe diff it from a previous version, then I run that to test it and maybe while that's running I go to a different chat and issue another instruction.

Before LLMs I used vim. When I want to find a function definition I ctrl+z find . -name ".whatever" | xargs grep "function whateverThisIs" and things like that.

grep -d skip "thing"

I copy and paste a lot if I'm using function names, I use a clipboard manager I guess as a sort of pseudo auto complete.

"Then why don't you just use an IDE?" I hear you ask!

It's because I write lots of what you might call "glue code" or "microservices". Lots of snippets of SQL and JavaScript functions that are executed on a queue, and API calls to integrate with things and code that runs on different platforms.

I'm almost never working on what you would call "an app" these days, so that's probably why I've never gravitated towards an IDE. Even when I was working on more monolithic web apps I never used anything other than vim with "set nocompatible" turned on so it wouldn't try to do anything IDE like.

I think what I liked about it then was that I could be just as productive using putty from an internet cafe as I could be on my own computer. Like a doomsdray prepper version of coding.