Comment by xlii

As many others I do use fd/rg/ctags, custom scripts, some even Perl ones; Today I’m on Kakoune but had plenty of Emacs integrations when it was my daily driver (Kakoune taught me to pipe selection through a script that echoes code fragment which works in most editors, e.g.: `|gosnip_if_err_panic.pl` with `responseErr` selected).

I think that the reasons I’m not using IDEs/LSP are more worthy sharing:

First one is that I cannot use one. While the main language I’m using has relatively ok LSP, the codebase prevents usage - as it’s ridden with circular dependencies, macros, module aliasing and multi dispatch cast chains. Everything outside of syntax highlight it unusable.

Second: I noticed that assisted coding is like GPS assisted driving. I stopped internally understanding architecture of the code when using IDEs, this disconnected my mind from the code and at some point it started to feel like shoveling. Mindlessly spit out the code at let IDE handle the rest. That made me efficient at local change but unable to build up and see „big picture”. It bothered me to the point I decided to not use them anymore.

The third thing is that I don’t take „no” (coming from software) for an answer. I often get those specific needs for code search/refactorings that IDEs/LSPs refuse to work with. E.g. I need to search customized OpenAPI specifications and link it to a macros/generated code for browsing. IDEs/LSPs cannot help as it’s not idiomatic, so I customize. And customization is a loop. You customize, you learn how to customize better, you customize more etc.

When it comes to LLM-based aids I’m at point of minimum trust. I’ve experienced so many problems with that code that I rather just disable it entirely. Example? I was setting up Ticker based waiters for Go and then in one place I accepted `time.NewTimer` local-LLM snippet instead of `time.NewTicker` in infinite loop. It was 4 lines of code and looked VERY similar as in 3 functions above (that was before code reduction phase). For those unfamiliar: Go’s ticker ticks every N time. Timer fires once. One-shot-fire in infinite loop == lock. Took 4 hours to debug.

I’m not against using LSP/IDEs. They have their use (but for Pete’s sake ask your organization leaders before feeding proprietary code into ChatGPT). They don’t work for me, I feel dumber. Maybe I’d be more efficient but I don’t care. I do this job also for fun, and GPS kills the fun part for me.