Why I Don't Use an IDE

As developers we strive to maximize our productivity by using tools that streamline workflow and by automating as many things as possible. An Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is software that is intended to streamline a developer's workflow by handling setup of the development environment and providing an easy to use GUI. While IDEs make many things easy they come at a cost of flexibility, transparency, and even developer productivity. By using a set of individual tools instead of an IDE we can create an environment that is extremely customizable and allows for greater productivity than that of a traditional IDE. In this talk I'll talk about my decision to not use an IDE and how I came to use the set of tools that I do now. I also demo the setup I have and go over the basics of each tool I use.

Transcript

1. Why I Don't Use an IDE
   Trevor Brown
   

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2. Trevor Brown
   Sarasota, Fl
   JavaScript, Erlang, Elixir, Ruby
   Software Developer at Voalte
   @Stratus3D
   Github.com/Stratus3D
   admin@stratus3d.com
   

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3. What is an IDE?
   An integrated development environment
   (IDE) is a software application that provides
   comprehensive facilities to computer
   programmers for software development. An
   IDE normally consists of a source code
   editor, build automation tools and a
   debugger. Most modern IDEs have intelligent
   code completion.
   – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_development_environment
   

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4. Eclipse IDE
   

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5. Emacs
   

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6. Problems with IDEs
   ●
   Often designed for a specific language or framework
   ●
   Hard to find IDEs that provide good support for
   obscure languages
   ●
   GUI is often a veil
   

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7. Advantages to Using
   an IDE
   ●
   Easy to setup
   ●
   Easy to learn
   ●
   Some things automated out of the box
   

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8. Why No IDE?
   

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9. Why No IDE?
   • I don't normally use a debugger
   • Unit tests and type analysis instead
   • Constantly trying out new languages and
   frameworks
   • Regularly use Erlang, Elixir, Bash, Ruby, and
   JavaScript, so I need something that works with a
   lot of languages
   • IDEs are often harder to customize than individual
   tools
   • Often proprietary
   

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10. No IDE
    

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11. The Tools I Use
    ●
    Vim
    ●
    Zsh
    ●
    tmux
    ●
    asdf
    

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12. Gnome Terminal
    

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13. asdf
    

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14. What is a version
    manager?
    ●
    Ensures the environment your project runs in
    has the right versions of it's dependencies
    available
    ●
    May also handle building and installing the
    dependencies
    ●
    Asdf is primarily focused on managing
    language versions
    ●
    Asdf is intended to replace the language
    specific versions managers out there like...
    

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15. Existing Version
    Managers
    ●
    Ruby's rvm, rbenv, ry and a dozen other
    version managers
    ●
    Elixir's kiex and exenv
    ●
    Erlang's evm, erln8 and kerl
    ●
    Node.js's nvm and nvmw
    ●
    ...
    

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16. asdf
    ●
    Generic version manager
    ●
    Created by Akash Manohar
    ●
    MIT License
    ●
    ~380 stars on GitHub
    ●
    Support for each language comes in the form
    of a plugin
    ●
    Plugins already exist for Elixir, Erlang, Go,
    Lua, Node.js, Python, Ruby, and Scala
    

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17. asdf is Simple
    ●
    100% Bash
    ●
    Doesn't alter your path Adds one directory
    to your path
    ●
    Doesn't affect any existing software
    ●
    Doesn't replace the `cd` command
    ●
    Plugins are just Git repositories
    

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18. How Does it Work?
    ●
    Plugins for each language or dependency
    ●
    Plugins handle downloading, building, and
    installation of available dependency
    versions
    ●
    Asdf invokes Bash scripts contained in the
    plugins when needed
    ●
    Asdf creates a shim for each executable
    found in the installed dependency
    

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19. Version 2
    Version 1
    How Does it Work?
    ●
    Asdf creates shims for each executable
    found in the installed dependency
    ●
    Shims invoke the correct version of the
    executable on the fly
    Binary
    Shell Binary
    Version 3 Binary
    Shim
    

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20. Similar Tools
    ●
    Lots of similar tools out there. Most are
    more complex and don't offer any
    additional benefits
    ●
    Nix is functional package manager that
    provides more guarantees about the
    environment your software runs in
    https://nixos.org/nix/
    

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21. The Tools I Use
    ●
    Vim
    ●
    Zsh
    ●
    tmux
    ●
    asdf
    

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22. Zsh
    

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23. Zsh
    ●
    Advantages over Bash
    – Oh My Zsh
    – Better autocompletion
    – Plugins
    – Easier to customize the prompt
    ●
    Similar to Bash
    ●
    Custom aliases and scripts to make things
    even easier
    

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24. Vim
    

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25. Vim
    ●
    Just a text editor
    ●
    Different modes
    ●
    Many open source plugins
    

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26. Vim Plugins
    ●
    Vundle
    ●
    CtrlP
    ●
    NerdTree
    ●
    Syntastic
    ●
    vim-easytags
    ●
    vim-gitgutter
    ●
    Vim-pencil
    ●
    Language and framework specific plugins
    

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27. Vim Tips
    ●
    Do things the right way (disable the arrow
    keys)
    ●
    Don't use too many plugins
    ●
    Be careful copying from others' vimrc files
    ●
    Write your macros and functions
    ●
    Learn VimL
    ●
    Do everything in vim
    

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28. tmux
    

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29. tmux
    ●
    Tmux sessions
    ●
    Sessions can contain multiple windows and
    panes
    ●
    You can disconnect from a session and
    reconnect later
    ●
    You can have multiple connections to a
    session
    ●
    Tmuxinator automates setup
    

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30. Gnome Shell
    

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31. tmuxinator
    ●
    Allows you to define “projects”
    ●
    Projects define the windows and panes
    present in a tmux session
    ●
    Projects define what should be run in each
    window and pane
    ●
    Projects also allow you to specify “pre”
    commands to be run
    

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32. Use Dotfiles!
    ●
    Configuration is everything when using
    tools like these
    ●
    Use Git to manage your dotfiles
    – Makes syncing between machines easier
    – Makes sharing easy
    

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33. Tour
    

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34. Conclusion
    ●
    Really happy with my workflow
    ●
    Very performent
    ●
    Had to read a lot of documentation, but
    learned a lot in the process
    ●
    Took a lot of work
    ●
    Not going to work for everyone
    ●
    Could hinder me in the future?
    

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35. Advice
    ●
    Learn one thing at a time
    ●
    Setup a dotfile repository
    ●
    Don't overload yourself
    ●
    Don't copy the dotfiles of others
    ●
    Look at the dotfiles of others to learn
    ●
    If you need a command, tool, or plugin, it
    probably already exists. DuckDuckGo is your
    friend
    

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36. Trevor Brown
    @Stratus3D
    Github.com/Stratus3D
    admin@stratus3d.com
    https://github.com/srqsoftware/06-29-
    2016_Why_I_Dont_Use_an_IDE
    

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