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Are IDEs mostly bloatware? (programming.dev)

submitted 1 year ago by bullshitter@programming.dev to c/ask_experienced_devs@programming.dev

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Hi experienced devs , I am a beginner programmer. I mostly use code completion and go-to source , and rename function and objects, code-pretty. Other features not so much. What features do you use often And what features are not that useful in an IDE and can be considered bloat? P.S.- Which is that one feature that you can't live without?( sorry for sounding like tiktok wannabe)

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[–] BehindTheBarrier@programming.dev 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

IDEs are useful, I always stick with them myself.

I don't care where my imports come from, I just need that reference when I start writing the type. I don't remember exactly the name, it's sufficient to type out a bit and get it in the autocomplete. I don't know the overloads, so it's nice to see what it can do/take. Solution wide rename, go to source/usages (I can't stress this enough, along with a mouse with back/forward buttons) allows quickly going back and forward between places you've been. It's not quite on the VIM bookmark and goto that I've seen a coworker use, but still great.

Running tests with good overview and the code a click away, debug both in tests and in general, global search is extremely useful when half your code base is compiled into a database... And another part is loose references to a property that the IDE isn't aware of

Lest not forget the most important one, auto formatting. I pushed for a format on save across the team, and while there's some larger changes in the first pull requests, it totally removes code that has 4 mile long lines, messy indentation and so much more.

While it requires work, a shared editorconfig goes a long way to align style both across computers and IDEs. Not all those style rules are that important but a common format helps making navigating code easier.

Visual studio is pretty good with hot reload, debugger and a few other things. But it needs ReSharper to properly shine imo, and that makes it so damn slow and buggy. I moved to Rider since I knew Pycharm, and it's a lot snapper with a few less bugs. When I started my job my laptop bluescreened a few times a week until VS2022 came out. It's also somehow randomly forgot my keybind until restart, failed to compile when going from .Net 6 back to a old framework version branch, and even clean solution didn't work. (because that doesn't clean obj folders)

Rider sometimes gets it in for itself that my files are invalid, but still compiles. And on first boot, running my application doesn't actual start it somehow. But outside that, the experience is much more smooth.