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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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[–] emma@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Isn't PICO-8 an IDE? I guess it doesn't really fit the traditional defitinion, but it includes a code editor, image editor, and music editor.

I would argue that PICO-8 is an IDE for game development on a fictional console, but I could understand why others would disagree. It is not necessarily what you would think of when you think of an IDE, but it is a development environment specially integrated with tools for game development. You can make an entire game without leaving PICO-8, and that sounds like an IDE to me.

[–] thtroyer@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

I think that's a fair argument. PICO-8 definitely could be called a primitive IDE. I think it's closer to being a primitive game engine with so much of its focus being on graphics and sound tooling.

While you can code simple things within PICO-8, I've found that as I've built bigger things, I work better in an outside editor, even if it only gets me smaller fonts, splitable windows, vim bindings, limited linting, and somewhat broken code completion.

This isn't a criticism of PICO-8 as an environment. I think there are a lot of strengths in its simplicity, especially for beginner coders.

I tend to make a distinction between a customizable editor with some support for a language (like vim+plugins) vs a dedicated all-in-one tool that fully understands the language and environment (IDE). PICO-8 is hard to place on that spectrum given it's an all-in-one tool, but switching to a modified editor gives you more features.