DEV Community

Discussion on: Why Are Some Developers so Allergic to IDEs?

Collapse
 
turnerj profile image
James Turner

It is a question I have had myself for a while and I think some of the other people commenting probably summed up the main points about bloat and configuration/flexibility.

I have a related question though: When does an editor become an IDE?

Like, you can take the standard install of VS Code and basically add plugins to it to mimic all the functionality of what you might find in other IDEs. Does that make VS Code an IDE too? If not, what does?

Is there a single specific feature that turns a simple text editor into an IDE?

Collapse
 
waterlink profile image
Alex Fedorov • Edited

For me personally, when it allows me to stop “editing text” and “start transforming/growing code.”

Editing text is still there a little bit, like 1-3% of the time, everything else is auto-completion, refactoring, transformation, auto-insertion, ALT+ENTER magic basically.

Such "transformation/growing of the code" should be at the tips of my fingers. Basically, as I touch the keyboard, the code should start growing, transforming and refactoring. I only make decisions in which direction.