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Via irreal.org I found this thread on reddit.
The thread is saddening imho. And I would like to add two things.
There is a post in this thread by a person making very much the point for the Jetbrains IDE. And in there:
> Emacs is for tinkerers and greybeards. Not for those who "just want to get shit done™". VSCode gets you just as much code intelligence, basically out-of-the box. All the customisability the average dev needs, and plugins for whatever's missing.
I do think, this falls way too short.
When I started using computers around 1986 or so, a lot of things I now use daily weren't invented. More specifically:
The first IDE I used was for Borland Pascal and C. It featured what looks like an ncurses character based GUI. It was great!
The second sort of editor was a thing on an IBM mainframe. Very peculiar prefix operated thing. XEDIT maybe.
The third editor was EDT running on DEC microVAXen under the VMS operating system. Anyone remember the "Gold"-Key? :)
Then I had my first encounter with vi on Unix (Kubota, AIX, HPUX). And with "vi" I mean just that and not vim or neovim, they were not around then.
After completing my first degree I switched to emacs. So this is number 5 at least. But I did not look back or elsewhere much.
The point I am trying to make is this: for me, computer screens are 80x24 characters, monospace font, shell interface (I'm using the i3/sway window managers on Linux systems). That's how I got raised. That's how my pattern recognition works. I can find interesting things in logfiles, just by scrolling through them. Of course I rely on "search" a lot. By the way: "less" got me to change from "more" literally in seconds, because it could move "backwards".
I understand, that people socalized in another epoch find other things normal. But please leave me alone, if you would please be so kind as to. I do learn new tools if I need them, e.g. git wasn't always there. Someone remember RCS? It was quite capable at its time.
To explain, what I'm doing at dayjob: I'm not a computer science major, but one of physics. I work in a role as a systems integrator. I receive hardware, I use serial interfaces and very awkward things to build a first stage boot loader, I use C and make to build a second stage boot loader (u-boot) matching the board. I build a linux kernel and a minimal userland. In other words: I write shell scripts to automate all this. Emacs shell-mode and flycheck work faster and further than my brain does. If I did a good job, then copying "the image" onto said hardware will make it boot up, come to live, talk to it's hardware environment and do its job. Hardware does not have a screen, so no GUI! :)
Of course, I have to use Outlook and Teams and a number of modern clicky tools. There is no way around that. I read my private email in emacs/mu4e. I honestly think that the text entry widget in most GUIS is a royal PITA, and that html mails shall be banned. So I try to stick with emacs key bindings as far as possible. I write lengthy emails in emacs, then copy them over to Outlook. And always choose a monospace font before pasting. Otherwise I cannt read the damn text myself.
I currently have to use very modern interfaces. My company gave me an iPhone for traveling. Folks, this stuff is so unbelievably modern, that I really don't know, how to use it. I keep pestering my colleages to show me how to do the most simple things, because they are neither obvious nor self explaining. It is a lost case.
So, my boss coming to me forcing me to use JetBrains or CLion? For Shell Skripts? If he insists, I'm out. I'm almost 60, but I would quit. This is not on the horizon, since my boss is using emacs for a set of special work flows himself.
Long years ago a similar thing had happened. Any big The Enterprise has a group of bean counters. And every time money is in short supply (i.e. always, make no mistake), they will count beans. That's their job.
So at that time I was working in a department providing Unix support (HPUX) to other departments in The Enterprise. So everyone in our group had an ordinary PC running Windows NT, plus a nice workstation running HPUX. That workstation was our daily driver. The Windows PC was to read email (had changed to a Microsoft thing back then) plus a few things not available on HPUX.
So one day our (remote) manager says, we have to get rid of the Unix workstations and work on Windows. I probably exploded right on the spot. I reminded him, that this workstation is a) long paid for, since we received them as a gift from a development department, and b) the tool to provide knowledge about what we were supposed to deliver. I added, that I would quit on the spot if he insists. He didn't.
Another long time ago in some psycho team booting whatever bullshit event, I found a nice gem. The lady running the event asked us to find a profession, the connotations of which would describe, how we actually worked.
I chose a seaman/skipper.
Why? I want to understand the operation to be carried out. I want to choose the tools, resources and if possible people to run the operation. Then we would set sail. And I do not want to be bothered until we return. Especially, I don't want to learn, that the thing was canceled, or that the goal is moved every week. If we run into trouble exceeding our capacities or knowledge, I'm going to ask for help.
Guess what. It never works like this. But it has helped me understand, why I would quit on the spot.
Never forget that the super fancy white collar manager can not make a release or fix a bug. Literally. They are totally dependant on all the other people, not only the developers. If I am not making the release, because I know, it is not ready for primetime, there is no release. This might cost your job, so use it wisely.
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