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Those people are the majority (or at least a large plurality). Quit your job as a game dev/web dev at a large software vendor/startup and join the enterprise Java/.NET devs working on middleware and be amazed at how scared they are of anything outside of the IDE.



The thing is, I actually can't imagine what it's like to be those people. I mean, I'm trying, but I literally can't: I log into my computer every day over SSH, I write and use CLI tooling constantly. I'm an emacs user, and if your tooling doesn't have a CLI mode, I'm usually not interested.

I can't stand IDEs and frameworks because I hate having things done magically for me, partly because "magic" tends to break, and partly because I have a compulsive need to know how things work, if not deeply than at least superficially. I can't stand Java and languages like it because the absurd amount of boilerplate they generate seems to require such things, it's generally considered a fool's errand to write Java outside of an irritatingly complex IDE, and it seems to attract complex frameworks like a pile of crap attracts flies.

An IDE dependance (not preference, dependance: you're terrified of going outside of an IDE) doesn't just imply a distaste for CLIs, it often implies a desire to have things done for you, for "magic."

Do these sorts of people rewrite software, even if there's a convenient framework, just because? Do they think about cache misses (even if they don't do anything about them)? Do they learn new languages and concepts on a whim, because, "I thought it seemed cool?"

Thinking like these people doesn't just mean ignoring years of knowledge, but also actually pretending that a deeply ingrained part of who I am, something I though near intrinsic to programmers (because what other sort of person would do this sort of thing voluntarily?).

I actually can't, and that kind of amazes me.




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