Why IDE's are useless for beginner programmers

classic Classic list List threaded Threaded
7 messages Options
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Why IDE's are useless for beginner programmers

Clarkton
A few months ago I struggled to understand programming concepts because I used an IDE, how?

The concept of an IDE is combining tools to make programming easier, this may be suitable for experienced programmers but for beginners, IDE's are ineffective.

Take a simple java program for example:

public class Main {
      public static void main(String[] args){
          System.out.println("Hello World");
     }
}

Any IDE will automatically put code similar to this after you create a java file and most likely, the programmer will ignore this because it's already written. Why is this bad?

An IDE makes it harder to make mistakes. Making mistakes is what helps develop programming intuition. The difficult part is, you can just say I already know this and move on and unfortunately, I fell into this trap. It turned out I didn't understand some concepts as deeply as required. Making the choice to use a simple text editor is the best decision any programmer can make because you have to write all code yourself and the beauty of it is you will make mistakes an IDE wouldn't have let you make.

Applying this ideology will definitely make you a better programmer overall.
 

Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: Why IDE's are useless for beginner programmers

fschmidt
Administrator
I think IDEs are fundamentally flawed for programmers at any level.  A craftsman uses simple tools to create exactly what he wants.  I wrote about tools versus applications here:

https://saidit.net/s/programming/comments/9bp3/git_vs_mercurial_please_relax/y4jg
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: Why IDE's are useless for beginner programmers

OmegaKV
In reply to this post by Clarkton
I am starting to wonder if maybe software development is too general for there to be an IDE that works for all software, even if they share the same language. But maybe an IDE can work if it is tailored to the specific software being developed. I am thinking of creating an IDE specific to the detector visualization software I maintain. The IDE would open up the files to edit, have a button to compile, have buttons to load different test inputs, and a section of the IDE that displays the image. Right now it is very tedious to do some of these tasks. I wrote a script to load the test image, but it is kind of a pain because I have to locate the script to run it, and editing it to change the image. Having all the functionality like this in a single IDE I write seems like it may make things easier.
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: Why IDE's are useless for beginner programmers

Clarkton
This approach to IDE's is much better than the approach modern programmers take.

An IDE should simplify the task at hand, not cram a bunch of bullshit together expecting everything to make sense
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: Why IDE's are useless for beginner programmers

SkydustMemory
In reply to this post by Clarkton
CONTENTS DELETED
The author has deleted this message.
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: Why IDE's are useless for beginner programmers

fschmidt
Administrator
SkydustMemory wrote
Are you talking about a text editor as simple as Windows Notepad, for example?
I use Sublime Text.  One should use a decent text editor with line numbers and other needed features.
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: Why IDE's are useless for beginner programmers

OmegaKV
In reply to this post by SkydustMemory
SkydustMemory wrote
I sympathize with your philosophy on making mistakes, it is similar to other fields where advancing technology has started to aid or completely take over the process, like animation.
This will be bad for art because AI is not very creative but it produces work indistinguishable from that of a creative artist, robbing the real artists of all credit.

What I mean by creative is: There are many different styles of art and these are different human interpretations of nature. An impressionist painting of a bridge would be one interpretation of that bridge, and a realistic painting would be another. Humans developed these interpretations in part by looking at nature, and in part by copying each other. But an AI only does the latter. An AI is just very good at interpolating various art pieces to create new ones. But an AI would never come up with an art style on its own, unless via a complete simulation of the human brain, because taste is something that is subjective to humans, so a non-human can never be a true artist (someone who can make artistic innovations at a fundamental level). How can an AI tell if an art is pleasing or not? - it can't, it can only interpolate. My point is to say that AI is going to cause art to further stagnate, if it isn't already dead.