Ask HN: What is an "outdated" tool or plugin that you refuse to switch from/why?
In the age of github stars being inflated and people jumping ship to ship between mainstream projects, I'm curious to hear other's opinions.
14 comments
All the cool kids are on VScode or Cursor, but I still use and love my boring old Jetbrains IDEs every day. It makes me feel old every time I see someone else's screenshot and realize I am pretty much the only one in all the companies I've ever worked for who likes Jetbrains. Too bad! It's a great IDE.
The main reason I keep using it is that the search files is so much faster and I like being able to edit lines in the search results. The other killer built-in feature is the Git "Resolve conflicts..." which other tools have, but not built into the editor. And for RubyMine, Show definition works more often than with any other editor I've seen.
I very very reluctantly moved from Eclipse IDE to IntelliJ IDEA. I still feel like the migration was three steps forward two steps back. (edit) IDEA is a perfectly nice IDE, don't get me wrong, I just don't really see why it got all the love back in the day.
On a similar note I vastly prefer Maven for my own Java based projects; I despise Gradle as being strictly inferior.
On a similar note I vastly prefer Maven for my own Java based projects; I despise Gradle as being strictly inferior.
I never used Eclipse so can't speak to that, but compared to VScode, it's got a lot of great built-ins: symbol lookup and searches work well, Typescript support is great, the debugger works well, built-in Gutlens-style version control GUI, a good 3-way diff and merge tool, linters, refactoring tools, etc. Also database browser, diagrammer, multi language support...
Most of that is also available in some form with VScode plug-ins, but I prefer Jetbrains's monolithic approach with batteries included. It's what I want from my IDE (everything out of the box).
And aren't Maven and Gradle build tools, not IDEs? (Sorry for the noob question; JS dev here)
Most of that is also available in some form with VScode plug-ins, but I prefer Jetbrains's monolithic approach with batteries included. It's what I want from my IDE (everything out of the box).
And aren't Maven and Gradle build tools, not IDEs? (Sorry for the noob question; JS dev here)
I like IDEA plenty... it's better in some ways than Eclipse, worse in others. I don't get why the Java dev market swept wholesale over to the paid-for tool in preference to the free one.
(edit: actually I think the reason may be that there was a perception that Eclipse was buggy/slow but I think that was always down to bad plugins - I'm not sure if IDEA had a better plugin system or just better curation of them)
I haven't itemised it, but Eclipse has most if not all of the features you list.
Maven and Gradle are indeed build tools, there I was just addressing the original question of "outdated" tools that I still use in preference to the current shiny one. Confusing in context I admit, sorry.
(edit: actually I think the reason may be that there was a perception that Eclipse was buggy/slow but I think that was always down to bad plugins - I'm not sure if IDEA had a better plugin system or just better curation of them)
I haven't itemised it, but Eclipse has most if not all of the features you list.
Maven and Gradle are indeed build tools, there I was just addressing the original question of "outdated" tools that I still use in preference to the current shiny one. Confusing in context I admit, sorry.
What was the Larry Ellison attributed quote about programmers ? Google shows me sth along the "the computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than fashion industry".
It rings quite true - new tools comes and gets the market because they are the new hot shot in town (like eclipse and then intellij once was). Its only matter of time before VSCode will go the same way.
As for eclipse I personally blame lack of funding and interest from new open source devs after it lost its status.
I still use it daily but with each new Eclipse release and my code base growth it really slows down to a halt sometimes and it becomes more and more frustrating. Maybe its time to switch to something that is kept alive by more than few old guys.
It rings quite true - new tools comes and gets the market because they are the new hot shot in town (like eclipse and then intellij once was). Its only matter of time before VSCode will go the same way.
As for eclipse I personally blame lack of funding and interest from new open source devs after it lost its status.
I still use it daily but with each new Eclipse release and my code base growth it really slows down to a halt sometimes and it becomes more and more frustrating. Maybe its time to switch to something that is kept alive by more than few old guys.
I still depend heavily on textfx npp plugins for many mundane tasks, such as quickly sorting a few lines in a text file and I have not bothered to find a replacement so far, like in almost 2 decades hehehe
I like Sublime Text because it's fast, has multiple cursors. And it's pretty. It's redundant with Obsidian but it just feels good.
None of the tools I use are actually outdated. If they were, I'd stop using them. However, I have no idea what would be considered "outdated" by the standards of most HN readers, so I can't actually answer this question.
vim tbh, grep, awk, bash
xbrowsersync
https://cog.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
Super simple tool that I use for everything from project templating to code generation to LLM driven docs.
Super simple tool that I use for everything from project templating to code generation to LLM driven docs.
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