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by nomel 970 days ago
Integrated linters save a lot of time with their immediate feedback. Depending on the language you're working with, remote debugging can be an incredible time saver. Modern editors are aware of the structure of the code, so can do things that are impossible for default VIM to do, like find the usage of a variable, rather than text occurrences, automatically show documentation, etc. All time savings.
1 comments
walleeee 969 days ago
Agreed, good points. I guess I still wonder whether these are needed for an introductory assignment. A vim/ssh workflow seems more future-proof than any particular IDE. As an instructor maybe it would make sense to do the first assignment with low-level tools, then introduce VSCode/etc and briefly demo these things, to make the added convenience even more visceral to the novice.
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nomel 969 days ago
> would make sense to do the first assignment with low-level tool

Sure, but if the goal is to teach programming, I think vim massively confuses a beginner. vim is hard for beginners, famously so. Something like VSCode, used as a remote text editor, is trivial and familiar to anyone who has used at MS Word. I agree it should be introduced, but there's definitely some cargo cult around vim and "the old ways".

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walleeee 969 days ago
Idk, if we're working on a remote machine already, it's not the student's first day. The bar to basic editing with vim is pretty low. Mode switch with i and esc, :x to save/exit, navigate where your fingers already are, slash to find. That all fits on a sticky note if it isn't already memorized in the first 30 seconds. They've likely played video games their whole lives, I struggle to see how mapping buttons to behaviors is a foreign or difficult concept.

As you say we're teaching programming. The ability to pick up an unfamiliar tool and get to know it on the fly is critical and the only way to develop it is practice.

That said, maybe there is no right answer here. I imagine the instructor's broader approach will make the difference, not which editor they make the class use for assignment three :)

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