[scarface_74]

This reads a lot like the old assembly language programmers (I was one) who stuck their nose up at C programmers for not knowing how computers worked because it was too high level.

The entire purpose of computers is to automate things and reduce complexity

[iamwil]

There is the very real possibility that automation masks complexity, not reduce it. And that’s what he’s saying.

[scarface_74]

I used this as an example before, the AWS SDK

https://boto3.amazonaws.com/v1/documentation/api/latest/inde...

It’s the same in every supported language since it is autogenerated from service definition files. I chose the Python version because it is all on one page. Would you rather memorize thousands of functions across hundreds of classes? Should AWS “reduce complexity” by getting rid of services and functionality?

Would you rather have an auto complete IDE or have to look up the web reference?

I’m sure it’s more complex to run S3 at scale than to build out the data center I did as part of my job to store 4TB worth of data in the early 2000s.

I would much rather run a 4 line CloudFormation template and do it in less than a second over it taking months to do it in house.

I started my programming in assembly in the 80s, should we go back to that too or should we keep using compilers and interpreters?

Should we keep programming in C or should we use manages runtimes with garbage collection?

[withinboredom]

yes to all of that. In other words, we need both. We need the low-level stuff to do things nobody has ever done before, and the high-level stuff for the things we do every day.

[scarface_74]

And even assemblers had macros in the late 80s and shortcuts to make assembly easier.

There is no reason to purposefully make your life harder and not use the tools available.

The parent poster doesn’t use IDEs because it hides complexity. There is a such thing as necessarily complex.

About a decade ago I was working at a company that created a SaaS product for railroad car repair billing.

These are the main requirements not including a dozen addendums

https://public.railinc.com/sites/default/files/documents/CRB...

The parent commenter would say that we shouldn’t use an IDE to navigate through the massive code base to make sure records submitted from the railroad yards were in compliance. What alternative would you suggest?

Intellisense for Visual Studio has been out since the mid 90a

[withinboredom]

I remember when it came out. It changed my life. Libraries without docs were suddenly discoverable. I didn’t have to memorize things, I just had to remember the gist of things. It let me focus on the important stuff. Still, today, before picking up a library, I will read over the whole thing so I know what is possible; but I don’t need to memorize it.