[g947o]

GitHub Copilot, Claude Code and Codex provide fairly good IDE integrations. They don't just edit files behind your back. They actually edit the files you have in the IDEs using editor APIs and even show you a nice diff view. This way you never have content that is out of sync. I find this approach very usable and appealing.

On the other hand, many of the AI tools and their companies think that you should completely ditch IDEs for CLIs only, because "nobody needs to write code anymore". Some of them even stopped maintaining IDE extensions and go all-in in CLIs.

(I call that complete BS)

[yonatan8070]

I've noticed that Codex usually uses the native editing tools and shows me a diff, but sometimes it just sidesteps that and does a cat > file << EOF, so I need to rely on Git diffs to tell what it did.

[MrJohz]

> This way you never have content that is out of sync.

They can definitely go out of sync, particularly if something that isn't the editor or the AI changes the code (e.g. running shell commands or opening the file in a different editor and making changes there). I've had a whole load of issues with VSCode where there's been spurious edits all over the place that show up again even if I try and revert them, because every time the AI makes an unrelated edit, VSCode tries to reset the file to the version it thinks exists and then play the AI's edits on top.

[g947o]

That problem already existed long before the age of LLMs?

[buzzerbetrayed]

I don’t even open a text editor anymore 90% of the time. Seems clear to me that IDEs, in the traditional sense, don’t really have a place in the future of software creation. They might morph into something that does, but definitely not in their current form, imo.

[satvikpendem]

If you actually want to engineer properly and review the code rather than pushing out vibe coded slop PRs, then IDEs absolutely do have a future.

[mbrumlow]

> If you actually want to engineer properly.

I think this statement is misguided, and potentially comes from a lack of experience in getting AI coders to produce quality.

Proper engineering does not come about from the tools you use or how you use them. Proper engineering has always come from thought, and reasoning, it never was about the act of coding. It always was about the systems thinking and expressing the goals and desires that matched the requirements.

IDEs were never needed to properly engineer and in the days of AI will become increasingly less important.

Tools for planning, reviewing, and commenting on code are the future. The necessity to edit actual code is coming to an end.

[satvikpendem]

Yes, that's what I said, I'm contrasting properly engineered AI code to vibe coded slop AI code, not that human written code is inherently better engineered.