this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2026
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Programmer Humor

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[–] sun_is_ra@sh.itjust.works 93 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

I disagree that a person with low IQ would think its possible to code using a simple text editor. If anything he needs IDE more than any one else.

[–] KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 63 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah, it doesn't fit the template but the low IQ version would be more like "You only need ChatGPT for coding."

[–] PumaStoleMyBluff@lemmy.world 29 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Every self-taught programmer I've seen starts off hacking at something in Notepad.

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[–] cows_are_underrated@feddit.org 28 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Depends on where you start. When your first contact is HTML its not too unusual to use a text editor for development.

[–] 14th_cylon@lemmy.zip 11 points 3 weeks ago

esp. if you started at the time when all you had for designing page layout were frames...

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[–] Hippy@piefed.social 41 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Why do you need a text editor? Just use radiation to bit flip the memory into the configuration you need.

[–] molten_boron@sh.itjust.works 7 points 3 weeks ago

Just need a magnetized needle and a steady hand.

[–] FishFace@piefed.social 38 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

I have no desire to work on a large project in a plain text editor.

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[–] mfed1122@discuss.tchncs.de 36 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (25 children)

I have never seen or known a serious professional who preferred to work outside of a full featured IDE. All the most skilled and highest paid developers I've ever known were more adamant about using the IDE when compared to the less skilled developers who preferred to do things more via command line and text editors. Just my experience. I often suspect that this meme is shared and liked by people who aren't really professionals. Perhaps I just haven't encountered them yet.

Edit: It seems I indeed haven't encountered them! Although I do stand by my original point to the extent that it seems there are disciplines where IDEs are best and disciplines where they aren't. I enjoyed reading everyone's responses and thinking about areas of software that I don't usually think about. It's given me lots to look into. Thanks everyone who responded nicely! Also, I definitely did not mean to imply that specialists working without IDEs are amateurs or anything like that! Much respect to everyone out there making software.

[–] vala@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 3 weeks ago

On the contrary most people I know who "really know their shit" are using neovim and cli tools.

[–] Corbin@programming.dev 15 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

So, you've never known any Unix hackers? I worked for a student datacenter when I was at university, and we were mostly vim users; as far as text-editor diversity, we did have one guy who was into emacs and another who preferred nano. After that, I went to work at Google, where I continued to use vim. As far as fancy IDE features, I do use syntax highlighting and I know how to use the spell checker but I don't use autocomplete. I've heard of neovim but don't have a good reason to try it out yet; maybe next decade?

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[–] zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 13 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It's all variable, and highly dependent on the languages you use, the types of applications you develop, your personal workflows, what you learned with and got used to as you were learning to program, and a myriad of other factors. Painting in broad strokes, like what the meme is doing or what you're doing, is almost never correct. There's always nuance.

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[–] AbsolutePain@lemmy.world 12 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

I know more than one person (I think 4, including me) who code for a living and essentially live in tmux.

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[–] PokerChips@programming.dev 12 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

If you're in a jvm or Microsoft heavy environment then maybe so.

[–] coriza@lemmy.world 12 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Just for reference, because programming is not one big tent, as far as I know most people working professionally developing for the Linux kernel, gcc and glic uses only a text editor and "Unix as your IDE". I never tried myself but I have a feeling that any IDE with git integration would just immediately cry trying to interact with the kernel or gcc git repo. Even gits own PS1 status feature slows to crawl in this repos.

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[–] BartyDeCanter@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

I’m a “serious professional” who has been developing for over 20 years and I’ve generally prefer a text editor the IDEs that I’ve had to use at work. I find that most IDEs are slow resource hogs that don’t give me features that I actually care about over a fast text editor.

The singular exception was Cider when I was at Google. It was fantastic at wrangling their massive monorepo, and integration with their code review and ticket system was nice. Somehow it was snappy and reliable even though it ran in Chrome.

Nowadays I’ve switched to Helix and use LSPs for the languages I use most. For what it’s worth, those are C, C++, Rust and Python. Mostly Rust and Python now.

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[–] BlushedPotatoPlayers@sopuli.xyz 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The best I know uses mcedit, there definitely life beyond IDEs

[–] mfed1122@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The Minecraft world editor? They use that for developing non-Minecraft world software? That's pretty fascinating. What sort of things do they develop with it?

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[–] firelizzard@programming.dev 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I, on the other hand, would not consider someone a serious, competent professional if they were unable to do their job without an IDE. Sure, every serious developer I’ve known uses an IDE or similar for day to day work, but that’s a matter of convenience. In my book “competence” includes being able to do your job without needing your hand held by the IDE.

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[–] red_tomato@lemmy.world 30 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

No one is going to take IntelliJ from me. Tab completion master race!

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[–] serpineslair@lemmy.world 30 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

Join the Vim cult! We have blackjack! And hookers!

(No guarantee of blackjack or hookers upon initiation).

[–] cows_are_underrated@feddit.org 17 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Already joined the emacs cult. Youre too late.

[–] expr@programming.dev 11 points 3 weeks ago

Don't worry, cult membership is flexible.

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[–] silasmariner@programming.dev 28 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

You also need a compiler or interpreter because wtf man you gotta run some stuff during development

[–] piccolo@sh.itjust.works 15 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

What, you dont program in binary? What a noob.

[–] silasmariner@programming.dev 8 points 3 weeks ago

I do, I just use abstractions and metaprogramming layers to do so more efficiently. Sounds like your workflow could use improving

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[–] apftwb@lemmy.world 14 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

If you write C code in a text file and rename the file extension to .exe and try to run it the CPU will do something.

This statement is technically correct, the best kind of correct.

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[–] MousePotatoDoesStuff@lemmy.world 28 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

You don't even need a text editor, you can write it on paper.

But both are terrible options if you want to actually get stuff done, now that we have better tools.

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[–] Juice@midwest.social 25 points 3 weeks ago

need ai integration to code

Nah that dude is on the left, and he makes 250k per year

[–] lengau@midwest.social 24 points 3 weeks ago

Joke's on you, with LSPs most text editors are full IDEs.

[–] carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)
[–] Feyd@programming.dev 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] lessthanluigi@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 3 weeks ago

Kate has a built-in terminal option (just like Dolphin file manager) and that can be super handy when using gcc.

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[–] lb_o@lemmy.world 10 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

These meme spreads misinformation under the disguise of wisdom.

Those on the right side are too blind in their arrogance and probably seldom face challenging tasks in large codebases.

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[–] rozodru@piefed.social 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

just run everything thru Doom Emacs. Terminal? emacs, git? emacs, ide? emacs, WM? emacs.

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[–] AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip 8 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Minus the "AI" part and I somewhat agree with the middle person, at least for HTML/CSS. I love how Bluefish has auto tag completion so I can focus on what goes inside instead of having to close open tags.

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[–] nil@piefed.ca 8 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I use Helix but Zed is good

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[–] Tier1BuildABear@lemmy.world 8 points 3 weeks ago

Notepad++ my beloved

[–] chasteinsect@programming.dev 7 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

In Neovim after re-writing my config I actually opted out of even using a LSP. If you have a picker with grep + fuzzy finder honestly the experience is not that bad and keeps things lean. You will need to change your workflow a bit but very doable. So I can stand behind the "meme".

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[–] 30p87@feddit.org 7 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

Don't worry, @aard@kyu.de already integrated OpenAI in Emacs.

[–] aard@kyu.de 10 points 3 weeks ago
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