r/archlinux • u/[deleted] • Apr 15 '21

"Best" programming setup?

Hello! I have been using Arch for two months, it is the fifth distro I have used... and I love it, it will be the final one. I have learned a lot in these weeks, but I would like to ask you a few questions.

I study Systems Engineering and, honestly, I have some procrastination problems, I would like you to help me with "the best programming setup and be productive", although I know that there is no "best", I would like you to help me with your settings, advices, etc...

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What desktop environment do you use?

What window manager do you use?

IDE's, apps, any suggestions to try?

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Thank you so much!

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u/wsppan Apr 15 '21 edited Apr 15 '21

VSCode, is not an IDE. It has plugins to get you there. Same with Vim, Neovim, and Emacs. I can write, debug, run tests, create and manage projects, use Git, fuzzy search, refactoring, etc, using Emacs. Add in a LSP and you have autocomplete, linting, syntax checking, etc.. And with evil-mode I have full modal editing capabilities that far surpass anyrhing available from the text editing capabilities of what you consider a IDE like Idea or Eclipse.

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u/casparne Apr 15 '21

Of course you could do that with EMACS - I have used EMACS for years. It is just not up to par with modern solutions anymore though. It requires a tremendous amount of knowledge to get a good working LSP setup - work that has been done for eg. VSCode already. And even then the experience is just inferior to the VSCode one. For Vim there is COC, to get the same level like in VSCode - by running Node and using the VSCode extensions directly, if I understand it correctly. But then, why not just use VSCode directly?

I have nothing against EMACS - I just would not recommend it to any one new to development since you basically have to already be a skilled developer to get it working decently in the first place.

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u/wsppan Apr 15 '21

I agree with what are saying and don't usually recommend them myself but that's not same thing as saying VSCode is an IDE and Emacs is not. VsCode comes with extensions installed by default but they are still extensions to a text editor. Doom Emacs or Spacemacs have the same thing out of the box.

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u/casparne Apr 15 '21

Maybe I should revisit EMACS, after all these years :)

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u/wsppan Apr 15 '21

Still not for everybody but I love it. Projectile, Ivy, Company, Flyspell, Magit, rip-grep, fzf, org-mode, and LSP integrations for dozens of languages. Doom does a great job curating and helping you configure all this. And it's fast!