I switched from Sublime to VSCode around 2017, and then switched back to Sublime in 2019. My return to Sublime was triggered by a funfunfunction video[1] wherein Mattias recounts an anecdote where he spent an enormous amount of time learning and configuring his IDE, editors, and tools.
I realized this is what I was doing with VSCode -- adding more and more extensions, and spending an increasing amount of time configuring them or troubleshooting them when they broke. I realized I was happier and more productive using a "dumber" tool like Sublime Text. I still use plugins with ST, but try to keep them to an absolute minimum. If there is a CLI for what I want to do, I prefer to just use that instead of an extension that obfuscates it. Also, ST is significantly snappier than VSCode, an Electron app.
I've been using ST4 for over a week now, and it's been a breath of fresh air.
I've seen far too many developers spend far too much time configuring literally everything but especially their IDEs. I've gotten so very tired of hearing that nonsense as an excuse in a scrum for no progress yesterday. I don't care. I don't need their tools to do my job; maybe they quite literally do and couldn't make any progress with out them...but I'm more convinced these types have little appreciation for work ethic.
All the configuration knobs on an IDE don't make a lick of sense if your goal is being useful to those paying for your services. Each and every one (with the exceptions of autocomplete, goto and syntax highlighting) are better implemented as separate tools. But that mentality got lost long, long ago.
First it was with competitive gaming. In tournaments, competition machines have their configs reset after each match. You have a limited amount of time to setup before game time because admins also have to check your config. I learned to have a fairly simple config (i.e. close to defaults) so I wouldn't run out of time.
Second time round it was with vim and Ruby. I spent nearly 2 months trying to get the right combination of plugins to get something close to a decent IDE experience. I ended up packing it in for RubyMine which gave me what I wanted right out the box.
What a fun video. I do think that "no configuration at all" is probably a little too extreme, and the real answer lies somewhere in the middle. But I think we should all be aware of metawork - it's far too easy to go down that rabbit-hole while feeling like we're being productive! I’ve literally spent a year working on a vscode plugin... sigh.
I realized this is what I was doing with VSCode -- adding more and more extensions, and spending an increasing amount of time configuring them or troubleshooting them when they broke. I realized I was happier and more productive using a "dumber" tool like Sublime Text. I still use plugins with ST, but try to keep them to an absolute minimum. If there is a CLI for what I want to do, I prefer to just use that instead of an extension that obfuscates it. Also, ST is significantly snappier than VSCode, an Electron app.
I've been using ST4 for over a week now, and it's been a breath of fresh air.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIjKJjzRX_E