nostr:npub197llnzpwfsg9h3mjcre307caj8mh8ea7v55395635qlu6qq6fd9q99rmtn Yeah, the term "IDE" itself is pretty poorly defined. It has something to do with providing tools for editing code and debugging programs, and developing software of course. But some people don't seem to understand that an IDE isn't strictly necessary for developing software. You can definitely use programming environments like the UNIX shell (and related utilities), which I have done professionally, or you can use a Lisp programming environment with good general-purpose tools for manipulating text such as Emacs.

I guess some people are pretty narrow-minded about how certain things are defined. They come to believe that only certain specific pieces of software like VS Code, Intelli-J, Eclipse, or NetBeans, are classified as "IDEs," and any new IDE they may run across must be exactly like these other things or else it is not an IDE to them. They don't seem to understand that all software "products" contain hundreds of algorithms and features to accomplish a variety of tasks, and there is lots and lots of overlap in the sets of features you will find between various individual software products.

If you are one of those people who take the view that you do not need to encircle a certain subset of functions or algorithms and label it an "IDE", you can just provide the individual functions to compute those algorithms as individual tools, and let the programmer assemble them in any way they please to get work done, then you might be the right kind of person to use Emacs, or a UNIX-like shell (and CLI utilities), as an IDE.