The Luddite Gambit

Almost every modern programmer relies on certain aides, certain tooling, when programming.

Search, auto-completion, syntax highlighting, in-editor linting, and all sorts of other helpers. Theoretically they allow you to "focus on programming" and not think about superficial things. They allow you to spend less mental power on things that could be done automatically.

The Luddite Gambit

A "gambit" is a term from Chess.

A chess opening in which a player sacrifices material with the aim of achieving a subsequent positional advantage.
— Wikipedia

I will be programming without most of these aids.

• I'll be using Sublime Text, my favorite graphical text editor.
• No auto-complete, I will type every character.
• No extensive syntax highlighting, instead opting for a minimal theme. On Sublime Text that means the Alabaster colorscheme.
• Search is allowed.
• Jump-to-file and jump-to-symbol are allowed.
• No LSP.
• No linting in-editor.
• No vibe coding. I haven't vibe coded in over a year anyway.
• Using an LLM to discover a solution, however, is allowed.
• Using Dash for language reference. (Free alternative: https://devdocs.io)

My hypothesis is as follows: if I force myself to think about the code, I will become more familiar with the codebase and more familiar with the programming language.

In addition I will be forced to optimize the DX to actually support this, by having faster feedback cycles for example.

As well I have heard that code written by blind programmers, for example, is structured very differently and in general easier to read and reason about. Perhaps there will be some changes to how I structure code as well, which I'm interested in.

I expect I will be more focused, due to having less things that potentially break your focus by asking for your attention.

Other programmers have gone down this "extreme" Luddite route and they've expressed an improvement in skills, and have found in general then the other "aides" get in their way, eventually. I want to find out if it's for me as well.

Let's find out how many of these modern aides are actually in my way.

A potential hedge against vibe coding

If it turns out that it does increase my skills and widens my skillset, and allows me to think more deeply about the codebase, and actually work more effectively, then this actually gives me an advantage against vibe coders that continuously ship (sloppier stuff).

We will see how that turns out.