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PDE: A different take on editing code

TJ DeVries · 88K views · 2022-06-28 · 20:01

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Overview

TJ DeVries coins the term PDE (Personalized Development Environment) to describe editors like Neovim that you shape to your own workflow. He contrasts this with out-of-the-box IDEs and discusses why customizable tools appeal to developers.

On Hacker News

It is the cited origin of the 'PDE' term, which HN uses when discussing vim, Neovim and Emacs as personally customized environments.

Recommended by 2 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2022–2025

Topics

Testing, debugging & developer tools
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neovimpdeeditorscustomizationvim

What people said

ivanjermakov · 2025-01 · Recommendation

> Lua is great, but one JSON file is even better I will never understand how you go back from a very customized editor setup to the one with "reasonable defaults with little to no things to configure". Great talk on this topic by TJ: Personal Development Environment: [VIDEO]

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ts0000 · 2023-01 · Recommendation

For anyone not understanding why (neo)vim exists, or why some developers prefer it to IDEs, I suggest watching "PDE: A different take on editing code" [1]. It reframes (neo)vim as a "Personalized Development Environment". I've been using (neo)vim for years, and don't want to use anything else. It isn't just about productivity (I would probably be as productive in an IDE). It's because its _mine_. It's a highly customized environment, catered to my needs. [1] [VIDEO]

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aquariusDue · 2025-08 · Reference

Well, I'd rather call it a PDE (Personal Development Environment)[0]. A term coined in the Neovim community that is pretty apt for Emacs too. Emacs can be pretty minimalist or maximalist depending on your preference, and it can be configured to have IDE-like features, though presented in a different way sometimes. Honestly, the big barrier to entry for Emacs is finding the time to configure it to your liking. The best way is to use it along with your IDE and existing tooling, slowly integrating Emacs into your workflow piece by piece and tinkering with it when you have a bit of time but always with a goal in mind i.e. window (pane in modern vernacular) management, showing symbol documentation in a hoverbox, adding spell checking to comments or inline git blame. And sure, there are lots of bits that you need to get used to at first, how copy and paste works out of the box without CUA-mode for one, but they're that big of a deal after a short while as some people make them out to be. I'll say this though, Emacs is like tiling window management, you either love it and extol its virtues everywhere or you look at its proponents like aliens from another galaxy. [0]: [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by TJ DeVries, played through YouTube.

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