You should probably ditch your IDE
What if the real productivity upgrade isn’t another plugin—but a paradigm shift?
I fire up VS Code.
It opens the last workspace I was in — half a dozen tabs, a Dockerfile, maybe a README from some unrelated task.
No clue what I was working on.
Just a vague memory: “Something about the scheduling API… or maybe a bug?”
I sit there for a moment trying to reconstruct context.
Last commit was Friday.
Today’s Tuesday.
My brain’s context window has been wiped clean by Slack pings, meetings, and weekend errands.
Command-P.
Type a filename I half remember.
Oh right, that test file.
Wait — did I change this in another branch?
Let me check.
Open terminal.
git branch.
Switch.
Pull.
Oops, the local container setup broke.
Right, I had containerized everything.
So now I need to run docker compose up. But then I remember there’s a VS Code extension that does it automatically. Let me find it, install it, configure it, restart VS Code.
Fifteen minutes gone.
I still haven’t written a single line of code.
This is what IDEs do to us.
They feel fast, but they slow us down in invisible ways.
Every step is a click, a context switch, a small distraction.
Every plugin promises convenience, but adds one more thing to babysit.
IDEs are built for humans — for our limited memory and need for visual cues.
They make us feel productive, but under the hood they’re optimizing for comfort, not speed.
Now we’re trying to stuff AI into them — Copilots, side panels, chat panes —
as if AI needs dark themes and split editors to work.
It doesn’t.
AI just needs a clean interface:
a project tree, access to code, a goal.
And that’s why the recent trend is fascinating —
AI tools are slowly releasing CLI equivalents.
Why? Because CLIs are where real automation lives.
They don’t need to simulate human clicks.
They just do things.
Look at Claude Code.
It’s keyboard-first, agentic, workflow-oriented.
No panels, no mouse clicks.
Just you, the terminal, and an AI that can actually act.
We’re entering an era where your local environment looks less like VS Code
and more like a command center —
a space where you orchestrate AI agents that code, build, test, and deploy.
You’re still in control, but your role shifts.
From “person typing in an editor”
to “team lead directing a swarm of coding agents.”
Don’t get me wrong — IDEs aren’t evil. They’re amazing tools for focus and flow. But if you care about speed, reproducibility, and automation…
you’ll outgrow them.
Because when AI can understand your repo, navigate branches, run builds, and test code —
why would you confine it inside a tool built for human eyes and hands?
IDEs are optimized for humans, they’ve been around for decades. Suddenly we’re trying to retrofit AI coding agents inside IDEs or forking IDEs to have AI coding assistants as first class citizens, and it is severely limiting.
We’re heading somewhere new.
And the first step might just be typing “claude” instead of opening VS Code.
Word.