Both Java and Lisp really need an IDE: I wouldn't want to write Java without a decent .<tab> completion, and I wouldn't want to do a lisp without paredit.
It's funny considering how different the languages are. I suspect both have coevolved with their tooling.
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Sometimes programming tools are so good that you miss them when using other languages. I see these mentioned the most frequently:
* IntelliJ (for Java)
* Slime+Emacs (for Common Lisp)
* Pharo (for Smalltalk)
I'm struck that they all have bespoke UIs.
Counter-intuitively, if you're writing a parser for a programming language, you need it to be a total function. As soon as you build IDE tooling, you need ASTs from invalid or incomplete input.
The parser should return (Ast, List<Error>) rather than Result<Ast, Error>.
... and my third refactoring with Cursor changed some function calls that I didn't want it to modify. Subtle.
I've had the most success with AI coding tools when I know exactly what I want the output to look like.