Self-Described Editor Curmudgeon Finally Gives Language Servers a Shot
A developer known for favoring a stripped-down, no-frills editing workflow decided to actually try using a language server instead of just dismissing the idea. The post walks through the experience of setting one up and using it for real coding tasks, weighing the promised benefits of autocompletion, inline diagnostics, and go-to-definition against the added complexity and resource overhead these tools bring.
The writeup is less a tutorial and more a personal reckoning: is the modern IDE-like tooling actually worth the setup cost for someone who has gotten by for years with simpler tools like grep and ctags? The discussion that followed on Hacker News reflected a similar split, with some commenters championing LSP-based setups as essential and others agreeing that lighter-weight tooling still has its place depending on the language and project size.