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Why are people using this instead of WebStorm? It seems like: - It a little faster for Typescript (but no better TS features from what I can see). - A lot of

Why are people using this instead of WebStorm? It seems like: - It a little faster for Typescript (but no better TS features from what I can see). - A lot of people are trying it because it's new, or because they like MS tools. - It's free On the other hand WebStorm still has more functionality overall, a few less rough edges, and a more standard UI (some people don't like how MS Code doesn't have a tabbed doc UI). My personal calculus is that WebStorm is so cheap, I would not allow my primary tool to be even 1% worse to save money. Also I like those crazy guys - they have been pushing out features very fast for years now.

WhitneyLand 10y ago
Downvotes? Would be interested to know which points were inaccurate.
- plexicle 10y ago
  I would personally never use an IDE for any of my (non-mobile) development. No way no how. That makes things like WebStorm or whatever DOA for me personally. My best guess for your downvotes is that your comment isn't only nonsense and inaccurate, but also pretty churlish.
  - WhitneyLand 10y ago
    Nonsense and churlish? How is it mean spirited to post observations about something people were asking about? And if something is incorrect why not just say what it is?
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  Downvotes are not limited to inaccuracy; a post can fail to add value to a conversation without being inaccurate.
adrianlmm 10y ago
Go away Jetbrains.
- WhitneyLand 10y ago
  What does that even mean? People were asking about it in comments so I added information. Are you accusing me of secretly living in the Czech Republic while hanging out HN to astroturf for WebStorm? Was there a mistake in the comment? Or, I hate to even ask, is this some sort of childish fanboy thing?
- SquareWheel 10y ago
  Cut it out with the "shill" accusations. Unless you have proof that somebody is astroturfing, it's a lazy accusation that is quickly becoming meaningless.
curiousDog 10y ago
I only code in Go these days and it has become my default editor.
mynameisvlad 10y ago
> some people don't like how MS Code doesn't have a tabbed doc UI VS Code has had tabs for over half a year now, since the 1.3 release in June. Beforehand, the "active documents" acted more or less as nerfed tabs, but I agree the real tab support was desperately needed before 1.3. > they have been pushing out features very fast for years now. WebStorm gets major updates 2-3 times a year, VS Code gets major updates 12 times a year. I'm pretty sure you can't really call WebStorm "very fast" on that front given that metric. I've never used WebStorm so I can't really comment on the other points, but you're also being very vague. What are some examples of more functionality and less rough edges?
veidr 10y ago
I upvoted your comment because your points are accurate (I have both WebStorm and Visual Studio Code open all day every day for my current project) and informative, but mostly because what the fuck are adiranlmm and plexicle going on about. From my experience, I would just add that while WebStorm is indeed far more powerful in terms of features that it has, it: - is actually slower even than VS Code for many operations (both of which are, when compared to a native editor like Sublime or TextMate 2, objectively slowww at basic operations like launching and opening windows) - it comes with a shopsack full of shit enabled by default, that most people will need to scale back, adjust, or turn off before getting productive. E.g., on the Mac, all the text editing keyboard shortcuts are wrong, drag and drop doesn't work like any other app, some windows can only be docked or floating windows (wtf!) and can't be put in the background, and all sorts of spurious code-linting and annoying popup suggestions are enabled by default. It's the UI equivalent of somebody shouting all sorts of commands and suggestions at you, while when you first open VSCode its a fairly minimal rectangle of text that you can work with right away and gradually learn the advanced features when you are ready to. So one answer to "why people use this instead of WebStorm" is probably that, especially on Mac, many people's first response to WebStorm is to groan "bleeeccch! yuck!" and close the window and drag the app to the trash. (I did that a few times, too, but in the end the WebStorm the code completion and intelligent navigation was so much better than anything else that I decided to endure the UI atrocities and stick with it.)
- h1d 10y ago
  If someone's trashing an editor which can be configured to fit your need to be less verbose, I guess that's just that. That "full of shit", which is useful to some, I just go to plugins and uncheck them, once.
greyman 10y ago
I recently switched from PHPStorm (which I already buy license for) to VS Code, and for me the main problem was Java engine on Windows which PHPStorm runs on. I just didn't have a luck to make it work smooth enough, while my computer is quite strong in and of itself. Those occasional hiccups when the editor or whole IDE just frozen for a few seconds driven me crazy sometimes. So for me, VS Code is a lot faster, not just a little bit. Also command invocation is faster via F1 key. Apart from that, VS Code just feel a bit more "modern", for example in the areas: - git integration is more straightforward, or "just better". - settings are also better organized, no more browsing various dialogs, everything is in one json file.
- fetbaffe 10y ago
  Make sure to run PHPStorm with 64-bit Java on Windows if you are on 64-bit platform. Much better experience. PHPStorm on Windows ships with 32-bit Java. You have to install 64-bit Java yourself and change your Windows shortcut to point to the 64-bit PHPStorm exe. It also has it own vmoptions file. If you install Jetbrains Toolbox App you can tell that run 64-bit for you and also set java heap size.
mmgutz 10y ago
vs.code - FREE - faster - source is on github - easy to write, fix plugins in javascript - javascript intellisense is better WebStorm is a good product but it doesn't really do anything that much better than vs.code that I would go back to it. Was a long time WebStorm user.
- h1d 10y ago
  I would rather beg MS to write many of the popular plugins. These free editors with flexible plugin system is only good if the plugins' quality stay above average. Stuff like Atom, I dig a dozen plugins only to keep 3 or so in the end, because they're written by random people with random quality, which is not much of use.
crooked-v 10y ago
WebStorm on OS X has been slow and laggy every time I've tried it on a machine that can handle Atom and VS Code with no problems.
Longhanks 10y ago
Not saying Electron is the pinnacle of performance, but IntelliJ and the whole Java Swing stack is just abysmal in my experience. I much prefer VS Code, it feels way 'snappier'.
jasim 10y ago
WebStorm has both Intellisense-like autocomplete and word completion. Its "Jump to definition" helped me become a better programmer because jumping into library code became a habit - be it Ruby or Javascript (I use RubyMine). They were one of the first editors to fully support JSX, and before that they came first in supporting Angular v1 and its directives. They let you refactor code in dynamic languages, does it silently and safely when the scope is clear, and asks you when not. When I had to work on a Java project, using IntelliJ was a dream. The same environment, but with sturdier refactoring. Plus it taught me Java idioms by whispering gentle suggestions while programming. In Rails, when you rename your controller it renames your routes. It has a great debugger integrated that just works. It has support for your rake tasks, at par with the deep integration into all environments it support. When they changed their subscription model to an yearly fee, I was happy to be giving more money from my limited paycheck to this company. It is the kind of software I'd write love letters to. I make tools for developers, and one day I want them to be of the calibre of JetBrains' products.
- noir_lord 10y ago
  Couldn't agree more, intellij is my favourite piece of software ever.
  - h1d 10y ago
    I can't believe I never tried Jetbrain's product until I used Android studio after becoming the default for Android dev.
eyko 10y ago
Because competition is healthy and without it you'd be wishing there was an alternative to WebStorm. Also because some of us don't like WebStorm. My experience with it has been very poor. I actually bought a license and invested time in trying to "like" it, but for my use case it was not quite there. E.g. I write a lot of Flow/TypeScript and it has always lagged behind or required me to use bleeding edge versions which were a) free anyway, so my license was unnecessary for that time span, and b) very buggy, which defeats the purpose. For vanilla JavaScript, it has the best autocompletion out there, but when you're using TypeScript or Flow there's just no advantage since practically any decent editor will give you the expected suggestions. Boot up times are important for me because sometimes I'm in the terminal and I want to open a file, work with it, then quit (`cmd+q` or `:q`) when I'm done. WebStorm is not my friend in those cases. Vim is. Surprisingly VSCode is as well. In WebStorm's defence, I believe the Vim plugin is one of the best out there (perhaps just second to Emacs evil mode). Other than that and its JavaScript IntelliSense... I can't really think of any other advantages. I hear some of my colleagues talk about git diffing / merge views, but to be honest I already have tools for that and I never do any git stuff in my editor unless it's Emacs + magit. Refactoring JavaScript code might be neat with WebStorm as well but I haven't used it enough to have an opinion on it. I don't know how well it performs with TypeScript / Flow / Elm codebases but I'd be interested to see it in action, since those seem to be easier targets for refactoring than JavaScript.

WhitneyLand 10y ago

Downvotes? Would be interested to know which points were inaccurate.

plexicle 10y ago
I would personally never use an IDE for any of my (non-mobile) development. No way no how. That makes things like WebStorm or whatever DOA for me personally. My best guess for your downvotes is that your comment isn't only nonsense and inaccurate, but also pretty churlish.
- WhitneyLand 10y ago
  Nonsense and churlish? How is it mean spirited to post observations about something people were asking about? And if something is incorrect why not just say what it is?
dragonwriter 10y ago
Downvotes are not limited to inaccuracy; a post can fail to add value to a conversation without being inaccurate.

adrianlmm 10y ago

Go away Jetbrains.

WhitneyLand 10y ago
What does that even mean? People were asking about it in comments so I added information. Are you accusing me of secretly living in the Czech Republic while hanging out HN to astroturf for WebStorm? Was there a mistake in the comment? Or, I hate to even ask, is this some sort of childish fanboy thing?
SquareWheel 10y ago
Cut it out with the "shill" accusations. Unless you have proof that somebody is astroturfing, it's a lazy accusation that is quickly becoming meaningless.

curiousDog 10y ago

I only code in Go these days and it has become my default editor.

mynameisvlad 10y ago

> some people don't like how MS Code doesn't have a tabbed doc UI VS Code has had tabs for over half a year now, since the 1.3 release in June. Beforehand, the "active documents" acted more or less as nerfed tabs, but I agree the real tab support was desperately needed before 1.3. > they have been pushing out features very fast for years now. WebStorm gets major updates 2-3 times a year, VS Code gets major updates 12 times a year. I'm pretty sure you can't really call WebStorm "very fast" on that front given that metric. I've never used WebStorm so I can't really comment on the other points, but you're also being very vague. What are some examples of more functionality and less rough edges?

veidr 10y ago

I upvoted your comment because your points are accurate (I have both WebStorm and Visual Studio Code open all day every day for my current project) and informative, but mostly because what the fuck are adiranlmm and plexicle going on about. From my experience, I would just add that while WebStorm is indeed far more powerful in terms of features that it has, it: - is actually slower even than VS Code for many operations (both of which are, when compared to a native editor like Sublime or TextMate 2, objectively slowww at basic operations like launching and opening windows) - it comes with a shopsack full of shit enabled by default, that most people will need to scale back, adjust, or turn off before getting productive. E.g., on the Mac, all the text editing keyboard shortcuts are wrong, drag and drop doesn't work like any other app, some windows can only be docked or floating windows (wtf!) and can't be put in the background, and all sorts of spurious code-linting and annoying popup suggestions are enabled by default. It's the UI equivalent of somebody shouting all sorts of commands and suggestions at you, while when you first open VSCode its a fairly minimal rectangle of text that you can work with right away and gradually learn the advanced features when you are ready to. So one answer to "why people use this instead of WebStorm" is probably that, especially on Mac, many people's first response to WebStorm is to groan "bleeeccch! yuck!" and close the window and drag the app to the trash. (I did that a few times, too, but in the end the WebStorm the code completion and intelligent navigation was so much better than anything else that I decided to endure the UI atrocities and stick with it.)

h1d 10y ago
If someone's trashing an editor which can be configured to fit your need to be less verbose, I guess that's just that. That "full of shit", which is useful to some, I just go to plugins and uncheck them, once.

greyman 10y ago

I recently switched from PHPStorm (which I already buy license for) to VS Code, and for me the main problem was Java engine on Windows which PHPStorm runs on. I just didn't have a luck to make it work smooth enough, while my computer is quite strong in and of itself. Those occasional hiccups when the editor or whole IDE just frozen for a few seconds driven me crazy sometimes. So for me, VS Code is a lot faster, not just a little bit. Also command invocation is faster via F1 key. Apart from that, VS Code just feel a bit more "modern", for example in the areas: - git integration is more straightforward, or "just better". - settings are also better organized, no more browsing various dialogs, everything is in one json file.

fetbaffe 10y ago
Make sure to run PHPStorm with 64-bit Java on Windows if you are on 64-bit platform. Much better experience. PHPStorm on Windows ships with 32-bit Java. You have to install 64-bit Java yourself and change your Windows shortcut to point to the 64-bit PHPStorm exe. It also has it own vmoptions file. If you install Jetbrains Toolbox App you can tell that run 64-bit for you and also set java heap size.

mmgutz 10y ago

vs.code - FREE - faster - source is on github - easy to write, fix plugins in javascript - javascript intellisense is better WebStorm is a good product but it doesn't really do anything that much better than vs.code that I would go back to it. Was a long time WebStorm user.

h1d 10y ago
I would rather beg MS to write many of the popular plugins. These free editors with flexible plugin system is only good if the plugins' quality stay above average. Stuff like Atom, I dig a dozen plugins only to keep 3 or so in the end, because they're written by random people with random quality, which is not much of use.

crooked-v 10y ago

WebStorm on OS X has been slow and laggy every time I've tried it on a machine that can handle Atom and VS Code with no problems.

Longhanks 10y ago

Not saying Electron is the pinnacle of performance, but IntelliJ and the whole Java Swing stack is just abysmal in my experience. I much prefer VS Code, it feels way 'snappier'.

jasim 10y ago

WebStorm has both Intellisense-like autocomplete and word completion. Its "Jump to definition" helped me become a better programmer because jumping into library code became a habit - be it Ruby or Javascript (I use RubyMine). They were one of the first editors to fully support JSX, and before that they came first in supporting Angular v1 and its directives. They let you refactor code in dynamic languages, does it silently and safely when the scope is clear, and asks you when not. When I had to work on a Java project, using IntelliJ was a dream. The same environment, but with sturdier refactoring. Plus it taught me Java idioms by whispering gentle suggestions while programming. In Rails, when you rename your controller it renames your routes. It has a great debugger integrated that just works. It has support for your rake tasks, at par with the deep integration into all environments it support. When they changed their subscription model to an yearly fee, I was happy to be giving more money from my limited paycheck to this company. It is the kind of software I'd write love letters to. I make tools for developers, and one day I want them to be of the calibre of JetBrains' products.

noir_lord 10y ago
Couldn't agree more, intellij is my favourite piece of software ever.
- h1d 10y ago
  I can't believe I never tried Jetbrain's product until I used Android studio after becoming the default for Android dev.

eyko 10y ago

Because competition is healthy and without it you'd be wishing there was an alternative to WebStorm. Also because some of us don't like WebStorm. My experience with it has been very poor. I actually bought a license and invested time in trying to "like" it, but for my use case it was not quite there. E.g. I write a lot of Flow/TypeScript and it has always lagged behind or required me to use bleeding edge versions which were a) free anyway, so my license was unnecessary for that time span, and b) very buggy, which defeats the purpose. For vanilla JavaScript, it has the best autocompletion out there, but when you're using TypeScript or Flow there's just no advantage since practically any decent editor will give you the expected suggestions. Boot up times are important for me because sometimes I'm in the terminal and I want to open a file, work with it, then quit (`cmd+q` or `:q`) when I'm done. WebStorm is not my friend in those cases. Vim is. Surprisingly VSCode is as well. In WebStorm's defence, I believe the Vim plugin is one of the best out there (perhaps just second to Emacs evil mode). Other than that and its JavaScript IntelliSense... I can't really think of any other advantages. I hear some of my colleagues talk about git diffing / merge views, but to be honest I already have tools for that and I never do any git stuff in my editor unless it's Emacs + magit. Refactoring JavaScript code might be neat with WebStorm as well but I haven't used it enough to have an opinion on it. I don't know how well it performs with TypeScript / Flow / Elm codebases but I'd be interested to see it in action, since those seem to be easier targets for refactoring than JavaScript.