4 ms·

It’s hard for me to praise Jetbrains, every time I start using Idea I have amazing experience, I feel like it’s totally one of the best IDEs out there and then

It’s hard for me to praise Jetbrains, every time I start using Idea I have amazing experience, I feel like it’s totally one of the best IDEs out there and then couple days and non-trivial plugins later I have noticeable lags when typing text. I immediately give up and switch back to my previous setup. Why can’t IDEs prioritize reducing typing latency? That’s like one of the most important parts of text editing. Anybody else had similar experience? Edit: not trying to rain on Jetbrains parade here, I’m genuinely happy they have a business model that works and products that sell well.

erokar 7y ago
I agree. It's sluggish and very resource hungry. It runs on the JVM and it shows. I've switched to VS Code, also for Java coding.
- keymone 7y ago
  But java isn’t slow and sluggishness is definitely not only due to GC pauses. It’s all about input handling subsystem.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    The sluggineshness you describe should definitely be mainly GC pauses. IDEA has done extra work on the "input handling subsystem" to the point where they are faster than most anything out there: See: https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2015/08/experimental-zero-latency-typing-in-intellij-idea-15-eap/ https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2015/08/experimental-zero-la... And: https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2015/08/experimental-zero-latency-typing-in-intellij-idea-15-eap/ https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2015/08/experimental-zero-la... (which is now standard)
    - coldtea 7y ago
      Sorry, the first link was meant to be: https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/ https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/
criddell 7y ago
How new is your computer?
somehnguy 7y ago
I'm working on a pretty heavy Java Spring/React project in IDEA and noticed some slowdowns recently when doing certain things. The IDE also complained that it was running low on memory when it happened. I enabled the memory usage viewer and saw that by default the whole IDE has a ceiling of 750M for the Java VM. I upped this to 2GB because I have plenty of RAM so why not. The slowdowns have completely stopped and it runs great again. You might be thinking 2GB thats a lot of memory to write code! Yeah, but IDEA is my all-in-one development interface, I write, inspect, debug, etc all from IDEA. 2GB is totally reasonable for what it provides me and my dev machine has plenty to spare anyway. 750M is too low of a default for a heavy Maven project with lot of dependencies.
dr_kiszonka 7y ago
I have a feeling JetBrains's products work well for most but not all types of projects. Anecdotally, I suffer from performance issues on a very high performance desktop when doing data science. Indexing happens frequently and takes at least 30 minutes. Notebooks and scientific mode bug out frequently, even after a fresh install and in brand new environments. Judging by YouTrack, these issues are not isolated to just my machine and workflow. I hope they figure them out soon because JetBrains's software is otherwise exceptional.
sooheon 7y ago
https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/#editor-benchmarks https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/#editor-benchmar... This finds JB editors to be good for typing latency, and mirrors my experience. I keep my number of plugins to a minimum, check if disabling your plugins improves the issue.
GordonS 7y ago
The only JetBrains IDE I've used is Rider, but AFAIK they are all based on IntelliJ - in 2-3 years of use, I don't recall ever experiencing lag when typing. I actually think it's one of the most performant and responsive IDEs I've ever used. For reference, I primarily use it on Windows, with 64GB of RAM, but also use it on MacOS with 32GB of RAM and on another Windows machine with only 16GB of RAM.
rsynnott 7y ago
I’ve found it to be generally pretty good for latency recently, though it did have serious issues on MacOS at least a few years back. Certainly far better than VS Code. (On a 2016 15” work MBP and a 2016 13” home one) One thing you may find useful if you have the memory is raising the max heap size a bit. The default is inadequate for very large projects IME.

erokar 7y ago

I agree. It's sluggish and very resource hungry. It runs on the JVM and it shows. I've switched to VS Code, also for Java coding.

keymone 7y ago
But java isn’t slow and sluggishness is definitely not only due to GC pauses. It’s all about input handling subsystem.
- coldtea 7y ago
  The sluggineshness you describe should definitely be mainly GC pauses. IDEA has done extra work on the "input handling subsystem" to the point where they are faster than most anything out there: See: https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2015/08/experimental-zero-latency-typing-in-intellij-idea-15-eap/ https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2015/08/experimental-zero-la... And: https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2015/08/experimental-zero-latency-typing-in-intellij-idea-15-eap/ https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2015/08/experimental-zero-la... (which is now standard)
  - coldtea 7y ago
    Sorry, the first link was meant to be: https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/ https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/

criddell 7y ago

How new is your computer?

somehnguy 7y ago

I'm working on a pretty heavy Java Spring/React project in IDEA and noticed some slowdowns recently when doing certain things. The IDE also complained that it was running low on memory when it happened. I enabled the memory usage viewer and saw that by default the whole IDE has a ceiling of 750M for the Java VM. I upped this to 2GB because I have plenty of RAM so why not. The slowdowns have completely stopped and it runs great again. You might be thinking 2GB thats a lot of memory to write code! Yeah, but IDEA is my all-in-one development interface, I write, inspect, debug, etc all from IDEA. 2GB is totally reasonable for what it provides me and my dev machine has plenty to spare anyway. 750M is too low of a default for a heavy Maven project with lot of dependencies.

dr_kiszonka 7y ago

I have a feeling JetBrains's products work well for most but not all types of projects. Anecdotally, I suffer from performance issues on a very high performance desktop when doing data science. Indexing happens frequently and takes at least 30 minutes. Notebooks and scientific mode bug out frequently, even after a fresh install and in brand new environments. Judging by YouTrack, these issues are not isolated to just my machine and workflow. I hope they figure them out soon because JetBrains's software is otherwise exceptional.

sooheon 7y ago

https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/#editor-benchmarks https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/#editor-benchmar... This finds JB editors to be good for typing latency, and mirrors my experience. I keep my number of plugins to a minimum, check if disabling your plugins improves the issue.

GordonS 7y ago

The only JetBrains IDE I've used is Rider, but AFAIK they are all based on IntelliJ - in 2-3 years of use, I don't recall ever experiencing lag when typing. I actually think it's one of the most performant and responsive IDEs I've ever used. For reference, I primarily use it on Windows, with 64GB of RAM, but also use it on MacOS with 32GB of RAM and on another Windows machine with only 16GB of RAM.

rsynnott 7y ago

I’ve found it to be generally pretty good for latency recently, though it did have serious issues on MacOS at least a few years back. Certainly far better than VS Code. (On a 2016 15” work MBP and a 2016 13” home one) One thing you may find useful if you have the memory is raising the max heap size a bit. The default is inadequate for very large projects IME.