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I love the homage to IntelliJ Rust in this article! As a newbie computer science major who "grew up" in the era of Eclipse/IntelliJ conversion, IntelliJ will n

I love the homage to IntelliJ Rust in this article! As a newbie computer science major who "grew up" in the era of Eclipse/IntelliJ conversion, IntelliJ will never cease to amaze me in how much more productive I became with IDE tools and the general "power behind the compiler". Mad props to the plugin interface JetBrains has provided and the novel solutions that have come out of this style of thinking that far outpaces the experience in something like Xcode.

pjmlp 6y ago
If InteliJ is amazing then using Smalltalk or Interlisp-D/Lisp Machines is like out of this world.
- matklad 6y ago
  I'd love to read an article that compares capabilities of the two! Martin Fowler seems to think otherwise: > I was known for my annoying habit of stating how Smalltalk's IDE was better than anything I'd seen. No longer. For me IntelliJ was first leap forwards in IDEs since Smalltalk. https://martinfowler.com/bliki/PostIntelliJ.html https://martinfowler.com/bliki/PostIntelliJ.html
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    It seems full of empty praise words without giving any example how it is better.
- enitihas 6y ago
  Can you give 5 features of such IDEs which aren't found in IntelliJ?
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    1 - Proper refactoring of dynamic languages due to the image nature. IntelliJ gets it most of the time. 2 - No continuous indexing of source code, stuff is just there. 3 - During execution of REPL statements or debug sessions, an errors jump into the debugger, fix the issue and continue as if nothing had happened 4 - a REPL that integrates the code being written, with inline images and graphical representation of data structures 5 - The complete developer experience is available to the developer and can be customised at any time without rebooting it. 6 - Code components can be integrated into other documents as live objects (this is where OLE and Taligent got their ideas from)
    - james-mcelwain 6y ago
      Not that I disagree with you, but 2-6 basically come down to "it lacks a Lisp-like REPL." I do think that the REPL workflow is way underappreciated and missing in Intellij. What I like about it is that it still focuses on working on semantic intent rather than editing text. In this way, it's similar in some sense to the idea of working on S-expressions rather than text.
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        Smalltalk and Mesa/Cedar also have their own share of features, I just listed what is somehow common to all of them. After all I was asked for 5 and wrote 6, could keeping writing a few more.
royjacobs 6y ago
Agreed, I spend a lot of time in IntelliJ (after fifteen years of Visual Studio) and it's absolutely delightful. For Rust I'm now using CLion and that's been wonderful as well. Kudos to the plug-in authors.
nvarsj 6y ago
I love IntelliJ's backends - they are best of breed for sure. However I think its editor is subpar and not very customizable. I also dislike its simple vim mode. I really wish I could pay for IntelliJ's backend with my desired editor. It's a shame IntelliJ didn't embrace LSP and work with the standard. I think eventually this will come to hurt them, because it just motivates those who want a better editor to build their own LSP backends. I have already dropped IntelliJ for almost every language because the LSP servers have gotten so good. The only languages I'm unable to avoid are the big JVM languages (except for Clojure). But one day someone is going to build a great JVM LSP and then I'll drop my IntelliJ subscription once and for all.
- vips7L 6y ago
  Have you tried the eclipse language server? It's pretty good. The vs code java plugin uses it.
  - nvarsj 6y ago
    The main problem I find is mixed language projects are not well supported like they are in Intellij. For example I'm working on projects using gradle and mixing Groovy and Java. In the past I was working on Scala/Java projects with sbt. None of these combinations are well supported by an LSP server. I think we need a polygot JVM LSP server that can support multiple languages and build tools seamlessly (just like IntelliJ can...).
    - vips7L 6y ago
      Yes that is a weakness. My project for work is scala/java and it is not a good experience once Scala gets involved. I've been hoping that the scala guys tackle this issue soon: https://github.com/scalameta/metals-feature-requests/issues/5 https://github.com/scalameta/metals-feature-requests/issues/...

pjmlp 6y ago

If InteliJ is amazing then using Smalltalk or Interlisp-D/Lisp Machines is like out of this world.

matklad 6y ago
I'd love to read an article that compares capabilities of the two! Martin Fowler seems to think otherwise: > I was known for my annoying habit of stating how Smalltalk's IDE was better than anything I'd seen. No longer. For me IntelliJ was first leap forwards in IDEs since Smalltalk. https://martinfowler.com/bliki/PostIntelliJ.html https://martinfowler.com/bliki/PostIntelliJ.html
- pjmlp 6y ago
  It seems full of empty praise words without giving any example how it is better.
enitihas 6y ago
Can you give 5 features of such IDEs which aren't found in IntelliJ?
- pjmlp 6y ago
  1 - Proper refactoring of dynamic languages due to the image nature. IntelliJ gets it most of the time. 2 - No continuous indexing of source code, stuff is just there. 3 - During execution of REPL statements or debug sessions, an errors jump into the debugger, fix the issue and continue as if nothing had happened 4 - a REPL that integrates the code being written, with inline images and graphical representation of data structures 5 - The complete developer experience is available to the developer and can be customised at any time without rebooting it. 6 - Code components can be integrated into other documents as live objects (this is where OLE and Taligent got their ideas from)
  - james-mcelwain 6y ago
    Not that I disagree with you, but 2-6 basically come down to "it lacks a Lisp-like REPL." I do think that the REPL workflow is way underappreciated and missing in Intellij. What I like about it is that it still focuses on working on semantic intent rather than editing text. In this way, it's similar in some sense to the idea of working on S-expressions rather than text.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      Smalltalk and Mesa/Cedar also have their own share of features, I just listed what is somehow common to all of them. After all I was asked for 5 and wrote 6, could keeping writing a few more.

royjacobs 6y ago

Agreed, I spend a lot of time in IntelliJ (after fifteen years of Visual Studio) and it's absolutely delightful. For Rust I'm now using CLion and that's been wonderful as well. Kudos to the plug-in authors.

nvarsj 6y ago

I love IntelliJ's backends - they are best of breed for sure. However I think its editor is subpar and not very customizable. I also dislike its simple vim mode. I really wish I could pay for IntelliJ's backend with my desired editor. It's a shame IntelliJ didn't embrace LSP and work with the standard. I think eventually this will come to hurt them, because it just motivates those who want a better editor to build their own LSP backends. I have already dropped IntelliJ for almost every language because the LSP servers have gotten so good. The only languages I'm unable to avoid are the big JVM languages (except for Clojure). But one day someone is going to build a great JVM LSP and then I'll drop my IntelliJ subscription once and for all.

vips7L 6y ago
Have you tried the eclipse language server? It's pretty good. The vs code java plugin uses it.
- nvarsj 6y ago
  The main problem I find is mixed language projects are not well supported like they are in Intellij. For example I'm working on projects using gradle and mixing Groovy and Java. In the past I was working on Scala/Java projects with sbt. None of these combinations are well supported by an LSP server. I think we need a polygot JVM LSP server that can support multiple languages and build tools seamlessly (just like IntelliJ can...).
  - vips7L 6y ago
    Yes that is a weakness. My project for work is scala/java and it is not a good experience once Scala gets involved. I've been hoping that the scala guys tackle this issue soon: https://github.com/scalameta/metals-feature-requests/issues/5 https://github.com/scalameta/metals-feature-requests/issues/...