8 ms·

From my experience out of the box you get poor performance and you have to spend a lot of time figuring out how to change configuration to improve it as knowled

From my experience out of the box you get poor performance and you have to spend a lot of time figuring out how to change configuration to improve it as knowledge is scattered in many places and not always up to date. Then it still likes to stall from time to time or sometimes doesn't register key presses properly. It's a poor user experience, but even worse is that alternatives are often worse. I wish there was an editor with low latency, smart search, some proper file system database, so it doesn't take ages to open a directory and built in VCS support, that works quicker than manually issuing commands in a terminal. I think the success of VSCode is because you can easily open it in your current directory from the terminal and it will show you your folder etc. without having to setup a project first and that you are ready to type you code quickly after opening. If I had to open PyCharm every time I want to try some Python in a new directory, I would probably start questioning my life choices. Before VSCode I would just use nano or Sublime.

btown 6y ago
I see them as complementary. VS Code shines if you’re jumping between independent codebases for distinct projects, and startup time matters. But my startup monorepo I keep loaded in IntelliJ for days at a time and have never looked back. For the 1% of time it’s laggy due to a JVM GC or background indexing, the other 99% of the time it’s immensely productive to have e.g. full-stack debug breakpoints that Just Work, well-designed customizable gutters, integrated linting, and more.
- spullara 6y ago
  I wonder if ZGC in Java 15, now that it is GA, would clean up any lag folks see.
  - moonchild 6y ago
    Personally, my experience with jetbrains IDEs is not that they lagged, but simply that they were slow. ZGC would probably harm more than help.
  - throwaway8941 6y ago
    I tried both ZGC and Shenandoah (with plenty of heap space available) and haven't noticed much difference compared to the default CMS. Also, Shenandoah (or maybe both?) does not support compressed pointers, so there was a noticeable increase in memory usage.
- Kwpolska 6y ago
  You can have multiple project windows open in IntelliJ, and opening a project from an already-running instance takes only a few seconds, so I don’t think that’s really relevant.
aschatten 6y ago
(disclaimer: I am an IntelliJ fanboy) > From my experience out of the box you get poor performance and you have to spend a lot of time figuring out how to change configuration to improve it as knowledge is scattered in many places and not always up to date. I don't know if you are talking about IntelliJ or VCS, but IntelliJ can quickly start an empty project. And you don't to spend time to figure out how things work. I mean, there is literally no entry barrier for a bare bone project. > I wish there was an editor with low latency, smart search, some proper file system database You are describing an IDE here. Smart search and a proper file system database, it means operating not on a collection of text files but on a project and a code tree, which is the main difference between IDE and Editor. > I think the success of VSCode is because you can easily open it in your current directory from the terminal and it will show you your folder etc. IntelliJ is adding this functionality slowly: https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2020/04/lightedit-mode/ https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2020/04/lightedit-mode/ It's not on par with opening a folder in VCS, but it's a matter of time until the close the gap if they choose to.
- xmprt 6y ago
  I've used both VSC and IntelliJ and I understand where you're coming from but when the parent comments says VSC is fast they really mean it. It's almost instantaneous and I can get a lot done in VSC even without all the complex smart functionality.
  - brabel 6y ago
    I use both VSC And IntelliJ. Searching symbols/usages/implementations in large projects is far faster in IntelliJ in my experience, not to mention it's much more accurate too but that's probably due to the language (Java/Kotlin in IntelliJ, Go/JS in VSC). It's really annoying when I have to wait seconds to find implementations of a Go interface in VSC as I am used to IntelliJ's instantaneous searches. I think you mean VSC is faster to start up, and perhaps to type? It's certainly not faster overall.
    - ta988 6y ago
      In my experience (on Linux), intelliJ reacts immediatly when I type, vscode always has that little delay that always make it feel weird to me.
waheoo 6y ago
The funny thing is that I can't tell if you're talking about intellij or vs code from the first paragraph. I find vscode a horrifying experience that is forced upon me because of poor choices made elsewhere in the org. I'm slowly picking up vim to replace it but I'd rather just not be forced out of my editor I still use daily (sublime.) In hindsight I wish I learned vim instead of sublime.
- dathanb82 6y ago
  I sometimes wish I hadn’t learned vim, because it limits the tools I’m happy using. Since I’ve built the vim muscle memory, every other text editing experience feels crippled, so I actively avoid products that don’t support at least basic vim key bindings. Luckily the list of products with vim bindings keeps growing.
  - abraae 6y ago
    So true. Like when you find muscle memory has injected :wq into your file in notepad.
nightowl_games 6y ago
JetBrains products _are_ pretty much the best. I think Android Studio + Kotlin is the best, most impressive IDE experience I've ever had. Mostly because Android Development in general is kinda hard, and Android Studio cleans it all up so nicely for you. It really outshines XCode in this regard. I've never used CLion but I really want to. That being said, I think it's clear that VSCode is, and will remain, dominant. First: its free. Second: it's simpler. That alone is enough to make any product dominant. The fact that's it free, simple, and pretty much just works is pretty stunning. VSCode for Unity Game Development kinda shocks me how you can literally install the IDE while the game is running and successfully attach a debugger. It's pretty wild how reliable it is. I'm not a VSCode fan boy. I find that it lags on my PC sometimes. I kinda hate the "notifications" that it pops up with. And I don't like the auto update mechanism or the Welcome screen, but overall VSCode (or Codium) is clearly the next level of IDE. I think Microsoft is going to build some really wild stuff on top of VSCode and Github. I think there gonna come up with way to leverage the amount of data they can mine out of github repos to write code for you. I'm pretty sure that's a big reason why they bought github.
- throwaway8941 6y ago
  If you do decide to get a clion license, cppcast.com has a discount code for personal license which shaves 25% off the first year. I won't post it here, just fish it out of the podcast, it's very nice.
- mycall 6y ago
  Today, Microsoft received an exclusive license for GPT-3. It is already known that it can write code if asked in natural language declaratively (in certain cases). I could see an integration with github's code (specifically retrained with) and see some really interesting stuff.
- devilduck 6y ago
  JetBrains makes some pretty great software overall, and I absolutely love DataGrip, but they aren't without flaws. I find them to be bulky and full of features I will probably never use. It's preferable to have a decent base and add features with plugins, for me.
tomc1985 6y ago
IntelliJ isn't really the IDE for dicking around with ideas. Projects or not, it's just too fat. I am an IntelliJ diehard myself and I usually have a copy of Sublime Text open as well, usually to use it as a scratch space, to peek at logs or somesuch, or for playing with code that isn't quite yet in a runnable state.
renewiltord 6y ago
Well, I think you're right about performance being a problem, but I have 64 GiB and a 4790k and an NVMe SSD. It's like half a percentage of my pre-tax income and was even less when I bought it. I don't need efficiency. I need something that, given fuel, gives me power. And as someone who has donated to vim, was an early backer of neovim's bountysource, and loves his terminal: vim is my ion drive, IntelliJ and friends are my conventional rocket.
- vladvasiliu 6y ago
  I'm not sure how performance is a problem for Intellij. Granted, I've only ever used Pycharm but I've never felt it sluggish or "slow" or got the impression I was waiting around for the IDE to do its thing. All this on a 2013 MBP with 16GB of RAM. I've found it also works very well on Linux on a laptop with a i5-8250U and 16 GB of RAM. The only thing that seems "slow" is starting up and indexing libraries and whatnot. Now I've never loaded the same projects in VSCode, but I'm not sure indexing would be that much faster and the startup doesn't really bother me, as I don't launch it multiple times a day.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    IntelliJ performs poorly if you have a many-module project with multiple independent `pom.xml` or gradle files on that Mac config you described. It does require tuning in this scenario to ensure that its Maven and Gradle imports do not fail and leave you unable to resolve your types. If you have a generate-source step you're going to be in even more trouble.
    - vladvasiliu 6y ago
      Would VSCode work better in this scenario? I'm not familiar with Java tooling, so my question is whether this is a tooling problem or an IntelliJ problem.
      - renewiltord 6y ago
        VSCode lacks many of IntelliJ's features so it would act as a text-editor with naive auto-complete better. With plugins and presumably an LSP link, you can get some degree of functionality but it does not compare in total. I would not write Java anywhere but IntelliJ. Any long time IntelliJ+Java user has macros and templates written so that boilerplate is automatic. `psvm` is built-in, as is `sout`, but when I wrote a lot of Java I had ones for other common patterns at my workplace.
GordonS 6y ago
> From my experience out of the box you get poor performance and you have to spend a lot of time figuring out how to change configuration to improve it This hasn't been my experience of JetBrains Rider at all - granted that startup does take a few seconds, but after that it seems to fly. > Then it still likes to stall from time to time or sometimes doesn't register key presses properly This was my experience with Visual Studio; I used it for over a decade because it is a great IDE - but performance and stability has never been great, and eventually I just couldn't stand the occasional lag any more and jumped ship to Rider. My experience there has been very different - it's rammed with at least as many features as Visual Studio, but has been rock solid, and never lags in use.
29athrowaway 6y ago
In IntellIJ you have scopes, where you can narrow down the project view to a set of folders, which is useful if you work on monorepos. Scopes affect not only the project view but also file search. You can disable plugins you don't need, and mark folders as excluded if you don't need them indexed, that makes it faster.
signal11 6y ago
Jetbrains were doing some work with a lightweight editor in IDEA to help with the “quick edits” use case. https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2020/01/intellij-idea-2020-1-eap-2/#lightedit_mode https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2020/01/intellij-idea-2020-1... https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2020/04/lightedit-mode/ https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2020/04/lightedit-mode/ It only appeared this year so it’ll be interesting to see if it gets traction.
accurrent 6y ago
The main reason I use VS Code is I tend to work on a lot of mixed-language development. I often have Python, rust, custom DSLs and C++ in the same code base with a custom build system. VScode gives me the flexibility to use all of them to their fullest potential without needing to support the build system. That being said if were to use Java I would probably not move away from intellij. Last time I tried clion though it was a disaster.
ilrwbwrkhv 6y ago
What are some of those config that improves performance for Jetbrains IDEs?

btown 6y ago

I see them as complementary. VS Code shines if you’re jumping between independent codebases for distinct projects, and startup time matters. But my startup monorepo I keep loaded in IntelliJ for days at a time and have never looked back. For the 1% of time it’s laggy due to a JVM GC or background indexing, the other 99% of the time it’s immensely productive to have e.g. full-stack debug breakpoints that Just Work, well-designed customizable gutters, integrated linting, and more.

spullara 6y ago
I wonder if ZGC in Java 15, now that it is GA, would clean up any lag folks see.
- moonchild 6y ago
  Personally, my experience with jetbrains IDEs is not that they lagged, but simply that they were slow. ZGC would probably harm more than help.
- throwaway8941 6y ago
  I tried both ZGC and Shenandoah (with plenty of heap space available) and haven't noticed much difference compared to the default CMS. Also, Shenandoah (or maybe both?) does not support compressed pointers, so there was a noticeable increase in memory usage.
Kwpolska 6y ago
You can have multiple project windows open in IntelliJ, and opening a project from an already-running instance takes only a few seconds, so I don’t think that’s really relevant.

aschatten 6y ago

(disclaimer: I am an IntelliJ fanboy) > From my experience out of the box you get poor performance and you have to spend a lot of time figuring out how to change configuration to improve it as knowledge is scattered in many places and not always up to date. I don't know if you are talking about IntelliJ or VCS, but IntelliJ can quickly start an empty project. And you don't to spend time to figure out how things work. I mean, there is literally no entry barrier for a bare bone project. > I wish there was an editor with low latency, smart search, some proper file system database You are describing an IDE here. Smart search and a proper file system database, it means operating not on a collection of text files but on a project and a code tree, which is the main difference between IDE and Editor. > I think the success of VSCode is because you can easily open it in your current directory from the terminal and it will show you your folder etc. IntelliJ is adding this functionality slowly: https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2020/04/lightedit-mode/ https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2020/04/lightedit-mode/ It's not on par with opening a folder in VCS, but it's a matter of time until the close the gap if they choose to.

xmprt 6y ago
I've used both VSC and IntelliJ and I understand where you're coming from but when the parent comments says VSC is fast they really mean it. It's almost instantaneous and I can get a lot done in VSC even without all the complex smart functionality.
- brabel 6y ago
  I use both VSC And IntelliJ. Searching symbols/usages/implementations in large projects is far faster in IntelliJ in my experience, not to mention it's much more accurate too but that's probably due to the language (Java/Kotlin in IntelliJ, Go/JS in VSC). It's really annoying when I have to wait seconds to find implementations of a Go interface in VSC as I am used to IntelliJ's instantaneous searches. I think you mean VSC is faster to start up, and perhaps to type? It's certainly not faster overall.
  - ta988 6y ago
    In my experience (on Linux), intelliJ reacts immediatly when I type, vscode always has that little delay that always make it feel weird to me.

waheoo 6y ago

The funny thing is that I can't tell if you're talking about intellij or vs code from the first paragraph. I find vscode a horrifying experience that is forced upon me because of poor choices made elsewhere in the org. I'm slowly picking up vim to replace it but I'd rather just not be forced out of my editor I still use daily (sublime.) In hindsight I wish I learned vim instead of sublime.

dathanb82 6y ago
I sometimes wish I hadn’t learned vim, because it limits the tools I’m happy using. Since I’ve built the vim muscle memory, every other text editing experience feels crippled, so I actively avoid products that don’t support at least basic vim key bindings. Luckily the list of products with vim bindings keeps growing.
- abraae 6y ago
  So true. Like when you find muscle memory has injected :wq into your file in notepad.

nightowl_games 6y ago

JetBrains products _are_ pretty much the best. I think Android Studio + Kotlin is the best, most impressive IDE experience I've ever had. Mostly because Android Development in general is kinda hard, and Android Studio cleans it all up so nicely for you. It really outshines XCode in this regard. I've never used CLion but I really want to. That being said, I think it's clear that VSCode is, and will remain, dominant. First: its free. Second: it's simpler. That alone is enough to make any product dominant. The fact that's it free, simple, and pretty much just works is pretty stunning. VSCode for Unity Game Development kinda shocks me how you can literally install the IDE while the game is running and successfully attach a debugger. It's pretty wild how reliable it is. I'm not a VSCode fan boy. I find that it lags on my PC sometimes. I kinda hate the "notifications" that it pops up with. And I don't like the auto update mechanism or the Welcome screen, but overall VSCode (or Codium) is clearly the next level of IDE. I think Microsoft is going to build some really wild stuff on top of VSCode and Github. I think there gonna come up with way to leverage the amount of data they can mine out of github repos to write code for you. I'm pretty sure that's a big reason why they bought github.

throwaway8941 6y ago
If you do decide to get a clion license, cppcast.com has a discount code for personal license which shaves 25% off the first year. I won't post it here, just fish it out of the podcast, it's very nice.
mycall 6y ago
Today, Microsoft received an exclusive license for GPT-3. It is already known that it can write code if asked in natural language declaratively (in certain cases). I could see an integration with github's code (specifically retrained with) and see some really interesting stuff.
devilduck 6y ago
JetBrains makes some pretty great software overall, and I absolutely love DataGrip, but they aren't without flaws. I find them to be bulky and full of features I will probably never use. It's preferable to have a decent base and add features with plugins, for me.

tomc1985 6y ago

IntelliJ isn't really the IDE for dicking around with ideas. Projects or not, it's just too fat. I am an IntelliJ diehard myself and I usually have a copy of Sublime Text open as well, usually to use it as a scratch space, to peek at logs or somesuch, or for playing with code that isn't quite yet in a runnable state.

renewiltord 6y ago

Well, I think you're right about performance being a problem, but I have 64 GiB and a 4790k and an NVMe SSD. It's like half a percentage of my pre-tax income and was even less when I bought it. I don't need efficiency. I need something that, given fuel, gives me power. And as someone who has donated to vim, was an early backer of neovim's bountysource, and loves his terminal: vim is my ion drive, IntelliJ and friends are my conventional rocket.

vladvasiliu 6y ago
I'm not sure how performance is a problem for Intellij. Granted, I've only ever used Pycharm but I've never felt it sluggish or "slow" or got the impression I was waiting around for the IDE to do its thing. All this on a 2013 MBP with 16GB of RAM. I've found it also works very well on Linux on a laptop with a i5-8250U and 16 GB of RAM. The only thing that seems "slow" is starting up and indexing libraries and whatnot. Now I've never loaded the same projects in VSCode, but I'm not sure indexing would be that much faster and the startup doesn't really bother me, as I don't launch it multiple times a day.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  IntelliJ performs poorly if you have a many-module project with multiple independent `pom.xml` or gradle files on that Mac config you described. It does require tuning in this scenario to ensure that its Maven and Gradle imports do not fail and leave you unable to resolve your types. If you have a generate-source step you're going to be in even more trouble.
  - vladvasiliu 6y ago
    Would VSCode work better in this scenario? I'm not familiar with Java tooling, so my question is whether this is a tooling problem or an IntelliJ problem.
    - renewiltord 6y ago
      VSCode lacks many of IntelliJ's features so it would act as a text-editor with naive auto-complete better. With plugins and presumably an LSP link, you can get some degree of functionality but it does not compare in total. I would not write Java anywhere but IntelliJ. Any long time IntelliJ+Java user has macros and templates written so that boilerplate is automatic. `psvm` is built-in, as is `sout`, but when I wrote a lot of Java I had ones for other common patterns at my workplace.

GordonS 6y ago

> From my experience out of the box you get poor performance and you have to spend a lot of time figuring out how to change configuration to improve it This hasn't been my experience of JetBrains Rider at all - granted that startup does take a few seconds, but after that it seems to fly. > Then it still likes to stall from time to time or sometimes doesn't register key presses properly This was my experience with Visual Studio; I used it for over a decade because it is a great IDE - but performance and stability has never been great, and eventually I just couldn't stand the occasional lag any more and jumped ship to Rider. My experience there has been very different - it's rammed with at least as many features as Visual Studio, but has been rock solid, and never lags in use.

29athrowaway 6y ago

In IntellIJ you have scopes, where you can narrow down the project view to a set of folders, which is useful if you work on monorepos. Scopes affect not only the project view but also file search. You can disable plugins you don't need, and mark folders as excluded if you don't need them indexed, that makes it faster.

signal11 6y ago

Jetbrains were doing some work with a lightweight editor in IDEA to help with the “quick edits” use case. https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2020/01/intellij-idea-2020-1-eap-2/#lightedit_mode https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2020/01/intellij-idea-2020-1... https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2020/04/lightedit-mode/ https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2020/04/lightedit-mode/ It only appeared this year so it’ll be interesting to see if it gets traction.

accurrent 6y ago

The main reason I use VS Code is I tend to work on a lot of mixed-language development. I often have Python, rust, custom DSLs and C++ in the same code base with a custom build system. VScode gives me the flexibility to use all of them to their fullest potential without needing to support the build system. That being said if were to use Java I would probably not move away from intellij. Last time I tried clion though it was a disaster.

ilrwbwrkhv 6y ago

What are some of those config that improves performance for Jetbrains IDEs?