15 ms·

I used to think VS Code was going to be a threat to JetBrains IDEs considering how fast its iterative development was (thanks in large part to the productivity

by mythz 6y ago

I used to think VS Code was going to be a threat to JetBrains IDEs considering how fast its iterative development was (thanks in large part to the productivity of JS + Web renderer) but its never seems to quite be able to reach the feature-set, polish & intelligence of JetBrains IDEs. Every IDE function appears to be better implemented in JetBrains, whether it's Code Analysis, Refactoring, Navigation, Running/Debugging, Running Tests, adding new files, git integration or contextual functionality like adding package references etc. Everything is just better in JetBrains. I see VS Code as an ubiquitous smart editor platform with zillions of plugins that's half way between a glorified text editor and an IDE which I use a lot for quick dev changes, quickly searching a folder, front-end UI development, trying out new languages or writing docs. But if I have to start a long dev session I turn to JetBrains which I find far more productive.

EasyTiger_ 6y ago
Agree, PHPStorm for me is a productivity monster
specialp 6y ago
The plugin infrastructure for VS Code along with excellent first party support for JS/TS has helped it grow very fast. But in languages other than TS the mishmash of plugins of varying quality really degrade the experience. The opinionated approach and strong first party support just makes Jet Brains product much cleaner. I use both a lot.
- kitsunesoba 6y ago
  Indeed, I haven't used VS Code a lot but my few experiences with it were largely figuring out which of the available plugins for a particular function was the "right" one, with all of them sitting at various levels of "working". The IntelliJ, Sublime, and heck even TextMate 2 plugin experience is cleaner in that regard.
azeirah 6y ago
Part of it feels like it comes from a different development philosophy. Vscode is a "text editor" or a "code editor". Usually this means that it's fairly lightweight, supports every language under the sun, is highly configurable and extensible, but doesn't have a lot of very in-depth features, and also partially relies on third-party extensions for deeper functionality. Jetbrains on the other hand works on IDEs built for one specific language explicitly. Consider CLion for C, it's only a couple of years old! They put a lot of resources into supporting a language and all its relevant workflows. Phpstorm for instance has built-in support for three different standalone code quality checkers, composer (package manager) support, deep language understanding with highlighting, warning, errors, refactorings, generators etc, doc comments, code formatting, support for different testing frameworks, a built-in debugger, etcetcetc... While that's great, you shouldn't go edit python code in Phpstorm. It supports syntax highlighting and maybe a couple of other small features, but that's it! In short, code editors usually cast a really wide net with a lot of configurability and extensibility, while (jetbrains) IDEs tend to go really deep on a single language or workflow, with less extensibility, and deep configurability within the supported language itself.
- cyral 6y ago
  One thing to note is that you can use IntelliJ and install the official plugins for each language. For example you can bring the WebStorm functionality to IntelliJ, or install the database plugin to get an embedded Datagrip window. (Which is really neat because you can then get SQL syntax highlighting and such based on your actual DB)
  - vinger 6y ago
    How does the open source IDEA plus php plugin experience compare to phpstorm?
    - yrio 6y ago
      The plugins for alternative languages (PHP, Python) are available only for IntelliJ Ultimate / paid. It's not available in free / open source IntelliJ So either [1] you buy IntelliJ Ultimate & get Java + other languages (PHP, Python, Ruby, etc except .NET and C++) or [2] you buy the language specific IDE (cheaper) like PhpStorm, PyCharm, etc
leetcrew 6y ago
I think that sounds about right. I see vs code as a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none type of tool. if I want to try something in a new language or just edit some text real quick (I find vs code has better than average support for weird text encodings) but keep a familiar ui, I go with vs code. if I'm going to be doing some more in-depth work, I'll spend the time to learn a purpose-built tool. I mostly write c++ for windows, and I find vs code can't really compete with its big brother (bloated as it is) here.
- brightball 6y ago
  This sums it up for me. For languages with a dedicated Jetbrains IDE (Java, Ruby, Python, etc) Jetbrains will be better experience hands down. For everything that doesn’t have the premium experience, I find that just using plugins isn’t as effective. For example, the experience of using IDEA with the Elixir plugin hasn’t been great despite a lot of development. It seems like it constantly loses the proper SDK if I jump between projects. The VS Code experience has been a lot better for Elixir though. Just works. The moment Jetbrains releases a dedicated Elixir IDE I’d jump for it though.
  - cutler 6y ago
    Why the assumption that a separate editor needs to be released? IntelliJ with language plugins is better.
    - brightball 6y ago
      Hadn’t been my experience thus far.
    - perrylaj 6y ago
      I agree. Intellij ultimate is the best polyglot work environment I've ever used. The primary project I work on has Java, kotlin, groovy, python, typescript, js, shell scripts, dockerfiles, various configuration files, etc. Intellij Ultimate handles them all equally well as the more specific language flavors in my experience.
herdcall 6y ago
Not sure how many devs code in a single language these days. I go back/forth between Go, Dart, and C++ every day, so using one IDE like VSCode (with the familiar features from extensions to shortcuts to snippets) is a big help.
- mythz 6y ago
  I do have to maintain libraries in several languages, basically every JetBrains IDE has built-in first-class support for JS/TypeScript + all popular Web file formats irrespective of whatever backend language you're developing in. For C#, F# & VB I use Rider. For Dart, Java & Kotlin I use Android Studio, but if I need to do a lot of development with Java/Kotlin I'll bounce to IDEA. For TypeScript/JS npm projects I use VS Code for small changes, but bounce to WebStorm for longer sessions. For the Swift package I use Xcode for development & VS Code for git, update docs & run publish scripts. Unfortunately ran into issues trying to build my project with AppCode. For all other languages (used to develop project templates & packages for https://gist.cafe https://gist.cafe) I'll use VS Code, but that's mainly because I don't have the IDE installed. If I had to spend more than a couple of days working on a language that JetBrains offers a dedicated IDE for I'll most likely be installing & trying that out, before falling back to VS Code (JetBrains All Products Pack + Unified Toolbox Updates makes this effortless & feasible).
- derekperkins 6y ago
  I think the vast majority of devs work in a single language, at least on a day to day basis.
- rfw300 6y ago
  It’s worth noting you can set up shared settings between every Jetbrains IDE which will sync up all of your keybindings, color schemes, etc.
  - iudqnolq 6y ago
    I've never got it to work reliably between different types of IDEs (Android Studio and Intellij for example)
africanboy 6y ago
in my experience Intellij looks better if you have coded in Inttellij first (especially Java) and then moved to othet tools. Intellij offers a lot of custom behaviours that IMO programmers start coding the "Intellij way" (let's call it Intellij muscle memory for lack of a better definition) on the other hand going from vi to Emacs to Sublime to VSCode is less of a problem and people tend to honestly judge strength and weaknesses of each one. For example magit is so good (for me) that until the magit plugin for VSCode came out I kept an instance of Emacs running only to interact with the git repository. Intellij git integration in comparison, in my opinion, it's barely usable and generally counter intuitive. BTW the java plugin bundle for VSCode replicates 95% of the features of Intellij, except for some formatting styles and a few of the refactoring facilities that I could not reproduce, I switched from Intellij to VSCode without looking back. There's even a keyboard bindings plugin for VSCode that perfectly maps IJ keyboard shortcuts. If only the VSCode java ecosystem was refined as it is today 2 years ago when the project I am working on started, I would have never even downloaded Intellij. If I had an euro for every time I had to "Invalidate cache and restart" on Intellij to make it recognize some trivial change, I would be rich now. Having said that: they are different products for different targets. Intellij has a huge advantage in corporate environments where conformity, uniformity and easily replacing team members are paramount, VSCode is an highly customizable code editor that fits a different use case where each member of the team prefers to customize the working experience as much as possible.
- noisy_boy 6y ago
  > in my experience Intellij looks better if you have coded in Inttellij first (especially Java) and then moved to othet tools. I have started with notepad and moved through vi, Eclipse, VSCode and then IntelliJ. Out of these I used Eclipse and IntelliJ for Java and IntelliJ wins hands down when it comes to the quality of the features, atleast for Java. > Intellij offers a lot of custom behaviours that IMO programmers start coding the "Intellij way" (let's call it Intellij muscle memory for lack of a better definition) on the other hand going from vi to Emacs to Sublime to VSCode is less of a problem and people tend to honestly judge strength and weaknesses of each one. Since I didn't start with IntelliJ, I didn't have any baggage of muscle memory etc but the ease of refactoring and the quality of autocomplete/suggestions of refactoring takes it beyond an editor to almost a companion. It doesn't nag and you are free to ignore its suggestions but hell those are pretty good suggestions. I use a few keyboard shortcuts like jumping to definition and checking usage so I don't have any keyboard focused attachment to IntelliJ. Infact I use vi keybindings in both VSCode and IntelliJ. > Intellij git integration in comparison, in my opinion, it's barely usable and generally counter intuitive. IntelliJ's git integration is definitely not barely useable and not counter intuitive either (I started with command line git and then worked on IntelliJ). The only gripe I have is that occasionally I want to create a branch from a tag and I need to do that from the command line. Everything else works seamlessly. > If I had an euro for every time I had to "Invalidate cache and restart" on Intellij to make it recognize some trivial change, I would be rich now. I've had to do invalidate cache and restart about 2 times in last two years so while it is not a great use of my time when I have to do it, its not a big bother considering it is rare for me. > Intellij has a huge advantage in corporate environments where conformity, uniformity and easily replacing team members are paramount, VSCode is an highly customizable code editor that fits a different use case where each member of the team prefers to customize the working experience as much as possible. In my team, the average period folks have been with the firm is 3 years so easily replacing people is not a priority (because they are not leaving left, right and center). Also, I'm not even sure if that makes any difference, because its not like we are coding style nazis carrying out IntelliJ dictated formatting (we use Sonarlint for linting and only expect people to code in a manner that is easy to understand and maintain). Almost all team members have used Eclipse / VSCode and atleast for Java, after they used IntelliJ, they haven't gone back to either.
xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
>thanks in large part to the productivity of JS + Web renderer Oh heavens no. I can't think of a single program written with "web technologies" that is in the same league of complexity as proper desktop applications. And IDEA is already enough of a resource hog; let's not make things worse!
usrusr 6y ago
A somewhat radical rephrasing would be that the IDEA products occupy the space that used to be held by Borland IDE or something like Quick Basic whereas VSCode seems more like an Emacs for the javascript age. (which I find surprisingly fitting, considering how according to The good Parts javascript is just a scheme with curlies)
harikb 6y ago
I use both. IntelliJ being a paid personal subscription. I like both. But VsCode excels in their remote editing capabilities. Sometimes I work on code that will only compile on a Linux and I am on a Mac. It is not just remote debugging - the whole environment including language server works flawlessly via remote while making you feel like local development. It is good for two good IDEs to survive. I don’t want one of them to win. There is room for two. I only wish the opensource development model of plugins (for both IntelliJ and VsCode) doesn’t come to bite us one day with a rogue developer inserting malware. The whole review/reputation system should be like Apple App Store
- reader_mode 6y ago
  This right here is what could get me to switch. I could theoretically host an IDE on a workstation and develop from anywhere with a browser. Unfortunately it's not ideal yet - remote editor wouldn't let me touch files not owned by session user (even when I could sudo) and similar issues.
  - hansvm 6y ago
    I still mostly just SSH onto a workstation for any of my personal work, but every month or two I'll check out the latest batch of self-hosted remote IDEs. My favorite by far (with caveats -- a few of your favorite extensions have licensing issues, and the mobile UI is garbage) is a fork of VS Code designed for doing exactly that. Check out https://github.com/cdr/code-server https://github.com/cdr/code-server.
  - dineshdb 6y ago
    I went this route with code-server[1]. But later decided against it because some shortcuts don't work in the browser. Also installing and managing code-server on those VMs had started becoming a chore. I am using remote-ssh instead. Hassle-free and works like charm. Can't comment on sudo issue because I mostly log in using root. [1]: https://github.com/cdr/code-server https://github.com/cdr/code-server [2]: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscode-remote.remote-ssh https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscod...
- 6y ago
jokethrowaway 6y ago
Jetbrains IDEs performance is so abysmal I quickly get annoyed and move to something else. Same with XCode. I find VSCode to be the most feature rich editor whose speed I can tolerate. VSCode is by no means ideal in terms of resource consumptions or startup speed but the community picked up VSCode for the golden path in the languages I code with (rust, node.js, frontend js) and using other lighter editors is a significant downgrade. Sublime was incredibly promising but it's not enough feature wise for my experience. I'd literally throw money into a native and more performant/lightweight VSCode.
- dschuessler 6y ago
  There are several projects attempting to develop a native smart editor. For Mac users there is Nova (https://nova.app/ https://nova.app/) and for the Vim crowd there is Onivim (https://onivim.io/ https://onivim.io/). I have used neither of them but I find them intriguing, especially when I wait for my VSCode cursor to catch up with my typing.
- thu2111 6y ago
  NB: IDEA performance is improved drastically by giving it more memory. Basically every time someone complains about perf issues with IDEA it's because their heap limit is too low. It can be configured via the help menu. One of the unfortunate (or fortunate?) design decisions in IDEA is that there's an explicit and user configurable tradeoff between performance and memory usage, but the defaults are far too low. And if it's too low only the most very recent versions can detect this and tell you what to do about it.
randomsearch 6y ago
I agree, I also think sibling comment about vs code being a generic text editor is a fair point. I’ve tried to move to vs code several times as I like using the “default” (same reason I use Ubuntu) but webstorm is just better IMO.
2muchcoffeeman 6y ago
VS Code is also pretty nice for free. I wouldn’t use it professionally if I had Idea. But for home use, free is pretty ok.
keyle 6y ago
I agree, I'm a long term IntelliJ polyglot, and I watch people in pair programming or video call refactor in VSCode and I feel sorry for them. Stuff goes sideways badly with dynamic languages, worse, they don't have a grip on it. Simple stuff like code formatting and structure of files isn't well respected by vscoders <I find>. IntelliJ got a bad wrap I guess because it all started with Java. I'm glad I had a short gig in Java to discover IntelliJ back then. I really think their software, although getting quite complex now, and the plugins can be a little sketch, is the best IDE out there <unless you're a vim nerd who swears by vim and will die on a sword for it>.
- willtemperley 6y ago
  The almost perfect Vim support is why I pay for JetBrains’ AppCode over xCode. Second I simply don’t think I’d be able to code both Java and Swift without having a similar workflow between IDEs. To me the development experience makes the difference between loving or hating the work.
api 6y ago
I switched from VSCode to CLion (IDEA variant) and its Rust plugin because... well... it actually works for complex C++ code. VSCode requires a restart every 10 minutes while working with a moderately complex C++ code base with some complex template logic. Since I switched I've really come to like the polish and completeness of the thing. I have confidence that it will actually work, and it almost always does. It's fatter than VSCode in some ways (especially RAM) but that's what 16G or more of RAM on a laptop is for.
bpicolo 6y ago
There are plenty of quirks when you aren't coloring in the lines in Jetbrains, though. Formatting with Rubocop on save in Rubymine is nearly impossible to do successfully in my attempts.
_the_inflator 6y ago
I agree with you. JetBrains IDEs are more thorough, kind of Apple like vertical integration while VS Code is more like Windows: hack everything together. From a experimental standpoint I highly prefer VS Code, since writing add-ons for JetBrain was too complicated for me in an affordable time. VS Code shines here. I think that this flexibility really is a different beast. For example, workflow optimization is becoming a thing in software development. In my department, I turned VS Code into a somewhat low-code editor for Web development. This could not have been achieved using JetBrains.
the__alchemist 6y ago
Even with plugins, VsCode feels like a text editor + syntax highlighter for single files. Jetbrains feels like a project-first language introspection tool. It knows how the languages (Python, Typescript, Rust etc) work, how their functions, data structures, modules etc interact.
smt1 6y ago
tbh, i like the polish of visual studio over vscode. or atom even.

by mythz 6y ago

EasyTiger_ 6y ago

Agree, PHPStorm for me is a productivity monster

specialp 6y ago

The plugin infrastructure for VS Code along with excellent first party support for JS/TS has helped it grow very fast. But in languages other than TS the mishmash of plugins of varying quality really degrade the experience. The opinionated approach and strong first party support just makes Jet Brains product much cleaner. I use both a lot.

kitsunesoba 6y ago
Indeed, I haven't used VS Code a lot but my few experiences with it were largely figuring out which of the available plugins for a particular function was the "right" one, with all of them sitting at various levels of "working". The IntelliJ, Sublime, and heck even TextMate 2 plugin experience is cleaner in that regard.

azeirah 6y ago

Part of it feels like it comes from a different development philosophy. Vscode is a "text editor" or a "code editor". Usually this means that it's fairly lightweight, supports every language under the sun, is highly configurable and extensible, but doesn't have a lot of very in-depth features, and also partially relies on third-party extensions for deeper functionality. Jetbrains on the other hand works on IDEs built for one specific language explicitly. Consider CLion for C, it's only a couple of years old! They put a lot of resources into supporting a language and all its relevant workflows. Phpstorm for instance has built-in support for three different standalone code quality checkers, composer (package manager) support, deep language understanding with highlighting, warning, errors, refactorings, generators etc, doc comments, code formatting, support for different testing frameworks, a built-in debugger, etcetcetc... While that's great, you shouldn't go edit python code in Phpstorm. It supports syntax highlighting and maybe a couple of other small features, but that's it! In short, code editors usually cast a really wide net with a lot of configurability and extensibility, while (jetbrains) IDEs tend to go really deep on a single language or workflow, with less extensibility, and deep configurability within the supported language itself.

cyral 6y ago
One thing to note is that you can use IntelliJ and install the official plugins for each language. For example you can bring the WebStorm functionality to IntelliJ, or install the database plugin to get an embedded Datagrip window. (Which is really neat because you can then get SQL syntax highlighting and such based on your actual DB)
- vinger 6y ago
  How does the open source IDEA plus php plugin experience compare to phpstorm?
  - yrio 6y ago
    The plugins for alternative languages (PHP, Python) are available only for IntelliJ Ultimate / paid. It's not available in free / open source IntelliJ So either [1] you buy IntelliJ Ultimate & get Java + other languages (PHP, Python, Ruby, etc except .NET and C++) or [2] you buy the language specific IDE (cheaper) like PhpStorm, PyCharm, etc

leetcrew 6y ago

I think that sounds about right. I see vs code as a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none type of tool. if I want to try something in a new language or just edit some text real quick (I find vs code has better than average support for weird text encodings) but keep a familiar ui, I go with vs code. if I'm going to be doing some more in-depth work, I'll spend the time to learn a purpose-built tool. I mostly write c++ for windows, and I find vs code can't really compete with its big brother (bloated as it is) here.

brightball 6y ago
This sums it up for me. For languages with a dedicated Jetbrains IDE (Java, Ruby, Python, etc) Jetbrains will be better experience hands down. For everything that doesn’t have the premium experience, I find that just using plugins isn’t as effective. For example, the experience of using IDEA with the Elixir plugin hasn’t been great despite a lot of development. It seems like it constantly loses the proper SDK if I jump between projects. The VS Code experience has been a lot better for Elixir though. Just works. The moment Jetbrains releases a dedicated Elixir IDE I’d jump for it though.
- cutler 6y ago
  Why the assumption that a separate editor needs to be released? IntelliJ with language plugins is better.
  - brightball 6y ago
    Hadn’t been my experience thus far.
  - perrylaj 6y ago
    I agree. Intellij ultimate is the best polyglot work environment I've ever used. The primary project I work on has Java, kotlin, groovy, python, typescript, js, shell scripts, dockerfiles, various configuration files, etc. Intellij Ultimate handles them all equally well as the more specific language flavors in my experience.

herdcall 6y ago

Not sure how many devs code in a single language these days. I go back/forth between Go, Dart, and C++ every day, so using one IDE like VSCode (with the familiar features from extensions to shortcuts to snippets) is a big help.

mythz 6y ago
I do have to maintain libraries in several languages, basically every JetBrains IDE has built-in first-class support for JS/TypeScript + all popular Web file formats irrespective of whatever backend language you're developing in. For C#, F# & VB I use Rider. For Dart, Java & Kotlin I use Android Studio, but if I need to do a lot of development with Java/Kotlin I'll bounce to IDEA. For TypeScript/JS npm projects I use VS Code for small changes, but bounce to WebStorm for longer sessions. For the Swift package I use Xcode for development & VS Code for git, update docs & run publish scripts. Unfortunately ran into issues trying to build my project with AppCode. For all other languages (used to develop project templates & packages for https://gist.cafe https://gist.cafe) I'll use VS Code, but that's mainly because I don't have the IDE installed. If I had to spend more than a couple of days working on a language that JetBrains offers a dedicated IDE for I'll most likely be installing & trying that out, before falling back to VS Code (JetBrains All Products Pack + Unified Toolbox Updates makes this effortless & feasible).
derekperkins 6y ago
I think the vast majority of devs work in a single language, at least on a day to day basis.
rfw300 6y ago
It’s worth noting you can set up shared settings between every Jetbrains IDE which will sync up all of your keybindings, color schemes, etc.
- iudqnolq 6y ago
  I've never got it to work reliably between different types of IDEs (Android Studio and Intellij for example)

africanboy 6y ago

in my experience Intellij looks better if you have coded in Inttellij first (especially Java) and then moved to othet tools. Intellij offers a lot of custom behaviours that IMO programmers start coding the "Intellij way" (let's call it Intellij muscle memory for lack of a better definition) on the other hand going from vi to Emacs to Sublime to VSCode is less of a problem and people tend to honestly judge strength and weaknesses of each one. For example magit is so good (for me) that until the magit plugin for VSCode came out I kept an instance of Emacs running only to interact with the git repository. Intellij git integration in comparison, in my opinion, it's barely usable and generally counter intuitive. BTW the java plugin bundle for VSCode replicates 95% of the features of Intellij, except for some formatting styles and a few of the refactoring facilities that I could not reproduce, I switched from Intellij to VSCode without looking back. There's even a keyboard bindings plugin for VSCode that perfectly maps IJ keyboard shortcuts. If only the VSCode java ecosystem was refined as it is today 2 years ago when the project I am working on started, I would have never even downloaded Intellij. If I had an euro for every time I had to "Invalidate cache and restart" on Intellij to make it recognize some trivial change, I would be rich now. Having said that: they are different products for different targets. Intellij has a huge advantage in corporate environments where conformity, uniformity and easily replacing team members are paramount, VSCode is an highly customizable code editor that fits a different use case where each member of the team prefers to customize the working experience as much as possible.

noisy_boy 6y ago
> in my experience Intellij looks better if you have coded in Inttellij first (especially Java) and then moved to othet tools. I have started with notepad and moved through vi, Eclipse, VSCode and then IntelliJ. Out of these I used Eclipse and IntelliJ for Java and IntelliJ wins hands down when it comes to the quality of the features, atleast for Java. > Intellij offers a lot of custom behaviours that IMO programmers start coding the "Intellij way" (let's call it Intellij muscle memory for lack of a better definition) on the other hand going from vi to Emacs to Sublime to VSCode is less of a problem and people tend to honestly judge strength and weaknesses of each one. Since I didn't start with IntelliJ, I didn't have any baggage of muscle memory etc but the ease of refactoring and the quality of autocomplete/suggestions of refactoring takes it beyond an editor to almost a companion. It doesn't nag and you are free to ignore its suggestions but hell those are pretty good suggestions. I use a few keyboard shortcuts like jumping to definition and checking usage so I don't have any keyboard focused attachment to IntelliJ. Infact I use vi keybindings in both VSCode and IntelliJ. > Intellij git integration in comparison, in my opinion, it's barely usable and generally counter intuitive. IntelliJ's git integration is definitely not barely useable and not counter intuitive either (I started with command line git and then worked on IntelliJ). The only gripe I have is that occasionally I want to create a branch from a tag and I need to do that from the command line. Everything else works seamlessly. > If I had an euro for every time I had to "Invalidate cache and restart" on Intellij to make it recognize some trivial change, I would be rich now. I've had to do invalidate cache and restart about 2 times in last two years so while it is not a great use of my time when I have to do it, its not a big bother considering it is rare for me. > Intellij has a huge advantage in corporate environments where conformity, uniformity and easily replacing team members are paramount, VSCode is an highly customizable code editor that fits a different use case where each member of the team prefers to customize the working experience as much as possible. In my team, the average period folks have been with the firm is 3 years so easily replacing people is not a priority (because they are not leaving left, right and center). Also, I'm not even sure if that makes any difference, because its not like we are coding style nazis carrying out IntelliJ dictated formatting (we use Sonarlint for linting and only expect people to code in a manner that is easy to understand and maintain). Almost all team members have used Eclipse / VSCode and atleast for Java, after they used IntelliJ, they haven't gone back to either.

xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago

>thanks in large part to the productivity of JS + Web renderer Oh heavens no. I can't think of a single program written with "web technologies" that is in the same league of complexity as proper desktop applications. And IDEA is already enough of a resource hog; let's not make things worse!

usrusr 6y ago

A somewhat radical rephrasing would be that the IDEA products occupy the space that used to be held by Borland IDE or something like Quick Basic whereas VSCode seems more like an Emacs for the javascript age. (which I find surprisingly fitting, considering how according to The good Parts javascript is just a scheme with curlies)

harikb 6y ago

I use both. IntelliJ being a paid personal subscription. I like both. But VsCode excels in their remote editing capabilities. Sometimes I work on code that will only compile on a Linux and I am on a Mac. It is not just remote debugging - the whole environment including language server works flawlessly via remote while making you feel like local development. It is good for two good IDEs to survive. I don’t want one of them to win. There is room for two. I only wish the opensource development model of plugins (for both IntelliJ and VsCode) doesn’t come to bite us one day with a rogue developer inserting malware. The whole review/reputation system should be like Apple App Store

reader_mode 6y ago
This right here is what could get me to switch. I could theoretically host an IDE on a workstation and develop from anywhere with a browser. Unfortunately it's not ideal yet - remote editor wouldn't let me touch files not owned by session user (even when I could sudo) and similar issues.
- hansvm 6y ago
  I still mostly just SSH onto a workstation for any of my personal work, but every month or two I'll check out the latest batch of self-hosted remote IDEs. My favorite by far (with caveats -- a few of your favorite extensions have licensing issues, and the mobile UI is garbage) is a fork of VS Code designed for doing exactly that. Check out https://github.com/cdr/code-server https://github.com/cdr/code-server.
- dineshdb 6y ago
  I went this route with code-server[1]. But later decided against it because some shortcuts don't work in the browser. Also installing and managing code-server on those VMs had started becoming a chore. I am using remote-ssh instead. Hassle-free and works like charm. Can't comment on sudo issue because I mostly log in using root. [1]: https://github.com/cdr/code-server https://github.com/cdr/code-server [2]: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscode-remote.remote-ssh https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscod...
6y ago

jokethrowaway 6y ago

Jetbrains IDEs performance is so abysmal I quickly get annoyed and move to something else. Same with XCode. I find VSCode to be the most feature rich editor whose speed I can tolerate. VSCode is by no means ideal in terms of resource consumptions or startup speed but the community picked up VSCode for the golden path in the languages I code with (rust, node.js, frontend js) and using other lighter editors is a significant downgrade. Sublime was incredibly promising but it's not enough feature wise for my experience. I'd literally throw money into a native and more performant/lightweight VSCode.

dschuessler 6y ago
There are several projects attempting to develop a native smart editor. For Mac users there is Nova (https://nova.app/ https://nova.app/) and for the Vim crowd there is Onivim (https://onivim.io/ https://onivim.io/). I have used neither of them but I find them intriguing, especially when I wait for my VSCode cursor to catch up with my typing.
thu2111 6y ago
NB: IDEA performance is improved drastically by giving it more memory. Basically every time someone complains about perf issues with IDEA it's because their heap limit is too low. It can be configured via the help menu. One of the unfortunate (or fortunate?) design decisions in IDEA is that there's an explicit and user configurable tradeoff between performance and memory usage, but the defaults are far too low. And if it's too low only the most very recent versions can detect this and tell you what to do about it.

randomsearch 6y ago

I agree, I also think sibling comment about vs code being a generic text editor is a fair point. I’ve tried to move to vs code several times as I like using the “default” (same reason I use Ubuntu) but webstorm is just better IMO.

2muchcoffeeman 6y ago

VS Code is also pretty nice for free. I wouldn’t use it professionally if I had Idea. But for home use, free is pretty ok.

keyle 6y ago

I agree, I'm a long term IntelliJ polyglot, and I watch people in pair programming or video call refactor in VSCode and I feel sorry for them. Stuff goes sideways badly with dynamic languages, worse, they don't have a grip on it. Simple stuff like code formatting and structure of files isn't well respected by vscoders <I find>. IntelliJ got a bad wrap I guess because it all started with Java. I'm glad I had a short gig in Java to discover IntelliJ back then. I really think their software, although getting quite complex now, and the plugins can be a little sketch, is the best IDE out there <unless you're a vim nerd who swears by vim and will die on a sword for it>.

willtemperley 6y ago
The almost perfect Vim support is why I pay for JetBrains’ AppCode over xCode. Second I simply don’t think I’d be able to code both Java and Swift without having a similar workflow between IDEs. To me the development experience makes the difference between loving or hating the work.

api 6y ago

I switched from VSCode to CLion (IDEA variant) and its Rust plugin because... well... it actually works for complex C++ code. VSCode requires a restart every 10 minutes while working with a moderately complex C++ code base with some complex template logic. Since I switched I've really come to like the polish and completeness of the thing. I have confidence that it will actually work, and it almost always does. It's fatter than VSCode in some ways (especially RAM) but that's what 16G or more of RAM on a laptop is for.

bpicolo 6y ago

There are plenty of quirks when you aren't coloring in the lines in Jetbrains, though. Formatting with Rubocop on save in Rubymine is nearly impossible to do successfully in my attempts.

_the_inflator 6y ago

I agree with you. JetBrains IDEs are more thorough, kind of Apple like vertical integration while VS Code is more like Windows: hack everything together. From a experimental standpoint I highly prefer VS Code, since writing add-ons for JetBrain was too complicated for me in an affordable time. VS Code shines here. I think that this flexibility really is a different beast. For example, workflow optimization is becoming a thing in software development. In my department, I turned VS Code into a somewhat low-code editor for Web development. This could not have been achieved using JetBrains.

the__alchemist 6y ago

Even with plugins, VsCode feels like a text editor + syntax highlighter for single files. Jetbrains feels like a project-first language introspection tool. It knows how the languages (Python, Typescript, Rust etc) work, how their functions, data structures, modules etc interact.

smt1 6y ago

tbh, i like the polish of visual studio over vscode. or atom even.