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When I meet quite practical devs that are into PHP or Java, they always recommend IntelliJ. Can anyone of that crowd that also have a solid understanding of Ema

When I meet quite practical devs that are into PHP or Java, they always recommend IntelliJ. Can anyone of that crowd that also have a solid understanding of Emacs do a short comparison between the two? I'd really appreciate it. Currently, I've only mustered enough courage and time to understand enough of vim to not feel scared of it anymore (vimtutor was the silver bullet for me there, learning enough vim in an hour to feel fine with it).

prohobo 5y ago
I think it's as simple as: Emacs is like VS Code, IntelliJ is like Visual Studio. JetBrains makes great IDEs, and you should use them if you're working on a large project that one of those IDEs is geared towards. It'd take a lot of work to get any other editor to have the same feature-set and organization of workspace. Emacs is a general-purpose environment for writing, and you should use it if you want a specific flow for writing code, or anything else. You can setup plugins so that it's like a mini IDE for most of the languages you write in, and you can setup plugins to modify the organization of your workspace. You want tabs? Add them. You want a tree view of your current project folder? Add one. You want Vim-style editing? Enable it. Etc. Right now it seems everyone is looking for a code editor that is extensible and fast - Emacs fits that bill better than VS Code (also Neovim might end up being even better!), but it's more difficult to get it right. That's why there are projects like Spacemacs and Doom Emacs to make adding/removing plugins easier, and also have a good setup out of the box.
r3n 5y ago
I use both for almost 10 years, here are my experiences: The main advantage of IntelliJ or any other IDE by JetBrains over Emacs, is that the out of box experience IDE provided, especially from a new programmer's perspective. All they need to do to click a button, check few checkbox, then IDE will resolve it for you and tell you what happened. But to make Emacs do any complex behaviors, you usually have to write additional codes or configurations to glue different features together. Not to mention you need to read documents and debug it when there is an error. In JetBrains IDEs those are integrated already. A context-aware error detection and code inspection is available the second you open the IDE first time. That is something default Emacs can never do. The main advantage on Emacs over IDEs, is that you can ask Emacs to do whatever you want as long as you know how to implement it. Practically speaking, you most likely will accumulate many little functions over time that is specific designed for your workflows. That kind of customizability is something IDEs cannot provide. I do not consider myself an Emacs power user, but I still benefit form it. Emacs is also have better text editing features in general. You can use the same features no matter what text file you are editing. That's why people want to use Emacs for everything. In short, they are different tools, use it where it is suitable for you. For me, I whine about how bad the editor is when I use IDE, then I complain about how bad the integration my Emacs has between multiple tools (mainly my inability to make it work). Hope this give you some ideas.
- heavenlyblue 5y ago
  Why would I need emacs for "complex behaviours" if I have <insert any programming language> installed on my computer? For example, I made a lot of scripts in Python to refactor codebases by automatically splitting files (including imports). Could I do that with emacs? Probably yes. But why? For most intents and purposes it doesn't matter if your "automated editing" environment is integrated in your editor.

prohobo 5y ago

I think it's as simple as: Emacs is like VS Code, IntelliJ is like Visual Studio. JetBrains makes great IDEs, and you should use them if you're working on a large project that one of those IDEs is geared towards. It'd take a lot of work to get any other editor to have the same feature-set and organization of workspace. Emacs is a general-purpose environment for writing, and you should use it if you want a specific flow for writing code, or anything else. You can setup plugins so that it's like a mini IDE for most of the languages you write in, and you can setup plugins to modify the organization of your workspace. You want tabs? Add them. You want a tree view of your current project folder? Add one. You want Vim-style editing? Enable it. Etc. Right now it seems everyone is looking for a code editor that is extensible and fast - Emacs fits that bill better than VS Code (also Neovim might end up being even better!), but it's more difficult to get it right. That's why there are projects like Spacemacs and Doom Emacs to make adding/removing plugins easier, and also have a good setup out of the box.

r3n 5y ago

I use both for almost 10 years, here are my experiences: The main advantage of IntelliJ or any other IDE by JetBrains over Emacs, is that the out of box experience IDE provided, especially from a new programmer's perspective. All they need to do to click a button, check few checkbox, then IDE will resolve it for you and tell you what happened. But to make Emacs do any complex behaviors, you usually have to write additional codes or configurations to glue different features together. Not to mention you need to read documents and debug it when there is an error. In JetBrains IDEs those are integrated already. A context-aware error detection and code inspection is available the second you open the IDE first time. That is something default Emacs can never do. The main advantage on Emacs over IDEs, is that you can ask Emacs to do whatever you want as long as you know how to implement it. Practically speaking, you most likely will accumulate many little functions over time that is specific designed for your workflows. That kind of customizability is something IDEs cannot provide. I do not consider myself an Emacs power user, but I still benefit form it. Emacs is also have better text editing features in general. You can use the same features no matter what text file you are editing. That's why people want to use Emacs for everything. In short, they are different tools, use it where it is suitable for you. For me, I whine about how bad the editor is when I use IDE, then I complain about how bad the integration my Emacs has between multiple tools (mainly my inability to make it work). Hope this give you some ideas.

heavenlyblue 5y ago
Why would I need emacs for "complex behaviours" if I have <insert any programming language> installed on my computer? For example, I made a lot of scripts in Python to refactor codebases by automatically splitting files (including imports). Could I do that with emacs? Probably yes. But why? For most intents and purposes it doesn't matter if your "automated editing" environment is integrated in your editor.