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I'd be more interested if there was VSCode support. The JetBrains folks response was ridiculous and dismissive: https://discuss.kotlinlang.org/t/official-suppo

I'd be more interested if there was VSCode support. The JetBrains folks response was ridiculous and dismissive: https://discuss.kotlinlang.org/t/official-support-for-visual-studio-code/8242 https://discuss.kotlinlang.org/t/official-support-for-visual... Apparently they refuse to support the most popular web IDE because Kotlin for JS is really about selling IDEA licenses. Fair enough, but it means I don't suggest Kotlin for anything except as a Java alternative and Android. There's better options from companies that are less adversarial to their community.

nirvdrum 5y ago
Does the LSP implementation [1] linked by the JetBrains employee in that thread not work? It pushed a new minor version release a little over a week ago. It seems pretty reasonable to me for them to not pay employee salaries to build a plugin for a competing product, especially when they already provide a comprehensive IDE solution available for free (in both senses). What other companies are doing that? I don't mean that as a challenge. I'd love to know what the better options are. [1] -- https://github.com/fwcd/kotlin-language-server https://github.com/fwcd/kotlin-language-server
- dboreham 5y ago
  It works. At least, it works well enough for me to use on a daily basis, and I'm pretty hard to please.
  - crummy 5y ago
    Do you happen to use Java and Kotlin in the same project? This seems to not work well for VSCode when I tried it a while back.
    - Strum355 5y ago
      That is actively being worked on currently, but is very WIP still
    - vips7L 5y ago
      Mixed language projects is something that only IntelliJ can really do. It’s actually the reason I switched over to it from VsCode for Java since we mix Scala in our project.
- esprehn 5y ago
  Read the README: https://github.com/fwcd/kotlin-language-server#this-repository-needs-your-help https://github.com/fwcd/kotlin-language-server#this-reposito... What you said would make sense, except they do build a plugin for Eclipse. Better options would be any language where the stewards are not trying to extract money from you by forcing your IDE choice. Or where they view fostering community good will as being in their best interest. Ex. MS offers an official LS rather than saying "we don't support other IDEs because Visual Studio licenses." There's lots of choices here for compile to JS languages: https://github.com/jashkenas/coffeescript/wiki/List-of-languages-that-compile-to-JS#static-typing https://github.com/jashkenas/coffeescript/wiki/List-of-langu...
  - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
    They don't owe anybody anything.
  - atraac 5y ago
    > What you said would make sense, except they do build a plugin for Eclipse. I don't know a single person who used Eclipse after 2020. Don't you think that supporting Eclipse might be a viable marketing strategy to get people who are stuck in the past on board with newer tech, as if anything, they will probably move on to IDEA? > Ex. MS offers an official LS rather than saying "we don't support other IDEs because Visual Studio licenses." MS is a bad example because they recently literally took away a feature from dotnet to push it into VS and drive sales, which was met a HUGE backlash from the community. Dotnet IS the driving force behind Visual Studio. JetBrains actually came in and took a piece of that from them(thankfully, because I personally hate vs/vscode). Like other answer to your comment said, JetBrains doesn't owe anything to anyone. If there is already a Language Server for Kotlin, great, I don't see how a product-based company could benefit from making something that drives people away from their (already free) product...
    - fivea 5y ago
      > I don't know a single person who used Eclipse after 2020. So your circle of acquaintances doesn't include anyone who used an IDE in the past year, and you extrapolate your personal anecdote how far? > Don't you think that supporting Eclipse might be a viable marketing strategy to get people who are stuck in the past (...) Can we spend a minute discussing how idiotic is this fad-drive development belief? I mean, why is anyone expected to be perceived as smart if they drop something that works in favour of an unproven tool just because it's new?
meibo 5y ago
I'm curious, how do you see this as being adversarial to their community? It's not like they are taking down kotlin language servers, there are community language servers and extensions for kotlin in vscode and they're linked here as well, by jetbrains employees. They need users to pay for IDEA to survive, so being open about not wanting to spend developer time to make it easier for people not to use IDEA that could be used to make IDEA better seems sensible from a business perspective. Seems like the community stepped up regardless.
srcreigh 5y ago
Just use jetbrains. VScode has properietary features which aren't available to other editors too.
- seanw444 5y ago
  Or if you care about open source, use VS Codium. It's literally VS Code minus the proprietary crap, and with a different branding.
  - ptx 5y ago
    But the "proprietary crap" part is where they've implemented all of the Python support, among other things, isn't it? And last time I looked the license prohibited using Microsoft's proprietary plugins with VS Codium.
    - IceWreck 5y ago
      The Python extension is open source but Pylance isn't. Use Pyright (type checking ext which is essentially Pylance without the ML stuff) instead of Pylance. Instead of Microsoft's C/C++ extension use clangd. Remote SSH and Remote Containers have alternatives as well but nothing as good. Google and Red Hat's extensions work out of the box along with several thousand other extensions.
      - wiseowise 5y ago
        > Instead of Microsoft's C/C++ extension use clangd. Didn’t know about this one, thanks.
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  Go on…
  - melony 5y ago
    OP is referring to some of Microsoft's intellisense language plugins. They are not bundled with VS code by default but they are the best-in-class in terms of language support for autocompletion.
lolinder 5y ago
If I'm understanding correctly, the thing you found offensive in that comment was the JetBrains employee talking about "dragging" people to IDEA. If that's the case, it's important to note that the notion was first suggested by the OP: > This would not only be beneficial to developers using this editor, but could drag a lot of developers to IDEA when seeking out for a full-blown IDE eventually. In this context, the JetBrains employee was not saying "it won't sell licenses and therefore we won't do it", they were saying "this won't do what you think it will do". JetBrains is a company, and like any other company their focus will tend to lean toward where the money is. But my experience with Kotlin over the last several years is that JetBrains is very responsive to the community and their needs.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  They public stated that a reason why Kotlin exists is to sell licenses. > The next thing is also fairly straightforward: we expect Kotlin to drive the sales of IntelliJ IDEA https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2011/08/why-jetbrains-needs-kotlin/ https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2011/08/why-jetbrains-need...
  - listenallyall 5y ago
    From 2011. I think their motivations have expanded quite a bit in the past 11 years, as has their commitment to the language, compilation targets and use cases.
  - ramraj07 5y ago
    What exactly is the problem with this? How is it different from C#? Or even Java ?
    - jhgb 5y ago
      > What exactly is the problem with this? What if I want to continue using Emacs?
      - avianlyric 5y ago
whateveracct 5y ago
> Kotlin for JS is really about selling IDEA licenses Kotlin the entire language is about selling IDEA licenses. Ever tried to read Kotlin in plaintext? It's terrible. The language makes you need the IDEA hints they give you to read it.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Indeed and they aren't shy about it. If it wasn't for Google giving wind to their sails, the Kotlin ship wouldn't have gone anywhere.
  - listenallyall 5y ago
    Kotlin is gaining momentum outside of Android, which is the only platform that Google helped with. In other areas, like Flutter, Google is actually competing with Kotlin (KMM).
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      Wishful thinking, enjoy your 8%. https://www.infoq.com/news/2022/03/jrebel-report-2022/ https://www.infoq.com/news/2022/03/jrebel-report-2022/
      - listenallyall 5y ago
        You have poor reading comprehension (in addition to a real hatred for one particular language, which seems unhealthy). I never stated that it was among the most popular languages, just that it was gaining momentum. In 2019, 41% of Kotlin devs claimed to work on web back-ends. In 2020 it was 47%. In 2021 the survey changed wording but "server-side development" had increased to 52% of Kotlin devs. https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2021/kotlin/ https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2021/kotlin/
        pjmlp 5y ago
        Ah, a survey from the company whose goal is to sell Kotlin, really conclusive.
Shadonototra 5y ago
- aaronbrethorst 5y ago
zem 5y ago
on the contrary, I found their response very fair and reasonable. Quoting: You can code Kotlin on any device, using any IDE, anywhere, at any time, thanks to the fact that Kotlin source code is stored in plain text files and not in a proprietary binary format. You do have a language server for that. The language server happens to be not developed by JetBrains, but it doesn’t actually restrict you from being able to use it in any way. In my book, “lock-in” means “you have to pay a single vendor or you can’t use the tool”. You seem to be defining it as “you have pay the vendor or live with maybe slightly worse code completion and no refactorings, until someone else supports these features in a free tool”. I don’t believe your definition to be justified.
fithisux 5y ago
I use Kotlin without a license. Just the community version of the IDE, they also released an eclipse plugin that is currently unmaintained. But still open source. I think they did their best to help but without hurting their business model. Groovy has no Netbeans support anymore. Who is to blame. Groovy? Groovy is better as a PL than Kotlin. But Kotlin is no match in terms of performance and pragmatism. I use both instead of Java and I never looked back.
gregkerzhner 5y ago
Seems like a no brainer - who wouldn’t want to use an awesome language like Kotlin and have it shared across iOS, Android and Frontend? However, the actual experience is full of sharp corners. Get ready for nonexistent documentation, hacky plugins, poor debugging support, lack of proper native libraries and head spinning errors. In general, it feels like doing carpentry using your plumber’s tools.
threatofrain 5y ago
IMO Fleet¹ from JetBrains is their answer to VSC, and hence it doesn't make sense for them to invest in VSC. What people are arguing for is the difference between the interests of JetBrains vs the interests of Kotlin, very similar to the kinds of conversations that went on for early Rust governance. [1]: https://www.jetbrains.com/fleet/ https://www.jetbrains.com/fleet/
ink404 5y ago
Developers using VSCode are not their community, they are not being adversarial to their own community but maybe a potential future one.
bmc7505 5y ago
Programmers spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about languages and tools, but don't want to pay for better ones, even when they are extremely cheap, drastically increase their productivity and save many headaches. Every other week, there is a post on HN complaining about funding open source. One of the few languages offering halfway decent tooling support is bad because... it makes users more dependent on tools? This makes no sense. Same story for Wolfram. If you want nice things, pay for them.
- johnfn 5y ago
  It doesn't have anything to do with price. The point is that I've invested a lot of time knowing my IDE (vscode) very well. Switching IDEs on the basis of a language which I've never used is a huge leap. You could make that leap a lot easier by allowing me to use it somewhere I'm comfortable first.
  - bmc7505 5y ago
    As others have mentioned in this thread, you are absolutely allowed to write Kotlin in VSCode! There is a perfectly good VSCode extension [1] for it. You may not receive the same extensive support that IntelliJ IDEA provides, but as Kotlin developer who occasionally writes in VSCode, I find it's decently usable. Once you're familiar with the command line, you'll probably be more productive running Gradle commands than fiddling with buttons and UI widgets anyway. [1]: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=fwcd.kotlin https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=fwcd.kot...

nirvdrum 5y ago

Does the LSP implementation [1] linked by the JetBrains employee in that thread not work? It pushed a new minor version release a little over a week ago. It seems pretty reasonable to me for them to not pay employee salaries to build a plugin for a competing product, especially when they already provide a comprehensive IDE solution available for free (in both senses). What other companies are doing that? I don't mean that as a challenge. I'd love to know what the better options are. [1] -- https://github.com/fwcd/kotlin-language-server https://github.com/fwcd/kotlin-language-server

dboreham 5y ago
It works. At least, it works well enough for me to use on a daily basis, and I'm pretty hard to please.
- crummy 5y ago
  Do you happen to use Java and Kotlin in the same project? This seems to not work well for VSCode when I tried it a while back.
  - Strum355 5y ago
    That is actively being worked on currently, but is very WIP still
  - vips7L 5y ago
    Mixed language projects is something that only IntelliJ can really do. It’s actually the reason I switched over to it from VsCode for Java since we mix Scala in our project.
esprehn 5y ago
Read the README: https://github.com/fwcd/kotlin-language-server#this-repository-needs-your-help https://github.com/fwcd/kotlin-language-server#this-reposito... What you said would make sense, except they do build a plugin for Eclipse. Better options would be any language where the stewards are not trying to extract money from you by forcing your IDE choice. Or where they view fostering community good will as being in their best interest. Ex. MS offers an official LS rather than saying "we don't support other IDEs because Visual Studio licenses." There's lots of choices here for compile to JS languages: https://github.com/jashkenas/coffeescript/wiki/List-of-languages-that-compile-to-JS#static-typing https://github.com/jashkenas/coffeescript/wiki/List-of-langu...
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  They don't owe anybody anything.
- atraac 5y ago
  > What you said would make sense, except they do build a plugin for Eclipse. I don't know a single person who used Eclipse after 2020. Don't you think that supporting Eclipse might be a viable marketing strategy to get people who are stuck in the past on board with newer tech, as if anything, they will probably move on to IDEA? > Ex. MS offers an official LS rather than saying "we don't support other IDEs because Visual Studio licenses." MS is a bad example because they recently literally took away a feature from dotnet to push it into VS and drive sales, which was met a HUGE backlash from the community. Dotnet IS the driving force behind Visual Studio. JetBrains actually came in and took a piece of that from them(thankfully, because I personally hate vs/vscode). Like other answer to your comment said, JetBrains doesn't owe anything to anyone. If there is already a Language Server for Kotlin, great, I don't see how a product-based company could benefit from making something that drives people away from their (already free) product...
  - fivea 5y ago
    > I don't know a single person who used Eclipse after 2020. So your circle of acquaintances doesn't include anyone who used an IDE in the past year, and you extrapolate your personal anecdote how far? > Don't you think that supporting Eclipse might be a viable marketing strategy to get people who are stuck in the past (...) Can we spend a minute discussing how idiotic is this fad-drive development belief? I mean, why is anyone expected to be perceived as smart if they drop something that works in favour of an unproven tool just because it's new?

meibo 5y ago

I'm curious, how do you see this as being adversarial to their community? It's not like they are taking down kotlin language servers, there are community language servers and extensions for kotlin in vscode and they're linked here as well, by jetbrains employees. They need users to pay for IDEA to survive, so being open about not wanting to spend developer time to make it easier for people not to use IDEA that could be used to make IDEA better seems sensible from a business perspective. Seems like the community stepped up regardless.

srcreigh 5y ago

Just use jetbrains. VScode has properietary features which aren't available to other editors too.

seanw444 5y ago
Or if you care about open source, use VS Codium. It's literally VS Code minus the proprietary crap, and with a different branding.
- ptx 5y ago
  But the "proprietary crap" part is where they've implemented all of the Python support, among other things, isn't it? And last time I looked the license prohibited using Microsoft's proprietary plugins with VS Codium.
  - IceWreck 5y ago
    The Python extension is open source but Pylance isn't. Use Pyright (type checking ext which is essentially Pylance without the ML stuff) instead of Pylance. Instead of Microsoft's C/C++ extension use clangd. Remote SSH and Remote Containers have alternatives as well but nothing as good. Google and Red Hat's extensions work out of the box along with several thousand other extensions.
    - wiseowise 5y ago
      > Instead of Microsoft's C/C++ extension use clangd. Didn’t know about this one, thanks.
eyelidlessness 5y ago
Go on…
- melony 5y ago
  OP is referring to some of Microsoft's intellisense language plugins. They are not bundled with VS code by default but they are the best-in-class in terms of language support for autocompletion.

lolinder 5y ago

If I'm understanding correctly, the thing you found offensive in that comment was the JetBrains employee talking about "dragging" people to IDEA. If that's the case, it's important to note that the notion was first suggested by the OP: > This would not only be beneficial to developers using this editor, but could drag a lot of developers to IDEA when seeking out for a full-blown IDE eventually. In this context, the JetBrains employee was not saying "it won't sell licenses and therefore we won't do it", they were saying "this won't do what you think it will do". JetBrains is a company, and like any other company their focus will tend to lean toward where the money is. But my experience with Kotlin over the last several years is that JetBrains is very responsive to the community and their needs.

pjmlp 5y ago
They public stated that a reason why Kotlin exists is to sell licenses. > The next thing is also fairly straightforward: we expect Kotlin to drive the sales of IntelliJ IDEA https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2011/08/why-jetbrains-needs-kotlin/ https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2011/08/why-jetbrains-need...
- listenallyall 5y ago
  From 2011. I think their motivations have expanded quite a bit in the past 11 years, as has their commitment to the language, compilation targets and use cases.
- ramraj07 5y ago
  What exactly is the problem with this? How is it different from C#? Or even Java ?
  - jhgb 5y ago
    > What exactly is the problem with this? What if I want to continue using Emacs?
    - avianlyric 5y ago

whateveracct 5y ago

> Kotlin for JS is really about selling IDEA licenses Kotlin the entire language is about selling IDEA licenses. Ever tried to read Kotlin in plaintext? It's terrible. The language makes you need the IDEA hints they give you to read it.

pjmlp 5y ago
Indeed and they aren't shy about it. If it wasn't for Google giving wind to their sails, the Kotlin ship wouldn't have gone anywhere.
- listenallyall 5y ago
  Kotlin is gaining momentum outside of Android, which is the only platform that Google helped with. In other areas, like Flutter, Google is actually competing with Kotlin (KMM).
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Wishful thinking, enjoy your 8%. https://www.infoq.com/news/2022/03/jrebel-report-2022/ https://www.infoq.com/news/2022/03/jrebel-report-2022/
    - listenallyall 5y ago
      You have poor reading comprehension (in addition to a real hatred for one particular language, which seems unhealthy). I never stated that it was among the most popular languages, just that it was gaining momentum. In 2019, 41% of Kotlin devs claimed to work on web back-ends. In 2020 it was 47%. In 2021 the survey changed wording but "server-side development" had increased to 52% of Kotlin devs. https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2021/kotlin/ https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2021/kotlin/
      - pjmlp 5y ago
        Ah, a survey from the company whose goal is to sell Kotlin, really conclusive.

Shadonototra 5y ago

aaronbrethorst 5y ago

zem 5y ago

on the contrary, I found their response very fair and reasonable. Quoting: You can code Kotlin on any device, using any IDE, anywhere, at any time, thanks to the fact that Kotlin source code is stored in plain text files and not in a proprietary binary format. You do have a language server for that. The language server happens to be not developed by JetBrains, but it doesn’t actually restrict you from being able to use it in any way. In my book, “lock-in” means “you have to pay a single vendor or you can’t use the tool”. You seem to be defining it as “you have pay the vendor or live with maybe slightly worse code completion and no refactorings, until someone else supports these features in a free tool”. I don’t believe your definition to be justified.

fithisux 5y ago

I use Kotlin without a license. Just the community version of the IDE, they also released an eclipse plugin that is currently unmaintained. But still open source. I think they did their best to help but without hurting their business model. Groovy has no Netbeans support anymore. Who is to blame. Groovy? Groovy is better as a PL than Kotlin. But Kotlin is no match in terms of performance and pragmatism. I use both instead of Java and I never looked back.

gregkerzhner 5y ago

Seems like a no brainer - who wouldn’t want to use an awesome language like Kotlin and have it shared across iOS, Android and Frontend? However, the actual experience is full of sharp corners. Get ready for nonexistent documentation, hacky plugins, poor debugging support, lack of proper native libraries and head spinning errors. In general, it feels like doing carpentry using your plumber’s tools.

threatofrain 5y ago

IMO Fleet¹ from JetBrains is their answer to VSC, and hence it doesn't make sense for them to invest in VSC. What people are arguing for is the difference between the interests of JetBrains vs the interests of Kotlin, very similar to the kinds of conversations that went on for early Rust governance. [1]: https://www.jetbrains.com/fleet/ https://www.jetbrains.com/fleet/

ink404 5y ago

Developers using VSCode are not their community, they are not being adversarial to their own community but maybe a potential future one.

bmc7505 5y ago

Programmers spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about languages and tools, but don't want to pay for better ones, even when they are extremely cheap, drastically increase their productivity and save many headaches. Every other week, there is a post on HN complaining about funding open source. One of the few languages offering halfway decent tooling support is bad because... it makes users more dependent on tools? This makes no sense. Same story for Wolfram. If you want nice things, pay for them.

johnfn 5y ago
It doesn't have anything to do with price. The point is that I've invested a lot of time knowing my IDE (vscode) very well. Switching IDEs on the basis of a language which I've never used is a huge leap. You could make that leap a lot easier by allowing me to use it somewhere I'm comfortable first.
- bmc7505 5y ago
  As others have mentioned in this thread, you are absolutely allowed to write Kotlin in VSCode! There is a perfectly good VSCode extension [1] for it. You may not receive the same extensive support that IntelliJ IDEA provides, but as Kotlin developer who occasionally writes in VSCode, I find it's decently usable. Once you're familiar with the command line, you'll probably be more productive running Gradle commands than fiddling with buttons and UI widgets anyway. [1]: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=fwcd.kotlin https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=fwcd.kot...