5 ms·

I really, really love Jetbrains. Even though I'm not an iOS developer, it's still nice to see that they are working to add their own flavor to the mix with oth

by Griever 15y ago

I really, really love Jetbrains. Even though I'm not an iOS developer, it's still nice to see that they are working to add their own flavor to the mix with other languages. I wish so much that they would create a Visual Studio replacement. I'm primarily a Ruby/PHP developer and use their PhpStorm and RubyMine products constantly, but whenever I am stuck doing something in .net and have to open up Visual Studio, I just get a gross vibe from the entire experience... And this is with Resharper installed as well! I see Visual Studio get a lot of support on HN, so maybe I am just weird, but I've never enjoyed using Visual Studio as a whole.

felideon 15y ago
"I see Visual Studio get a lot of support on HN, so maybe I am just weird, but I've never enjoyed using Visual Studio as a whole." Me neither. I switched from Visual Studio (C#) to Emacs (Common Lisp) -- and a short stint on the AllegroCL IDE -- and I do not miss Visual Studio one bit. It always struck me as odd to see Visual Studio getting praised here. I can only assume it fares better than Netbeans or Eclipse?
- Griever 15y ago
  Agreed. I used to think that I didn't like VS because I also didn't like .NET. I still don't like .NET, but after using other IDE's for other languages (primarily Jetbrains' products) I have grown to dislike it even more. It feels like the Internet Explorer of IDE's to me. I am not sure whether or not my distaste is justified since I am well aware that it is a powerful IDE, I just hate how bloated it all feels. That and its incredibly annoying that once I wish to uninstall it, I end up having to uninstall about 20 other programs too. Very obnoxious.
- to3m 15y ago
  I can't speak for everybody, but I always rated Visual Studio because of its zero-effort code navigation and code completion. (No setup required, and it's surprisingly good at seeing through common preprocessor tricks.) The debugger is pretty good, too, the text editing experience is fine, the whole thing is 99% operable via keyboard, and the scripting language is bearable. This probably doesn't sound like a rousing endorsement, but I've yet to find anything that's as good for reading and writing C, C++ or C# code. (People using Visual Studio for anything else should definitely consider shopping around, though as general-purpose text editors go it is far from the worst possible.)
  - bokchoi 15y ago
    > zero-effort code navigation Try the ReSharper VS addon from JetBrains -- it makes navigation much much better. VS code navigation really is primitive in comparison.
fleitz 15y ago
VS does 90% of things pretty well, and you hack and slash your way around the stuff it doesn't do well. VS is one of those interfaces that is easy to grow into, out of the box it's pretty functional and eventually you learn all of it's features as you go. Resharper really makes VS a much better product. Intellisense practically codes for you and has just enough of the documentation that you don't need to dig into MSDN that often. XCode especially anything before XCode 4 is pretty abysmal, I really enjoy JetBrains other products (except for their RoR IDE). I was really surprised at how horrible XCode is given Apple's penchant for UX (too bad Jobs didnt code). Looking forward to using AppCode, I'll be really happy if there is usable code completion.
MatthewPhillips 15y ago
VS just tries to do too much. Integrating TFS is a bad idea, that should be a separate application entirely (or possible 2 separate applications). VS nails the core functionality it has provided since VS2003; code completion, refactoring, debugging. Too bad the featuritis means we have to deal with weird bugs like random freezes that require to close all the way out and restart. You can always just use the text editor of your choice and msbuild though.
LearnYouALisp 15y ago
How I wish they would hire some experienced Lisp people and make a dream IDE.

by Griever 15y ago

felideon 15y ago

"I see Visual Studio get a lot of support on HN, so maybe I am just weird, but I've never enjoyed using Visual Studio as a whole." Me neither. I switched from Visual Studio (C#) to Emacs (Common Lisp) -- and a short stint on the AllegroCL IDE -- and I do not miss Visual Studio one bit. It always struck me as odd to see Visual Studio getting praised here. I can only assume it fares better than Netbeans or Eclipse?

Griever 15y ago
Agreed. I used to think that I didn't like VS because I also didn't like .NET. I still don't like .NET, but after using other IDE's for other languages (primarily Jetbrains' products) I have grown to dislike it even more. It feels like the Internet Explorer of IDE's to me. I am not sure whether or not my distaste is justified since I am well aware that it is a powerful IDE, I just hate how bloated it all feels. That and its incredibly annoying that once I wish to uninstall it, I end up having to uninstall about 20 other programs too. Very obnoxious.
to3m 15y ago
I can't speak for everybody, but I always rated Visual Studio because of its zero-effort code navigation and code completion. (No setup required, and it's surprisingly good at seeing through common preprocessor tricks.) The debugger is pretty good, too, the text editing experience is fine, the whole thing is 99% operable via keyboard, and the scripting language is bearable. This probably doesn't sound like a rousing endorsement, but I've yet to find anything that's as good for reading and writing C, C++ or C# code. (People using Visual Studio for anything else should definitely consider shopping around, though as general-purpose text editors go it is far from the worst possible.)
- bokchoi 15y ago
  > zero-effort code navigation Try the ReSharper VS addon from JetBrains -- it makes navigation much much better. VS code navigation really is primitive in comparison.

fleitz 15y ago

VS does 90% of things pretty well, and you hack and slash your way around the stuff it doesn't do well. VS is one of those interfaces that is easy to grow into, out of the box it's pretty functional and eventually you learn all of it's features as you go. Resharper really makes VS a much better product. Intellisense practically codes for you and has just enough of the documentation that you don't need to dig into MSDN that often. XCode especially anything before XCode 4 is pretty abysmal, I really enjoy JetBrains other products (except for their RoR IDE). I was really surprised at how horrible XCode is given Apple's penchant for UX (too bad Jobs didnt code). Looking forward to using AppCode, I'll be really happy if there is usable code completion.

MatthewPhillips 15y ago

VS just tries to do too much. Integrating TFS is a bad idea, that should be a separate application entirely (or possible 2 separate applications). VS nails the core functionality it has provided since VS2003; code completion, refactoring, debugging. Too bad the featuritis means we have to deal with weird bugs like random freezes that require to close all the way out and restart. You can always just use the text editor of your choice and msbuild though.

LearnYouALisp 15y ago

How I wish they would hire some experienced Lisp people and make a dream IDE.