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> if you like them. Important caveat here. My only exposure to JetBrains had been through Intellij which was thoroughly unpleasant around 2012-2013. That impre

> if you like them. Important caveat here. My only exposure to JetBrains had been through Intellij which was thoroughly unpleasant around 2012-2013. That impression has left me forever sour towards them. Surprised to hear people say that it could be a step up from VSCode. It looks like "Fleet" is their VSCode competitor? I'm not sure if the homepage does a good job at communicating how this improves over of VSCode. First of all VSCode has an enormous ecosystem of tools which seems hard to replicate. In terms of advertised features for Fleet, it seems like the one most highlighted on the page is multiplayer, which would possibly enable others watching me code live? Sounds nerve-wracking. Although I could imagine some helpful scenarios when pair-programming or something. Other items that are advertised don't really encourage me to want to make the leap, especially as something I have to pay for. It sounds like they could host your code, or something like that, which could be nice. An annoying part of my workflow is that I work on the same codebase between multiple machines and every time I hop between machines I have to commit the changes to a private repository that is separate from my team's repository. It seems like it would be somewhat straight-foward to have the same code shared between all machines. Other than that I would be interested to hear on how any Jetbrains products would improve productivity.

acchow 4y ago
Strange. In my experience, IntelliJ from 2012 is a superior experience to VSCode today.
- realusername 4y ago
  To each their own, I would still continue to use VSCode even if IntelliJ's current version was free. Even Jetbrain themselves realised this since they are creating a VSCode clone called Fleet.
- nikkwong 4y ago
  Granted; I was very junior then--and I think my issues may have been mostly related to the finnicky nature of java tooling and dependencies rather than the IDE itself.
- happymellon 4y ago
  I use both, and it really depends on the language. Something like Java is really benefitted from IntelliJ, Spring integration is excellent, but especially scripting languages like Python or JavaScript/Typescript don't get enough uplift and you might as well use VS Code.
  - acchow 4y ago
    I mean for Java. IntelliJ is made for Java. If you want to do Python, Jetbrains (the creator of IntelliJ) made PyCharm. For Javascript, they made Webstorm.
Semaphor 4y ago
> Surprised to hear people say that it could be a step up from VSCode. VS Code is very* lightweight. Both in speed and in features. Comparing it with IntelliJ makes it seem very basic. Now, for some people that’s okay, but JetBrains IDEs are full-blown IDEs. *: Compared to something like JetBrains tools, or literally any other electron software.
- petesergeant 4y ago
  Could you give some examples of the differences I would see as a TypeScript developer using a “full-blown IDE” over VS Code.
  - 5e92cb50239222b 4y ago
    For TypeScript there's little difference since most of TypeScript support comes from the same language server running in the background (there's an option in the menus to restart it if it breaks, same as in vscode). Although autocomplete is better (especially for pure JS), it doesn't warrant paying for a license IMHO. Personally, I use IDEA for TS because I use it for other languages where it blows everything else out of the water (so muscle memory). Also, if you're doing server-side development, it has a very good built-in client for two dozen databases (which pretty much replicates the functionality of their DataGrip product), so you get decent data editing / import / export / DDL support, and excellent autocompletion for your SQL (interspersed among TS code, or not — doesn't matter). Edit: also, 100% of their products' funtionality can be used from keyboard. I don't touch the mouse at all. I think vscode can support something like that, but with very heavy customization (and even then I'm not sure). Out of the box it pretty much forces you to use the mouse for many things.
    - jackcviers3 4y ago
      I almost never use the mouse in vscode, emacs keybindings and the command pallete and keyboard shortcuts created any time I touch the mouse. But I also don't get everything I want, (like macros and web browsing and face customization and rectangular editing) that I get with emacs, so I only use vscode for liveshare. Incidentally, I use and pay for tabnine (another ai assistant) in emacs and it's fantastic - single line completions are superior to whole snippets I have to read with copilot, and don't get me out of my flow. I am surprised the tabnine company completions are way easier to work with than in vscode. With grouped backends, company lsp + company tabnine is great. I'd encourage kite users to try it. Well worth the money.
inDigiNeous 4y ago
I have to say I had the same experience with IntelliJ when developing for Android in 2013-15 or so. This year when trialing CLion I was very positively surprised by the evolution of their platform, it's easily the most usable environment for C++ development I have used. I have experience from pure VIM, VSCode, Visual Studio for Windows, the reliable refactoring features alone are worth the price. With VSCode I would find the refactoring support not reliable and the intellisense features also might just stop working randomly depending on the project. Prompted me to move to WebStorm also for web development, and I must say I have been very positively surprised there also. Seems they have made some important strides in the past years, can highly recommend testing their environments out.

acchow 4y ago

Strange. In my experience, IntelliJ from 2012 is a superior experience to VSCode today.

realusername 4y ago
To each their own, I would still continue to use VSCode even if IntelliJ's current version was free. Even Jetbrain themselves realised this since they are creating a VSCode clone called Fleet.
nikkwong 4y ago
Granted; I was very junior then--and I think my issues may have been mostly related to the finnicky nature of java tooling and dependencies rather than the IDE itself.
happymellon 4y ago
I use both, and it really depends on the language. Something like Java is really benefitted from IntelliJ, Spring integration is excellent, but especially scripting languages like Python or JavaScript/Typescript don't get enough uplift and you might as well use VS Code.
- acchow 4y ago
  I mean for Java. IntelliJ is made for Java. If you want to do Python, Jetbrains (the creator of IntelliJ) made PyCharm. For Javascript, they made Webstorm.

Semaphor 4y ago

> Surprised to hear people say that it could be a step up from VSCode. VS Code is very* lightweight. Both in speed and in features. Comparing it with IntelliJ makes it seem very basic. Now, for some people that’s okay, but JetBrains IDEs are full-blown IDEs. *: Compared to something like JetBrains tools, or literally any other electron software.

petesergeant 4y ago
Could you give some examples of the differences I would see as a TypeScript developer using a “full-blown IDE” over VS Code.
- 5e92cb50239222b 4y ago
  For TypeScript there's little difference since most of TypeScript support comes from the same language server running in the background (there's an option in the menus to restart it if it breaks, same as in vscode). Although autocomplete is better (especially for pure JS), it doesn't warrant paying for a license IMHO. Personally, I use IDEA for TS because I use it for other languages where it blows everything else out of the water (so muscle memory). Also, if you're doing server-side development, it has a very good built-in client for two dozen databases (which pretty much replicates the functionality of their DataGrip product), so you get decent data editing / import / export / DDL support, and excellent autocompletion for your SQL (interspersed among TS code, or not — doesn't matter). Edit: also, 100% of their products' funtionality can be used from keyboard. I don't touch the mouse at all. I think vscode can support something like that, but with very heavy customization (and even then I'm not sure). Out of the box it pretty much forces you to use the mouse for many things.
  - jackcviers3 4y ago
    I almost never use the mouse in vscode, emacs keybindings and the command pallete and keyboard shortcuts created any time I touch the mouse. But I also don't get everything I want, (like macros and web browsing and face customization and rectangular editing) that I get with emacs, so I only use vscode for liveshare. Incidentally, I use and pay for tabnine (another ai assistant) in emacs and it's fantastic - single line completions are superior to whole snippets I have to read with copilot, and don't get me out of my flow. I am surprised the tabnine company completions are way easier to work with than in vscode. With grouped backends, company lsp + company tabnine is great. I'd encourage kite users to try it. Well worth the money.

inDigiNeous 4y ago

I have to say I had the same experience with IntelliJ when developing for Android in 2013-15 or so. This year when trialing CLion I was very positively surprised by the evolution of their platform, it's easily the most usable environment for C++ development I have used. I have experience from pure VIM, VSCode, Visual Studio for Windows, the reliable refactoring features alone are worth the price. With VSCode I would find the refactoring support not reliable and the intellisense features also might just stop working randomly depending on the project. Prompted me to move to WebStorm also for web development, and I must say I have been very positively surprised there also. Seems they have made some important strides in the past years, can highly recommend testing their environments out.