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Jetbrains is still the leader in all of the small details that make navigating and working a code base easy. Copy and paste workflow is a minor slowdown, but n

Jetbrains is still the leader in all of the small details that make navigating and working a code base easy. Copy and paste workflow is a minor slowdown, but nothing compared to things like smart links in terminal, auto detection of run configurations, etc, etc.

joshstrange 2y ago
This. 1000x This. I watch people navigate code in VSCode and I want to pull my hair out. Things that I don’t even think about are hard and/or require just falling back to search. And before “there is a plugin for that”, I’m sure there is. I’m sure you can configure VSCode to be just as powerful as IDEA but the rank and file using it aren’t doing that work to install and configure a bunch of plugins. So, on average, VSCode doesn’t hold a candle to an IDEA. With Aider I skip a lot of the copy/pasting but I’d still copy/paste to the browser before I left IDEA.
- nick_ 2y ago
  For literally multiple years I tried to convince a colleague of mine to try Rider. They're a diehard CLI and VS Code user. I made a video showing my workflow and how quickly I can navigate around and do refactors. Next day they were saying they couldn't believe it took them this long to use something better.
- poincaredisk 2y ago
  >I watch people navigate code in VSCode and I want to pull my hair out. For me it's the other way around, when I see someone using an IDE instead of a lean editor I see their struggle. Multiple seconds to open the IDE (sometimes tens of second), multi-hundred millisecond lag when opening a file, noticeable input lag. And when you have to edit a file your IDE doesn't understand, all you have is a bloated notepad. I know I'm biased and I intentionally wrote this one-sided to counter your post. In practice, it just depends. Right now in my work I primarily edit scripts (up to a few hundred lines of code), do quick edits to various larger projects - sometimes few different projects a day - and read files in dozens of programming language (I only reall program in Python and C/C++, but I have to constantly consult various weird pieces of code). VsCode works great for me. On the other hand, long time ago when I was working on large C# projects, I can't imagine not using Visual Studio (or Rider nowadays I guess).
  - sgarland 2y ago
    Neovim works fine with massive codebases. Telescope is a bit slow sometimes, but given how long ripgrep takes on the same, I assume it’s simply a limitation of memory bandwidth, and not tooling.
  - ruraljuror 2y ago
    > sometimes few different projects a day - and read files in dozens of programming language +1 this is what brought me back to vscode after experimenting with goland. To me vscode better handles the heterogeneity of my daily work. In my workspace I can keep open: a golang codebase, a massive codebase consisting of yaml config files, a filesystem from a remote ssh connection, a directory of personal markdown notes, and directories of debug logs. In my experience jetbrains excelled at the single use case, but vscode won on its diversity. I will say that the parent comment had me curious about goland again. But I suspect I really need to spend more time configuring my vscode setup. I spent years using emacs, and would love to have a helm-like navigation experience.
digging 2y ago
It's always difficult to notice features you don't know are missing. I'm a near-exclusive user of VSCode (or Codium, at home) and like to think of myself as moderately advanced. I continually update my configurations and plugins to make my workflow easier and often see my peers stumble on operations that are effortless for me. It's hard to explain to them what they're missing until they watch me code. So now I'm curious about watching some typical Jetbrains workflows.
SebastianKra 2y ago
I switched from JetBrains to Cursor after multiple years, and it's nowhere near as bad as the comments here make it out to be. For most of the rough edges, I've found workarounds at this point. I miss some of the refactorings, but half the time the AI does them for me anyways. Smart links in terminal are supported. Detection of run configurations is supported. My main issues atm are: - Quick search is inferior. You can't search for folders, and symbol search is global, without the option to exclude certain locations (such as build artifacts) from indexing. - cspell is more annoying than it is useful. I don't want to babysit my spellchecker. Without extensive configuration, there are far too many false positives.
bogwog 2y ago
Can you give some examples? I spend the majority of my time reading code nowadays, and I often have like 8 or more Sublime Text windows open (each open on a separate codebase). I cant imagine how much RAM it would take to do that in CLion or Visual Studio. Sublime Text's text search is the killer feature for me. CTRL+SHIFT+F and I can search a million LOC+ codebase instantly, navigate the results with CTRL+R, do a sub-search of the results with CTRL+F, set bookmarks with CTRL+F2 (and jump to them with F2/SHIFT+F2), pop the results out to a different window for reference, etc. And all that happens with no jank whatsoever. The LSP plugins make life easier, but even without that Sublime is often able to find where symbols are defined in a project using just the contextual information from the syntax highlighter. I tried CLion for a while, but couldnt get productive in it. Ofc I'm much more experienced with Sublime, so maybe I just didnt give myself enough time to learn it, but CLion felt sluggish and inefficient. The smart code features are probably more advanced than Sublime's LSP plugins, but I didn't find anything that would make the switch actually an improvement to me.
- mattmanser 2y ago
  Are you joking about the 8 editors? I have a laptop I bought 10 years ago. It only has 16 gig of RAM [1]. I have had 8+ editors open, mix of visual studio and vs codes. And in VS you often group all your codebases into single solutions. So usually have multiple windows from multiple projects open in each ide. It only struggles when I leave the debuggers running several days because of a slight (known) memory leak in visual studio. There's probably a fix but reopening the ide takes like 10 seconds. And it remembers all my open files. All editors are much better, faster at searching, use less memory, etc. than they wwre 10/20 years ago. Everyone's improved. You seem to be a bit stuck with an old impression. [1] I have a vastly more powerful machine but I keep procrastinating switching my work setup over to it.
  - rnewme 2y ago
    You'll be disappointed when you move over to vastly more powerful machine and performance improvement is neglible
- SkyPuncher 2y ago

joshstrange 2y ago

This. 1000x This. I watch people navigate code in VSCode and I want to pull my hair out. Things that I don’t even think about are hard and/or require just falling back to search. And before “there is a plugin for that”, I’m sure there is. I’m sure you can configure VSCode to be just as powerful as IDEA but the rank and file using it aren’t doing that work to install and configure a bunch of plugins. So, on average, VSCode doesn’t hold a candle to an IDEA. With Aider I skip a lot of the copy/pasting but I’d still copy/paste to the browser before I left IDEA.

nick_ 2y ago
For literally multiple years I tried to convince a colleague of mine to try Rider. They're a diehard CLI and VS Code user. I made a video showing my workflow and how quickly I can navigate around and do refactors. Next day they were saying they couldn't believe it took them this long to use something better.
poincaredisk 2y ago
>I watch people navigate code in VSCode and I want to pull my hair out. For me it's the other way around, when I see someone using an IDE instead of a lean editor I see their struggle. Multiple seconds to open the IDE (sometimes tens of second), multi-hundred millisecond lag when opening a file, noticeable input lag. And when you have to edit a file your IDE doesn't understand, all you have is a bloated notepad. I know I'm biased and I intentionally wrote this one-sided to counter your post. In practice, it just depends. Right now in my work I primarily edit scripts (up to a few hundred lines of code), do quick edits to various larger projects - sometimes few different projects a day - and read files in dozens of programming language (I only reall program in Python and C/C++, but I have to constantly consult various weird pieces of code). VsCode works great for me. On the other hand, long time ago when I was working on large C# projects, I can't imagine not using Visual Studio (or Rider nowadays I guess).
- sgarland 2y ago
  Neovim works fine with massive codebases. Telescope is a bit slow sometimes, but given how long ripgrep takes on the same, I assume it’s simply a limitation of memory bandwidth, and not tooling.
- ruraljuror 2y ago
  > sometimes few different projects a day - and read files in dozens of programming language +1 this is what brought me back to vscode after experimenting with goland. To me vscode better handles the heterogeneity of my daily work. In my workspace I can keep open: a golang codebase, a massive codebase consisting of yaml config files, a filesystem from a remote ssh connection, a directory of personal markdown notes, and directories of debug logs. In my experience jetbrains excelled at the single use case, but vscode won on its diversity. I will say that the parent comment had me curious about goland again. But I suspect I really need to spend more time configuring my vscode setup. I spent years using emacs, and would love to have a helm-like navigation experience.

digging 2y ago

It's always difficult to notice features you don't know are missing. I'm a near-exclusive user of VSCode (or Codium, at home) and like to think of myself as moderately advanced. I continually update my configurations and plugins to make my workflow easier and often see my peers stumble on operations that are effortless for me. It's hard to explain to them what they're missing until they watch me code. So now I'm curious about watching some typical Jetbrains workflows.

SebastianKra 2y ago

I switched from JetBrains to Cursor after multiple years, and it's nowhere near as bad as the comments here make it out to be. For most of the rough edges, I've found workarounds at this point. I miss some of the refactorings, but half the time the AI does them for me anyways. Smart links in terminal are supported. Detection of run configurations is supported. My main issues atm are: - Quick search is inferior. You can't search for folders, and symbol search is global, without the option to exclude certain locations (such as build artifacts) from indexing. - cspell is more annoying than it is useful. I don't want to babysit my spellchecker. Without extensive configuration, there are far too many false positives.

bogwog 2y ago

Can you give some examples? I spend the majority of my time reading code nowadays, and I often have like 8 or more Sublime Text windows open (each open on a separate codebase). I cant imagine how much RAM it would take to do that in CLion or Visual Studio. Sublime Text's text search is the killer feature for me. CTRL+SHIFT+F and I can search a million LOC+ codebase instantly, navigate the results with CTRL+R, do a sub-search of the results with CTRL+F, set bookmarks with CTRL+F2 (and jump to them with F2/SHIFT+F2), pop the results out to a different window for reference, etc. And all that happens with no jank whatsoever. The LSP plugins make life easier, but even without that Sublime is often able to find where symbols are defined in a project using just the contextual information from the syntax highlighter. I tried CLion for a while, but couldnt get productive in it. Ofc I'm much more experienced with Sublime, so maybe I just didnt give myself enough time to learn it, but CLion felt sluggish and inefficient. The smart code features are probably more advanced than Sublime's LSP plugins, but I didn't find anything that would make the switch actually an improvement to me.

mattmanser 2y ago
Are you joking about the 8 editors? I have a laptop I bought 10 years ago. It only has 16 gig of RAM [1]. I have had 8+ editors open, mix of visual studio and vs codes. And in VS you often group all your codebases into single solutions. So usually have multiple windows from multiple projects open in each ide. It only struggles when I leave the debuggers running several days because of a slight (known) memory leak in visual studio. There's probably a fix but reopening the ide takes like 10 seconds. And it remembers all my open files. All editors are much better, faster at searching, use less memory, etc. than they wwre 10/20 years ago. Everyone's improved. You seem to be a bit stuck with an old impression. [1] I have a vastly more powerful machine but I keep procrastinating switching my work setup over to it.
- rnewme 2y ago
  You'll be disappointed when you move over to vastly more powerful machine and performance improvement is neglible
SkyPuncher 2y ago