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> But what do you actually get with IntelliJ? A massive, monolithic Java application that frequently hogs 8GB+ of RAM, locks up your system while “indexing pre-

> But what do you actually get with IntelliJ? A massive, monolithic Java application that frequently hogs 8GB+ of RAM, locks up your system while “indexing pre-built binaries,” and forces you into a closed proprietary ecosystem. This is just exaggeration. I use IntelliJIDEA everyday (on mac) with multiple projects open and tbh they have optimized the IDE a lot to make it faster. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's getting better. Also it's not closed source. The core of the IDE is open source (https://github.com/jetbrains/intellij-community https://github.com/jetbrains/intellij-community) and for some specific framework support (e.g. Spring) are available on Ultimate.

CafeRacer 3mo ago
This is actually not an exaggeration. Ive been using WebStorm when it worked well, then it became progressively slower to the point of being unusable even on small projects.
- Bishonen88 3mo ago
  Counterpoint: use intellij on full stack apps with cdk, react, sqls and whatnot, multiple open at a time, without any problem.
  - affenape 3mo ago
    I've tried using RustRover over WSL2 multiple times with every new release, but it's been a huge disappointment every time. My fans constantly spin like crazy, memory vanishes into thin air, and typing is super laggy - it even overwrites random sections of the file sometimes. On top of that, the built-in terminal is totally unusable because it craps out and freezes the app whenever there's a large output. PyCharm, on the other hand, was always great to use. But since VS Code gives me pretty much everything I need for my daily work without demanding too much from my system, I've finally moved away from JetBrains.
    - jyounker 3mo ago
      It sounds like IntelliJ is out of memory and the GC is thrashing. Increase the IDE's heap size(1), and it will probably work fine. (1) It's a menu option these days.
- Cthulhu_ 3mo ago
  I feel the same about VS Code, it's probably some of the plugins but sometimes, especially when LLMs make edits, memory usage explodes until my system breaks down and force pauses some apps until I kill some of them. I should go back to Zed, maybe use the CLI interface for agentic programming instead of the UI.
- sgt 3mo ago
  I've got Android Studio open now, while also working in several PyCharm projects, IntelliJ and WebStorm. No issues at all on macOS.
- tsvetkov 3mo ago
  It's a bit strange to project a personal experience with one product onto all other products by the same vendor, even if those products use shared platform parts. Not to dismiss your claim, it's just IDEs (code engines specifically) are naturally pretty complicated pieces of software, so the experience may vary. The claim that 8Gb RAM is required just for Intellij seems to be at least overgeneralization (also depends a bit on how you count RAM usage; e.g. do you count all mmaped files as RAM usage even when pages are not loaded?). Can be true for some projects, but I've been working on decently sized Java/Kotlin codebases (~250k locs) with way less RAM allocated for Intellij (again, your experience may vary). Even Intellij and Kotlin projects themselves have been usable with less memory, at least some time ago. What's more baffling, though, is how an LSP would be significantly better if it is based on the same IDE core, just running headlessly? I think there may be an independent non-IDE based LSP for Scala, but both Java and Kotlin LSP are based on existing IDEs engines (Java LSP is based on Eclipse engine, Kotlin LSP is based on Intellij). A quote from the kotlin-lsp GitHub repository: > The language server is based on the most recent IntelliJ IDEA version and proprietary parts of JetBrains Air and Fleet products, making it partially closed-source. https://github.com/Kotlin/kotlin-lsp https://github.com/Kotlin/kotlin-lsp
deleted 3mo ago
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gf000 3mo ago
Also, like where else would the indices live? They are in memory to make going to definition, source, analysis etc fast. It's not even using java objects for these, so a feature-equivalent solution would be similarly "fat".
- psychoslave 3mo ago
  I don’t know, using Vim and Exuberant Ctags can give you a significant part of these features for a very lower footprint. But to be clear, it’s not a ready-to-go path on parity with DX that IntelliJ provides. Hackers are often exceptionally good at optimizing the hidden parts no one give a shit until everything crumble under systemic slowness, but they often also are very bad at designing even a decent UX for everything else regarding in-your-face aspects.
  - qsera 3mo ago
    >I don’t know, using Vim and Exuberant Ctags can give you a significant part of these features for a very lower footprint. 100% true. Also, the problem I have with these magic thingies is that I don't know what to do if the magic stops working. With tools that just does one thing, I can easily figure out the point of failure and fix it.
  - f3408fh 3mo ago
    For the record Neovim has built-in LSP support and Vim supports LSP with plugins. Why use Ctags that you have to manually generate?
  - isityettime 3mo ago
    When I worked as a Scala developer years ago, I still used JetBrains IDEs for some things but I did most of my work in Emacs using ENSIME and ggtags/xref as a fallback. I ended up using ggtags elsewhere as well, and was pretty impressed with both how far it got me and how fast it was.
tiew9Vii 3mo ago
I've used InteliJ on and off for 20 plus years. It's progressively got bloated and slower, not faster. 20 years ago it was the fast lean option when there was Netbeans and Eclipse. Today it's ok, still good feature wise but fast and lean it is not anymore when I've used it for Scala oand Kotlin.
- gib444 3mo ago
  Yup. It's been particularly bad since around 2023/2024 and only got worse with all the AI crap, though I think that's been almost a useful scapegoat for them recently
  - wiether 3mo ago
    I've tried (all?) the AI stuff they published, it was awful; but I was able to easily uninstall/deactivate those features once I realized it was not helpful. On my MBP M4 or my Linux laptop, I never get the impression that it's bloat. Prior to using IntelliJ I had been a Eclipse user and I've never experienced even 5% of the pain I had with Eclipse since moving to IntelliJ. When everything is going to shite, I welcome with pleasure my yearly invoice from JetBrains, thinking that, at least, there is a company pushing quality software that deserves my money.
    - flossly 3mo ago
      Emacs is great for LISP-like langs. IJ is great for JVM langs. Sure one can cross-use the above, but that's harder. Still great to have an IDE agnostic Kotlin LSP!
- sajithdilshan 3mo ago
  I remember it was pretty slow even like early 2020s. But since they have introduced the new UI design IDE, somehow they have optimized it. I think they made it modular so only the core module that is needed are loaded and some modules are loaded only if it's needed by a plugin. Also, they have optimized indexing as well. I remember the whole thing slowed down when it starts to index a medium size gradle project, but now it runs the indexing in the background but the rest of the IDE quite responsive. However, it seems like in general they are moving at right direction when it comes to optimizing the core of the IDE and all other functionalities comes as plugins and you can just uninstall them if not needed. I use the community edition every day and recently I have been using claude code for coding, but I still use debug console most of the time. I haven't found another IDE which is as powerful as IDEA when it comes to debugging a JVM language project.
akshaydeshraj 3mo ago
IntelliJ (actually Android Studio based on IntelliJ) was my first real IDE and real programming experience. I was so blown away ! Almost 15 years later, nothing else matches the out of the box experience of IntelliJ, atleast for JVM based languages.
- pjmlp 3mo ago
  Add in VS for .NET languages and C++ (hot reload, debugging capabilities), and the beloved Delphi/C++ Builder duo as well. To this day there isn't anything like C++ Builder, if you want the famous VB dev experience, but with C++.
  - storus 3mo ago
    Borland was way ahead of its time, nowadays there is no non-AI way to build a whole UI app in on afternoon like with Delphi/C++ Builder. Pity their greed prevented them from dominating via simplicity.
  - sfn42 3mo ago
    I have used both VS and Rider for .NET development and for me Rider beats VS by a mile.
    - pjmlp 3mo ago
      As long as you only do Web development with .NET.
      - sfn42 3mo ago
        Can't really speak to that as I do mostly web development. Not sure why there would be any issue with any other kind of development though?
- TacticalCoder 3mo ago
  > IntelliJ (actually Android Studio based on IntelliJ) was my first real IDE and real programming experience. I was so blown away ! I switched to IntelliJ back when people where still arguing which of the two between Eclipse or NetBeans was better (fools!): that is, before some of the commenters here were born. Heck, I bought IntelliJ when the world was ending in the Mayan calendar, it was something like 75% off because the world was going to end in a few weeks anyway. But since 10+ years I'm using only... Emacs. Emacs now with tree-sitter, LSPs, native-compilation, magit and the LLMs at ease with Un*x CLI tools make it so that IntelliJ looks like a behemoth. From a glorious past but still a behemoth.
pjmlp 3mo ago
Quite ironic, given that Emacs used to stand for "Eight Megabytes and Constantly Swapping" for the epoch hardware.
- neutronicus 3mo ago
  Also ironic given that emacs with a LSP server is more than capable of slowing a dev machine to a crawl
z3t4 3mo ago
People will complain about 2MB ram usage and then gladly spend 4k on a mac pc
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
rob74 3mo ago
Completely agree. Also: some people enjoy fiddling with their tools, installing extensions and configuring everything until it's just perfect. Other people (most, I would argue - the proverbial "silent majority") want to get something that works reliably "out of the box" and has most (not all, IntelliJ IDEs also have plugins of course) batteries included. They shockingly are even willing to pay money for this!
- isityettime 3mo ago
  The dream is something batteries-included but still radically hackable. Emacs is slowly making this feasible via smaller and smaller "starter kits" as it adds new features. It's not perfect, and maybe this approach will never yield a fully productized solution like IntelliJ. But getting a full-featured Emacs setup hasn't meant building the world from scratch in a long time!
mdawwg 3mo ago
I'm also on a mac, but in the last few years performance and memory usage has gotten pretty bad. Though we use Intellij for mostly Angular / Node projects. A colleague of mine had reverted to an older major release because it runs better on our Macs. He ended up switching over to a popular open source IDE and hasn't looked back.
zipy124 3mo ago
I frequently have to restart PyCharm every few days, as it slows so bad that it cannot scroll or type smoothly. This is on a very powerful macbook pro....

CafeRacer 3mo ago

This is actually not an exaggeration. Ive been using WebStorm when it worked well, then it became progressively slower to the point of being unusable even on small projects.

Bishonen88 3mo ago
Counterpoint: use intellij on full stack apps with cdk, react, sqls and whatnot, multiple open at a time, without any problem.
- affenape 3mo ago
  I've tried using RustRover over WSL2 multiple times with every new release, but it's been a huge disappointment every time. My fans constantly spin like crazy, memory vanishes into thin air, and typing is super laggy - it even overwrites random sections of the file sometimes. On top of that, the built-in terminal is totally unusable because it craps out and freezes the app whenever there's a large output. PyCharm, on the other hand, was always great to use. But since VS Code gives me pretty much everything I need for my daily work without demanding too much from my system, I've finally moved away from JetBrains.
  - jyounker 3mo ago
    It sounds like IntelliJ is out of memory and the GC is thrashing. Increase the IDE's heap size(1), and it will probably work fine. (1) It's a menu option these days.
Cthulhu_ 3mo ago
I feel the same about VS Code, it's probably some of the plugins but sometimes, especially when LLMs make edits, memory usage explodes until my system breaks down and force pauses some apps until I kill some of them. I should go back to Zed, maybe use the CLI interface for agentic programming instead of the UI.
sgt 3mo ago
I've got Android Studio open now, while also working in several PyCharm projects, IntelliJ and WebStorm. No issues at all on macOS.
tsvetkov 3mo ago
It's a bit strange to project a personal experience with one product onto all other products by the same vendor, even if those products use shared platform parts. Not to dismiss your claim, it's just IDEs (code engines specifically) are naturally pretty complicated pieces of software, so the experience may vary. The claim that 8Gb RAM is required just for Intellij seems to be at least overgeneralization (also depends a bit on how you count RAM usage; e.g. do you count all mmaped files as RAM usage even when pages are not loaded?). Can be true for some projects, but I've been working on decently sized Java/Kotlin codebases (~250k locs) with way less RAM allocated for Intellij (again, your experience may vary). Even Intellij and Kotlin projects themselves have been usable with less memory, at least some time ago. What's more baffling, though, is how an LSP would be significantly better if it is based on the same IDE core, just running headlessly? I think there may be an independent non-IDE based LSP for Scala, but both Java and Kotlin LSP are based on existing IDEs engines (Java LSP is based on Eclipse engine, Kotlin LSP is based on Intellij). A quote from the kotlin-lsp GitHub repository: > The language server is based on the most recent IntelliJ IDEA version and proprietary parts of JetBrains Air and Fleet products, making it partially closed-source. https://github.com/Kotlin/kotlin-lsp https://github.com/Kotlin/kotlin-lsp

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

gf000 3mo ago

Also, like where else would the indices live? They are in memory to make going to definition, source, analysis etc fast. It's not even using java objects for these, so a feature-equivalent solution would be similarly "fat".

psychoslave 3mo ago
I don’t know, using Vim and Exuberant Ctags can give you a significant part of these features for a very lower footprint. But to be clear, it’s not a ready-to-go path on parity with DX that IntelliJ provides. Hackers are often exceptionally good at optimizing the hidden parts no one give a shit until everything crumble under systemic slowness, but they often also are very bad at designing even a decent UX for everything else regarding in-your-face aspects.
- qsera 3mo ago
  >I don’t know, using Vim and Exuberant Ctags can give you a significant part of these features for a very lower footprint. 100% true. Also, the problem I have with these magic thingies is that I don't know what to do if the magic stops working. With tools that just does one thing, I can easily figure out the point of failure and fix it.
- f3408fh 3mo ago
  For the record Neovim has built-in LSP support and Vim supports LSP with plugins. Why use Ctags that you have to manually generate?
- isityettime 3mo ago
  When I worked as a Scala developer years ago, I still used JetBrains IDEs for some things but I did most of my work in Emacs using ENSIME and ggtags/xref as a fallback. I ended up using ggtags elsewhere as well, and was pretty impressed with both how far it got me and how fast it was.

tiew9Vii 3mo ago

I've used InteliJ on and off for 20 plus years. It's progressively got bloated and slower, not faster. 20 years ago it was the fast lean option when there was Netbeans and Eclipse. Today it's ok, still good feature wise but fast and lean it is not anymore when I've used it for Scala oand Kotlin.

gib444 3mo ago
Yup. It's been particularly bad since around 2023/2024 and only got worse with all the AI crap, though I think that's been almost a useful scapegoat for them recently
- wiether 3mo ago
  I've tried (all?) the AI stuff they published, it was awful; but I was able to easily uninstall/deactivate those features once I realized it was not helpful. On my MBP M4 or my Linux laptop, I never get the impression that it's bloat. Prior to using IntelliJ I had been a Eclipse user and I've never experienced even 5% of the pain I had with Eclipse since moving to IntelliJ. When everything is going to shite, I welcome with pleasure my yearly invoice from JetBrains, thinking that, at least, there is a company pushing quality software that deserves my money.
  - flossly 3mo ago
    Emacs is great for LISP-like langs. IJ is great for JVM langs. Sure one can cross-use the above, but that's harder. Still great to have an IDE agnostic Kotlin LSP!
sajithdilshan 3mo ago
I remember it was pretty slow even like early 2020s. But since they have introduced the new UI design IDE, somehow they have optimized it. I think they made it modular so only the core module that is needed are loaded and some modules are loaded only if it's needed by a plugin. Also, they have optimized indexing as well. I remember the whole thing slowed down when it starts to index a medium size gradle project, but now it runs the indexing in the background but the rest of the IDE quite responsive. However, it seems like in general they are moving at right direction when it comes to optimizing the core of the IDE and all other functionalities comes as plugins and you can just uninstall them if not needed. I use the community edition every day and recently I have been using claude code for coding, but I still use debug console most of the time. I haven't found another IDE which is as powerful as IDEA when it comes to debugging a JVM language project.

akshaydeshraj 3mo ago

IntelliJ (actually Android Studio based on IntelliJ) was my first real IDE and real programming experience. I was so blown away ! Almost 15 years later, nothing else matches the out of the box experience of IntelliJ, atleast for JVM based languages.

pjmlp 3mo ago
Add in VS for .NET languages and C++ (hot reload, debugging capabilities), and the beloved Delphi/C++ Builder duo as well. To this day there isn't anything like C++ Builder, if you want the famous VB dev experience, but with C++.
- storus 3mo ago
  Borland was way ahead of its time, nowadays there is no non-AI way to build a whole UI app in on afternoon like with Delphi/C++ Builder. Pity their greed prevented them from dominating via simplicity.
- sfn42 3mo ago
  I have used both VS and Rider for .NET development and for me Rider beats VS by a mile.
  - pjmlp 3mo ago
    As long as you only do Web development with .NET.
    - sfn42 3mo ago
      Can't really speak to that as I do mostly web development. Not sure why there would be any issue with any other kind of development though?
TacticalCoder 3mo ago
> IntelliJ (actually Android Studio based on IntelliJ) was my first real IDE and real programming experience. I was so blown away ! I switched to IntelliJ back when people where still arguing which of the two between Eclipse or NetBeans was better (fools!): that is, before some of the commenters here were born. Heck, I bought IntelliJ when the world was ending in the Mayan calendar, it was something like 75% off because the world was going to end in a few weeks anyway. But since 10+ years I'm using only... Emacs. Emacs now with tree-sitter, LSPs, native-compilation, magit and the LLMs at ease with Un*x CLI tools make it so that IntelliJ looks like a behemoth. From a glorious past but still a behemoth.

pjmlp 3mo ago

Quite ironic, given that Emacs used to stand for "Eight Megabytes and Constantly Swapping" for the epoch hardware.

neutronicus 3mo ago
Also ironic given that emacs with a LSP server is more than capable of slowing a dev machine to a crawl

z3t4 3mo ago

People will complain about 2MB ram usage and then gladly spend 4k on a mac pc

deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]

rob74 3mo ago

Completely agree. Also: some people enjoy fiddling with their tools, installing extensions and configuring everything until it's just perfect. Other people (most, I would argue - the proverbial "silent majority") want to get something that works reliably "out of the box" and has most (not all, IntelliJ IDEs also have plugins of course) batteries included. They shockingly are even willing to pay money for this!

isityettime 3mo ago
The dream is something batteries-included but still radically hackable. Emacs is slowly making this feasible via smaller and smaller "starter kits" as it adds new features. It's not perfect, and maybe this approach will never yield a fully productized solution like IntelliJ. But getting a full-featured Emacs setup hasn't meant building the world from scratch in a long time!

mdawwg 3mo ago

I'm also on a mac, but in the last few years performance and memory usage has gotten pretty bad. Though we use Intellij for mostly Angular / Node projects. A colleague of mine had reverted to an older major release because it runs better on our Macs. He ended up switching over to a popular open source IDE and hasn't looked back.

zipy124 3mo ago

I frequently have to restart PyCharm every few days, as it slows so bad that it cannot scroll or type smoothly. This is on a very powerful macbook pro....