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Why I Switched from Visual Studio Code to JetBrains WebStorm

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Re: Why I Switched from Visual Studio Code to JetBrains WebStorm

#41

Post by __m »

founderling wrote: post #6

When you guys think about all the developers you know, do you rather see a positive or a negative correlation between the usage of high level tools and developer productivity? In other words, is your experience that developers who use an IDE are more productive then developers who only use a text editor? In my experience, the (very few) developers I know who only use VIM or Emacs are way more productive then those wh…

I don’t see a correlation there. Without autocomplete and all kinds of insights, you have to be experienced to make working with a simple editor feasible. Given the same experience, I don’t think that working with a simple editor is faster.

Re: Why I Switched from Visual Studio Code to JetBrains WebStorm

#42

Post by chronogram »

founderling wrote: post #6

When you guys think about all the developers you know, do you rather see a positive or a negative correlation between the usage of high level tools and developer productivity? In other words, is your experience that developers who use an IDE are more productive then developers who only use a text editor? In my experience, the (very few) developers I know who only use VIM or Emacs are way more productive then those wh…

I personally am most productive when I work instead of faff about with different tools each week, so I guess whatever you’re good at is a good approach. If you used vim since the ‘90s you probably don’t waste much time with learning different editors all the time.

I obviously also write more code when I don’t write tests, but the code isn’t better or more useful. I remember the times when there was much less testing so other people’s code was kind of useless a lot of the time.

Personally I use Sublime most, because I’ve done that for years, but for rookies reading this, don’t go and get Sublime just to mimic me. If you’re starting out then use whatever people you can get information from use, so you can ask questions and they have less friction when helping you. So if you write C# targeting Windows, having Visual Studio proper will be a boon so you’re probably using the same thing as the Stackoverflow people. Doesn’t matter that an Internet forum user uses Sublime or vim.

My comment reads like it comes off as snarky, apologies.

Re: Why I Switched from Visual Studio Code to JetBrains WebStorm

#43

Post by itronitron »

founderling wrote: post #6

When you guys think about all the developers you know, do you rather see a positive or a negative correlation between the usage of high level tools and developer productivity? In other words, is your experience that developers who use an IDE are more productive then developers who only use a text editor? In my experience, the (very few) developers I know who only use VIM or Emacs are way more productive then those wh…

A think this depends on whether the code being written depends on a lot of other code (frameworks and libraries for example). People that use full-featured IDEs have a much easier time exploring large or unfamiliar codebases so can explore more paths.

The best developers I have worked with, in terms of either productivity or 'ability' use high level tools all of the time. And among the worst developers I have known are people that only use vi.

Re: Why I Switched from Visual Studio Code to JetBrains WebStorm

#44

Post by jjeaff »

not_kurt_godel wrote: post #14
founderling wrote: post #6

When you guys think about all the developers you know, do you rather see a positive or a negative correlation between the usage of high level tools and developer productivity? In other words, is your experience that developers who use an IDE are more productive then developers who only use a text editor? In my experience, the (very few) developers I know who only use VIM or Emacs are way more productive then those wh…

Out of the hundreds of devs I've worked with, I can think of exactly two who use(d) vim to edit code with any regularity. Both are fairly proficient above-average devs overall, but I'm pretty sure they also use IDEs heavily and only use vim for quick things. Beyond a certain level of codebase complexity, there is simply no way to do the job with a text editor, even with fancy macros. Vim is an elegant tool, but is si…

Interesting. From reading HN, you would think every coder worth anything is hacking away with emacs or vim on black and green terminal screens.

But I suppose people that use emacs and vim are like vegans. Those that do, are definitely going to tell you about it.

Re: Why I Switched from Visual Studio Code to JetBrains WebStorm

#45

Post by matharmin »

ashnehete wrote: post #3

I can understand that people may perceive VS Code and WebStorm as alternatives. Though, as rightly pointed out by the author, the former is an editor while the latter is an IDE. The whole post just says that in 10 different redundant ways.

What's your definition for an IDE that does not include VS Code?

Just because VS Code feels lightweight, doesn't mean there is any fundamental limitation preventing it from supporting all the features mentioned in the post. In fact, as the author and others mentioned, you can achieve many of the same features with plugins in VS Code.

Yes, WebStorm is better in the points mentioned by the author, and the JetBrains IDEs are amazing in general. But saying it's because one is the editor and the other an IDE is completely wrong.

Re: Why I Switched from Visual Studio Code to JetBrains WebStorm

#46

Post by mnm1 »

founderling wrote: post #6

When you guys think about all the developers you know, do you rather see a positive or a negative correlation between the usage of high level tools and developer productivity? In other words, is your experience that developers who use an IDE are more productive then developers who only use a text editor? In my experience, the (very few) developers I know who only use VIM or Emacs are way more productive then those wh…

Productivity is irrelevant if quality is low and generally, developers who don't use proper tools produce low quality code. It might be small issues, but details matter. Wrong or missing docblocks, bad formatting, no linting, unused variables, extra use statements, etc. I see it all the time from developers who don't use a proper IDE, but even from developers that do but don't know how to use their IDE. Developers who use simple editors like vim/emacs/etc. generally are the worst offenders. The attention to detail is generally not there because there are a ton of tiny details that go into making good code and paying attention to them over thousands of lines manually (vs. having an ide that will take care of them automatically) is difficult. Even things like navigating code and debugging seem to be difficult to impossible to do efficiently for these developers. We are all human and have human limitations.

I'm in no way saying these developers are not good developers, but they do produce a product that's often below par, below expectations, and below what they could do with proper tools. I do not understand why they stick with substandard tools. If you want vim key bindings, they are available in any ide. Startup time is simply not a factor when it occurs at most once per day, if that. I think developers love to focus on issues of personal preference and fashion to the detriment of using the best tools available. Sure, if you can produce great code with a great attention to detail with the editor of your choice, great. Keep at it. But if you can't keep up with the attention to detail and numerous requirements that go into writing great code because your tools are inadequate, defending the tools because of personal preference and fashion is ridiculous and lessens the quality of the final product. That is unacceptable.

Re: Why I Switched from Visual Studio Code to JetBrains WebStorm

#47

Post by loxs »

Currently I use WebStorm, but I also always have a spacemacs window open, to do the things that WebStorm can't do.

Fresh example from yesterday: I open a .graphqlconfig file in WebStorm, which is a JSON file. Good luck making WebStrom open it as a JSON file... One minute later, I've opened the file in emacs, M-x json-mode, M-x mark-whole-buffer, M-x json-reformat-region, did the changes I needed to do, carried on with my life.

So it's not that WebStorm (or any other fluffy high-level tool) is perfect or "enough". There is always this one thing that will make your life miserable if you are religious with these things.

Re: Why I Switched from Visual Studio Code to JetBrains WebStorm

#49

Post by xfer »

not_kurt_godel wrote: post #14
founderling wrote: post #6

When you guys think about all the developers you know, do you rather see a positive or a negative correlation between the usage of high level tools and developer productivity? In other words, is your experience that developers who use an IDE are more productive then developers who only use a text editor? In my experience, the (very few) developers I know who only use VIM or Emacs are way more productive then those wh…

Out of the hundreds of devs I've worked with, I can think of exactly two who use(d) vim to edit code with any regularity. Both are fairly proficient above-average devs overall, but I'm pretty sure they also use IDEs heavily and only use vim for quick things. Beyond a certain level of codebase complexity, there is simply no way to do the job with a text editor, even with fancy macros. Vim is an elegant tool, but is si…

Would you mind being a bit more specific than using vague language and analogy? What are all these modern development tasks?

Re: Why I Switched from Visual Studio Code to JetBrains WebStorm

#50

Post by CaptainMarvel »

hansflying wrote: post #11
hansflying wrote: post #5

Very biased article and by the way, tslint will also warns you if you don't use promise: https://palantir.github.io/tslint/rules/no-floating-promises...

ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING in this article is wrong. I just opened a typescript project in VSCode, created unused function and a class method and I immediately get warning that they are unused. So the author can't even check the facts before writing an article...

VSCode has Local History?
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