Why I Switched from Visual Studio Code to JetBrains WebStorm • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by nnq » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 7:19 PM UTC

moosingin3space wrote: post #128

nnq wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

..that's like saying: "We're proud to have the best the anti-suicide-by-jumping building meshes system and workplace psychiatric counseling in the world! The world record rate of suicide amongst our employees prompted us to implement and perfect this measures to such a high degree, that now we're considering to pivot our entire business model towards selling 'employee suicide prevention consulting services', since no…

This is a rather tasteless joke.

In retrospect I'd delete it if I could. I was imagining it inside a Dilbert cartoon in my head and it seemed funnier than it was. Again, I'm sorry for it, mental health issues are not a joke, I should know that. And I should also know that the tech community finds them less funny than others do, and for valid reasons.

(...hanging out with ppl from the healthcare field made me too used to cruel/gross/insensitive/politically-incorrect/borderline-sadistic jokes, always forget that the rest of the world is less desensitized to death and suffering than us :P)

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

#142

Post by fgonzag » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 8:21 PM UTC

matharmin wrote: post #45

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 IDE…

any text editor with sufficiently powerful plugin capabilities can become an IDE, but AFAIK you can't turn any IDE into a Text Editor (there is no way to disable everything but the editor by default)

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

#143

Post by cheerlessbog » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 9:22 PM UTC

Illniyar wrote: post #85

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…

For the last 10 years I've worked with perhaps 200 developers, I haven't seen a single one who uses vim or emacs, whether they are 20 or 50 years old. Maybe it's the nature of the work - web development (frontend and backend). I've known a few who use sublime text, and there was no correlation with either being a good developer or being productive (though I haven't met a bad developer using sublime yet, mediocre ones…

I use Sublime or VS Code but for no purpose that I could not put Vim to if I wanted. Most of my coding work is reading and thinking. When navigating, I mostly use regexes (relying heavily on standard code format). After using VS for twenty years, I decided to try this more textual approach two years ago, and I believe I have become a better developer for it. An IDE makes it so easy to drop into the debugger. I try to gain understanding of the code and drop into the debugger only if necessary. With this barebones approach, I more deeply understand the system and more often fix bugs at the root rather than the symptom.

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

#144

Post by meko » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 9:31 PM UTC

chronogram wrote: post #42

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…

Actually your comment was insightful. I have a bad habit of editor jumping. Went from vim (6mo) -> emacs (18mo) -> vscode (8mo) -> and have been using sublime for the last month. Keep switching because I don't feel productive in them and kept getting a grass-is-greener vibe every time I'd see someone online using it. Maybe it's because I never specialized and really got gud with one of them. Would have stuck it out with emacs but using it on windows is a big meh (way too much fiddling, generally speaking). Popped off vscode because... microsoft. although it had the most surface polish of the editors I've tried, and intellisense was nice. Sublime has been good to me so far, but the available themes leave something to be desired, and the emacs keybinds are iffy. Maybe I just haven't found 'the one' and at this point, there are too many features from each editor that I like that I may never find it. Emacs came closest, but learning to configure it was too time intensive, had to cut my losses and find something more portable and time efficient. Guess I'll just stick with sublime from now on and say that's that...

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

#145

Post by cheerlessbog » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 9:32 PM UTC

Lowkeyloki wrote: post #130

Having used both, I can say without hesitation that they're both fantastic works of software. I personally use vscode as my daily driver now because it has all of the features I care about from WebStorm but it's free. (I also have a license for Sublime Text and used that for years. I still prefer vscode now. But a developer's IDE/editor is a deeply personal choice and everyone should use whatever software they're mos…

Sublime just isn't able to iterate as fast as VS Code can - it's closed source, and seemingly one or two developers. So I expect the gap to widen. Of course if Sublime already fills your needs, that's not a problem.

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

#146

Post by cheerlessbog » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 9:43 PM UTC

matharmin wrote: post #45

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 IDE…

It's less of a distinction then it used to be, but IDE's tend to be workspace/project first, and editors tend to be folder/file first.

You would typically point an IDE at a metafile that described the source files, build settings and so forth and it would discover the editable files. All this in a semi opaque manner, bootstrapped by some menus or templates. In contrast in an editor, you might generate the metafile only when your project becomes too big for the defaults to be sufficient.

You're right that the distinction is much more blurred now. For example you can do a lot in Visual Studio now without using a "project" file.

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

#147

Post by cheerlessbog » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 9:48 PM UTC

eridius wrote: post #9

Niksko wrote: post #4

While VS Code presumably can do almost everything Webstorm (and other Jetbrains products) can, my experience in my fairly large software company is that most of the people that use VS Code don't actually bother to install the plugins to bring it up to feature parity. Out of the box functionality is underrated, even seemingly among devs who have the skills and knowledge to tinker.

VSCode has a ton of extensions but very frequently there's no good information about which extensions you should actually use, and whether you need to configure them to get the best behavior. For example, the other day I went to install a GraphQL extension for syntax highlighting and there was something like a half-dozen competing extensions, with no good way of figuring out why I should use one versus the other. I e…

The VS Code extensions manager shows a star rating, download count, extension description, a list of the commands they expose, often the popular extensions have animated gifs showing how they work. What else are you looking for?

For example when I installed VS Code I needed a Git extension. There are zillions but only two or three that are clearly ahead of the pack and it only took a few minutes to try each one.

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

#148

Post by cheerlessbog » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 9:50 PM UTC

kmlx wrote: post #94

realusername wrote: post #24

It's always the same debate, on my case all the features of Webstorm he's listing I will likely never use them whereas the lag issues & the clutter interface of Webstorm just make it a no-start as my main editor.

you mention speed. then you’ll be happy to find out that sublime text is much faster than vs code. on my mac even my intellij idea ultimate is faster than vs code. from my experience, vs code is the slowest editor you could possibly use, slower than a full blown ide, slower than a text editor. it’s just a slow piece of software.

Have you tried Atom?

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

#149

Post by not_kurt_godel » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 10:22 PM UTC

black-tea wrote: post #114

erpellan wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* Find usages * Go to definition * Extract method * Introduce parameter * Inline variable * Rename method * Rename variable In a Jetbrains tool these are automatic / atomic operations.

What planet are you people living on? It's like you just whack the word "modern" on the front, stick your hands up and say "haha, you couldn't understand, grandad". Programmers have been doing these things since the beginning of time.

I programmed exclusively with text editors for a number of years. Of course you can do anything in a text editor that you can do in a modern IDE as long as you have patience. I would even go so far as to say that having the experience of using a text editor instead of an IDE is a valuable one; certain types of edits really can be done much more efficiently in vim than an IDE so it's an excellent tool to have at your disposal. But text editors simply can't match the sophistication and efficiency of a good IDE that is built to interact with your code programmatically from the ground up. For example, here is a list of refactoring operations that IDEA provides as atomic operations that can be done in a few clicks/keystrokes and instantly, safely undone with a single keystroke[0]:

* Change signature

* Convert Anonymous to Inner

* Convert to Instance Method

* Encapsulate Fields

* Extract refactorings

  * Extract constant

  * Extract Field

  * Extract interface

  * Extract method

  * Extract Superclass

  * Extract variable

  * Extract parameter

  * Extract into class refactorings

* Find and Replace Code Duplicates

* Generify Refactoring

* Inline

* Invert Boolean

* Make Static

* Migrate

* Move and Copy refactorings

* Pull Members Up, Push Members Down

* Remove Middleman

* Rename refactorings

* Replace Constructor with Builder

* Replace Constructor with Factory Method

* Replace Inheritance with Delegation

* Replace Temp With Query

* Safe delete

* Type Migration

* Use Interface Where Possible

* Wrap Return Value

Meanwhile, merely performing a simple pure-text find-replace across multiple files using vim and emacs is a chore. And better hope you don't screw it up because there's often no easy way to safely undo such a change, especially not with a single keystroke. The idea that even master-level users of vim/emacs could begin to hope to replicate the operations listed above with the depth, accuracy, and user-friendliness that IDEA offers is simply laughable. Any granddad worth his salt is perfectly capable of understanding that advancements in software have yielded tools that are by far and away objectively superior for a wide variety of development tasks.

[0] https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/refactoring-source-code....

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

#150

Post by not_kurt_godel » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 10:57 PM UTC

arcturus17 wrote: post #55

jjeaff wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What’s with this vim vs IDE debate anyway - vim works wonderfully with the IntelliJ suite and many other IDEs. If you’ve been doing vim or emacs since the 80s then great but I’m not going to go through months of configuration hell to repurpose vim into an IDE when I can do it the other way around.

My feelings exactly. Like I said, there's nothing wrong with a hammer (vim), but it's a poor use of time using one to fasten 3000 nails to frame a building. I think vim/emacs users get defensive and militant because they've invested significant time and effort into learning a specific set of skills that tie into their professional, and to an extent personal, identity. It's an understandable psychological defense mechanism to reject the notion that those skills are significantly less valuable nowadays, but it doesn't negate the fact that their judgement is being clouded.