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Switching from Vim to Intellij

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Re: Switching from Vim to Intellij

#181

Switching from a bicycle to a truck. Vim is NOT an IDE. Yes a lot of people try to make it one, but Vim is not very good at it. You need a lot of additional small tools to even come close to a full-blown IDE in functionality. It's a text editor.

Sure, an IDE comes with all the tools and features right out of the box. But not everyone needs all of them. I don't see a problem with combining tools, which is really easy with Vim as it already runs in the terminal. I installed a couple plugins in Vim. But those all provide features I actually use and they barely affect performance. But more importantly I just prefer the Vim approach: start out with a minimal UI a…

I've tried for years to find the right combination of plugins and configs to make vim (and now neovim) as comfortable as IntelliJ for "large" languages (like Java & Scala), and I still can't do it.

I actually very much agree with you that IntelliJ's all-batteries-included bits can be distracting and frustrating at times, and it's annoying to track down and disable the stuff you don't want. The memory usage makes me cry; occasionally the OOM killer murders it on my 16GB laptop.

But IntelliJ actually does all the things I want it to, reliably, and (mostly) without fuss. vim/nvim just... doesn't. Or I haven't figured out how to get it to do it after hours of trying, which amounts to the same thing.

It makes me super sad, because a part of me rebels at having to use a giant IDE to be productive, but that's just been my experience. I too would rather put a motor and bags on my bicycle than start cutting down a truck, but I haven't found a motor and bags that fit and work right for me, after more work than is reasonable trying.

Re: Switching from Vim to Intellij

#182
post #165

Most important problem missed with fancy IDE: Tiny monitor. Its like looking at your source code thru a paper towel tube instead of in VR. Even if you can get a bigger monitor and give up on laptops, you'd STILL get to see more code at once using VIM. Its "nice" and "interesting" I can see my build system innards on the left and with effort I can click them in and out but in practice people are lazy and just don't ge…

This has generally not been an issue for me, and I code on a 13" laptop most of the time, with no external monitors. Even with all panes but the editor pane closed, there's still the toolbar, tab bar, status bar, and a bit more space taken up, but in practice I just don't find that it matters.

Regardless, "can fit more code on one screen" is not even in my top 10 list of things I look for in my development environment.

Re: Switching from Vim to Intellij

#183

I was thinking there might be something interesting here. Then I got to this line: "I started a new job working on a large typescript React project. Vim couldn’t handle opening a TSX file larger than 50 lines without crashing." And I was like LOL WUT? The author's case in this regard woudl be stronger if they helped us understand what was actually going wrong. Bad plugins? Conflicting macros? I'm pretty sure that sim…

Indeed, I routinely edit files in vim that are many GBs in size.

Note that you can still use for those big files and the IDE for all the rest. I am using emacs with IntelliJ Idea (one shortcut or action to open current file or selected file in the file list if you don't want to open it in IntelliJ) . I'm using that when I need to edit orgmode files or do complex text processing on a file.

Re: Switching from Vim to Intellij

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to switch to using Spacemacs and use Evil but on Windows 10 I'm having no luck getting that working due to some weird errors when emacs starts and tries to install the packages. So for the time being I'm stuck using vim.

Spacemacs is overly complicated. Try Doom, or just start with vanilla Emacs, and add Evil.

I confirm that, switched from an overly complex config to spacemacs then a year later to doom. Doom feels much more polished, faster and require a lot less configuration, at least for my use case.

Re: Switching from Vim to Intellij

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's for the full suite, too. Pycharm covers a lot of web dev beyond python and personal is only $89 first year, $71 second and $53 third.

And you don't need to continue your subscription unless you want continued updates. My PyCharm 'subscription' lapsed around two years ago, and I'm only planning on purchasing a new fallback license for the upcoming 2020.3 release because their excellent vim-mode plugin finally supports jump lists, but requires a newer version than the one I originally paid for - and I'm honestly happy to pay them again.

And you will love the new version! So much changed these last too years.

Re: Switching from Vim to Intellij

#186
post #21

I recently switched from IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate to VS Code for Go development (side project), because I don't want to pay for it, when I'm no longer a student. With Golang VS Code works great after getting used to it. The Go plugin is not available for the community edition. For Java and Android development I always used (and still use) IDEA because it's feels much better than Eclipse.

I went the other way around (from VS Code to IntelliJ), it has some refactoring support and the like, and I have to work and switch between a few languages during an average work day. VS Code is fine for a lot of things, but not as powerful as intellij. That said, main downside to IntelliJ is IMO speed and input lag in editor windows, mainly in TSX files. I admit it's a complex language and the fact that Prettier run…

Interesting my frustration with VSCode (for typescript) was that everything felt sluggish compared to Idea. I guess that may be something where hardware configuration and organization of project matter?

Re: Switching from Vim to Intellij

#187
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you still in school? If yes, well just take RAM into consideration next time. If no, get your boss to buy you a decent laptop immediately.

yep first year. Funnily enough, I have a laptop grant from uni, waiting to see how those ARM Macs turn out.

Or consider getting a better PC with more ram and faster nvme drives for the same price.

Re: Switching from Vim to Intellij

#188
I use Vim at work, a few light plugins for Go and I'm off. I'm not bothered with auto complete or any of that stuff, and it works great for me.

In my spare time I dabble in Unity, and what I always get stuck on is the IDE for the C# code. It used to come with an IDE that was pretty good, which I forget the name of. Autocomplete and other things worked out of the box. These days it comes with Visual Studio and I find it a pain. Auto complete, etc doesn't work, and getting it to work seems very complicated. I then go on the internet, and someone says VS code is good, so I try that, but run into the same issues integrating with the Unity libraries and so on, and before I know it I have spend a day just on trying and failing to configure IDEs and it's not that much fun to be honest. It sounds like Intellij might be better? I don't know.

At this point I just go back to writing Go in Vim where I am happy and don't have to spend so much time fighting to be allowed to write code.

Re: Switching from Vim to Intellij

#189
post #165

Most important problem missed with fancy IDE: Tiny monitor. Its like looking at your source code thru a paper towel tube instead of in VR. Even if you can get a bigger monitor and give up on laptops, you'd STILL get to see more code at once using VIM. Its "nice" and "interesting" I can see my build system innards on the left and with effort I can click them in and out but in practice people are lazy and just don't ge…

You'd like IDEA's distraction free mode then.

> In Distraction-free mode, the editor occupies the entire main window with the source code centered. All other elements of the UI are hidden (tool windows, toolbars, and editor tabs) to help you focus on the source code of the current file. You can still use shortcuts to open tool windows, navigate, and perform other actions.

https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/ide-viewing-modes.html

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