Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code • Hacker News Board

Re: Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

#91

Post by amitport » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 3:15 PM UTC

cyral wrote: post #84

azeirah wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of it feels like it comes from a different development philosophy. Vscode is a "text editor" or a "code editor". Usually this means that it's fairly lightweight, supports every language under the sun, is highly configurable and extensible, but doesn't have a lot of very in-depth features, and also partially relies on third-party extensions for deeper functionality. Jetbrains on the other hand works on IDEs built…

One thing to note is that you can use IntelliJ and install the official plugins for each language. For example you can bring the WebStorm functionality to IntelliJ, or install the database plugin to get an embedded Datagrip window. (Which is really neat because you can then get SQL syntax highlighting and such based on your actual DB)

Well just note that this doesn't work with all combination of languages. Try installing CLion on webstorm for example.

Re: Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

#92

Post by Longhanks » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 3:16 PM UTC

jayjader wrote: post #85

azeirah wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of it feels like it comes from a different development philosophy. Vscode is a "text editor" or a "code editor". Usually this means that it's fairly lightweight, supports every language under the sun, is highly configurable and extensible, but doesn't have a lot of very in-depth features, and also partially relies on third-party extensions for deeper functionality. Jetbrains on the other hand works on IDEs built…

I wonder if you have had the chance to use a Jetbrains IDE with a professional license. Doing so gives you access to more or less the content of all the other "flavors" as plugins (it's basically all IntelliJ underneath). For example, I've been using PyCharm for both our python backend _and_ our React + Typescript frontend, all in the same project window, with the same features regarding syntax, linting, refactoring,…

It does not for C/C++, you need CLion for that.

Re: Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

#93

Post by tsimionescu » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 3:16 PM UTC

charrondev wrote: post #9

matsemann wrote: post #2

Most of this post is just speculation like " I seriously doubt it will work well in an average cafe though " without much substance. Either test it or report on it, or at least discuss its shortcomings based on some technical merits. And frankly I don't care how well it works on "spotty café wifi". If the wifi sucks I wouldn't sit there and work anyway. As for the language server protocol, nothing stops IDEA from doi…

One of the things that baffles me is the rust-Lang support. Rust-lang has an official dual-licensed MIT/Apache language server protocol implementation (RLS) under active development. In my view it’s currently a better experience than the custom IntelliJ one. Instead of collaborating though I see IntelliJ continuing on the path of their custom implementation. Every week RLS gives an update on their progress and so doe…

JetBrains have always developed their own language analyzers from what I've seen. I would bet they have a clear API between a language analyzer and their suite of refactoring and code navigation tools, and it would probably end up being similar to work to support that API through an open source variant VS building their own.

Not to mention, JetBrains typically are at the forefront of IDE support for a language, they start working on it before there are any open source tools around to base work off of. Even with mature languages like C#, the JetBrains C# language backend predates Rosslyn by a good decade I think.

Re: Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

#94

Post by arcturus17 » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 3:16 PM UTC

kvakva wrote: post #75

Curious about people who switched to something like Webstorm from VS Code. I've tried it for Typescript development and didnt find much of a difference. I can say webstorm has better , more clean ui for Git, but that's it. Certainly issue was that I could only try it shortly on simple project. Would love it here about some more example from other where to see the differences. Btw I am pretty impressed with Quick fix…

Right now I'm primarily using PyCharm, but I made the switch from VSCode to Webstorm a few years back. Here's what I liked better:

- The refactoring keyboard shortcuts and facilities (moving functions from one file to another, UX for renaming, etc.)

- I found code introspection and autocomplete to be more accurate

- I perceived WebStorm to run better on my machine. The initial load time was longer, but after that the latency of different actions seemed better (again, this was just my perception, on my machine).

- Preferred how many things came installed by default on WS vs having to install plugins on VSCode.

- The Live Templates feature was better than the equivalent code snippets feature.

- The command palette felt more intuitive, I could find things that occurred to me much easier than in VSCode's equivalent.

- The git UX which you mention

Those are a few things that come to mind. VSCode may have significantly improved in these dimensions over time - I wouldn't know because I only use for writing markdown and sometimes to compare my working code base with another code base in a second window.

Re: Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

#95

Post by khaledh » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 3:17 PM UTC

I've been programming with various IDEs and text editors for over 30 years. In my formative programming years (1990s) I relied heavily on Borland and Microsoft IDEs. In the 2000s it was a combination of Visual Studio (C/C++/C#) and various editors (PHP, HTML/CSS/JS). In the 2010s I started working across multiple languages: C#, Java, Python, Ruby, Elixir, Scala, JavaScript (also dabbled with Lisp, Go, and Rust); using various tools: Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, VS Code, Atom, Sublime, Vim, and even Emacs.

My opinion: JetBrains IDEs beat every single other IDE/editor hands down (Visual Studio -- not Code -- comes close). The level of integration and polish is unmatched. I use PyCharm on a daily basis at work and the level of productivity I get out if it is far beyond what I get from any other IDE/editor. I've been developing a hobby kernel recently using C, and initially used VSCode; it was OK. Then I thought I'd give JetBrains CLion a try and I never looked back. I happily paid for license and it's been a well spent investment.

Re: Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

#96

Post by jerf » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 3:18 PM UTC

meddlepal wrote: post #25

matwood wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I have used IntelliJ for Java for as long as I can remember and can't imagine using anything else. For JS and Go I use VSCode. I wonder if it's just what I started with and am used to. I've tried to use Intellij a couple of times for Go, but end up back on VSCode.

I dont know how you’re productive with VS Code and Go... I watch my coworkers live code with it sometimes and they are struggling. The lang server crashes constantly and stuff like autoimports or code complete barely works. I sometimes want to scream while watching them struggle.

Be sure they're updating. There's no prompt or anything that I've seen in my environment to do so.

It's still not perfect but my experience doesn't match that.

Re: Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

#97

Post by yrio » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 3:19 PM UTC

vinger wrote: post #90

cyral wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing to note is that you can use IntelliJ and install the official plugins for each language. For example you can bring the WebStorm functionality to IntelliJ, or install the database plugin to get an embedded Datagrip window. (Which is really neat because you can then get SQL syntax highlighting and such based on your actual DB)

How does the open source IDEA plus php plugin experience compare to phpstorm?

The plugins for alternative languages (PHP, Python) are available only for IntelliJ Ultimate / paid. It's not available in free / open source IntelliJ

So either [1] you buy IntelliJ Ultimate & get Java + other languages (PHP, Python, Ruby, etc except .NET and C++)

or [2] you buy the language specific IDE (cheaper) like PhpStorm, PyCharm, etc

Re: Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

#98

Post by tharkun__ » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 3:19 PM UTC

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #71

arcturus17 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not, there are many, many language-specific things that an IDE does beyond code hints. Microsoft doesn't seem to be investing that much, if anything, on languages other than JS/TS; it is delegating all on the OSS community through plugins. And while some of the plugins are really good, in my experience they don't even come close to the native capabilities of Jetbrains products.

This is what Microsoft does. Their #1 thing is being in the market even if the product is bad. They’re delegating now, but wait until they’ve established their foothold, leveled up the core framework. Then they’re going to stop delegating one language after another.

Embrace: put out an open source code editor.

Extend: have a plugin system that everyone can contribute to (sounds like eclipse or IntelliJ CE) and even make money off of. Plugins don't have to be free.

Extinguish: make your own plugins with full refactoring support etc. for the languages you see most actively used (everyone uses it for Go and Python now? Make a good enough plugin for that. Nobody uses it for Erlang anyway? Leave it to the community)

The good old MS in action.

Re: Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

#99

Post by mkrishnan » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 3:20 PM UTC

My opinion: JetBrains IDEs beat every single other IDE/editor hands down (Visual Studio -- not Code -- comes close). The level of integration and polish is unmatched. I happily paid for license and it's been a well spent investment.

Re: Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

#100

Post by thedevelopnik » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 3:23 PM UTC

parhamn wrote: post #60

I use IntelliJ daily. I think when LSP gets there VSCode can catch up and fill the IDE gap, but until then it doesn't come close to IntelliJ in terms of functionality (though sometimes the perf of IJ makes me want to switch but it has been feeling a lot better on the M1). LSP needs to make 2 major improvements in order to to get wider adoption: - Improve package/runtime support detection (Go modules, npm, virtualenvs…

This is interesting to me and makes me question what I missed on setting up JetBrains products. I moved away from them because of their lack of support for standard tooling like eslint and pep8. It felt like JetBrains editors wanted me to set up lint rules by their spec and I had to set it up in their editor configs.

I’ve always been able to add the VSC plugin for a language and everything just works. With JetBrains it felt like the first thing I was gonna have to do on every project on every one of my computers was set up a bunch of custom scripts to do really basic stuff.

To be clear, I really am questioning what I missed, not the parent. Everyone here says Jetbrains is more convenient and I felt like my first task was always 3 hours of setting it up.