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Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

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Re: Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

#201
post #95

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); usin…

The only reason I use VS Code is when I want to quickly check a file or create a PoC. PyCharm or CLion are just too slow and frustrating, but for bigger projects there is no better option than those, despite being awfully slow.

On what platform are you using these IDEs? I use CLion daily and it is very fast on my Linux machine with a Ryzen 3700X CPU.

(I have heard complaints that the JetBrains IDEs are much slower on Macs, which also corresponds with my limited experience of using their IDEs on a Mac.)

Re: Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

#202
People act as if the language server protocol has no equivalent in JetBrains ecosystem. There are, things like MPS: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/mps/mps-user-s-guide.html, or the platform: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/docs/intellij/intellij-platfor...

This whole argument that VS code takes over seems to be assuming the Language Server Protocol and Electron is a vastly superior ecosystem. I haven't seen any evidence of this being true. It's probably an improvement over the older Visual Studio ecosystem, though.

Sure seems like this argument is just another version of, "Well, it's Java, so it's enterprise/corporate/boring".

They're both open source ecosystems, and that's great. And I'd rather work with the JetBrains or VS Code ecosystems, then say, Eclipse, even though all of them are open source. (I haven't met many Android devs yearning for the Eclipse-based Android development environment.)

Edit: to clarify that open source commment

Re: Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

#203
post #146

Speaking as a corporate programmer working from home indefinitely, I'd kill for IDEA Viewer. My laptop can't have code on it, so I'm forced to remote desktop to my workstation to use IntelliJ and CLion remotely, which is a middling experience at best. A light protocol for synchronizing the frontend with the IDE backend would be excellent. You can look at my profile and various papers we've published about why code on…

It has some semi-minor issues still (e.g. resizing panes, last I tried it, would only move a few pixels before losing the "drag"), and it's not as efficient as VSCode (which is a pretty high bar, to be fair), but there is a "Projector" for many of their IDEs: https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-run-android-studio-on-any-dev...

It's not quite good enough on my bandwidth to make me switch from VSCode for remote work, but it's pretty close. And the day it is, I will be thrilled to abandon VSCode's horrible Go plugins.

Re: Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

#204
post #95

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); usin…

I had the same experience, used Visual Studio for C++, and years after C#, and Eclipse for Java projects. When JetBrains came along it really shined. I tried VS Code a couple of years ago for a few months for some scripting languages, it really is not bad, however JB IDEs are better for Java, Python, Ruby,.. even for frontend development - support for Angular and React is great. I bought the "all products pack" for i…

This is a decent investment for coders. Good tools make all the difference.

Re: Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

#205
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a current MS intern, curious what work ya'll are doing in Go. Would you be up for a call sometime?

Email me your MS alias and I'll reach out over Teams on Monday. Email is my profile.

Thank you. I might be missing something, but not seeing an email in your profile here and not seeing anything plausible in internal search.

I’m [redacted], I don’t mind that being public for a bit to avoid playing tag :)

Re: Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

#206

My take with VS Code is that their support of development container and ssh is the best and it's a killer feature. My ultimate goal for quite sometime now was to pack all my development dependencies inside containers or cloud-init files to keep my host bare-bone and have reproducible/shareable setups anywhere anytime. Before I was an Emacs fan. I tried multiple combination of Emacs, Tramp and containers but it failed…

I desperately wanted VS Code's remote development functionality in IDEA, and was keeping track of their remote development feature in YouTrack. When CodeWithMe was released, I was sorely disappointed.

All I wanted was my code to run anywhere, and my local machine to be the IDE.

mutagen.io ended up being my answer. After learning how it worked, I got it set up and it works really well. I'm mostly doing PHP development these days, and have a LAMP stack running as docker containers on a server.

The sync is nearly instant (99% of the time), the rare conflicts are easily resolved, and of course debugging still works.

The only thing I'm missing is collaborative editing, which I still have to jump over to VS Code to do. I haven't tried out two people using `mutagen sync` on the same instance of code, but that could be a really interesting solution if it works.

An editor agnostic solution to collaborative/pair coding would be really fantastic.

Re: Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

#207
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IntelliJ ultimate is the main IDE. Everything else is a version of IntelliJ that has been configured for a specific language. IntelliJ should, theoretically, be able to behave like any of the sub-IDEs, but the reverse is not true.

Theoretically yes. In practice no. Each IDE has workflows and features tuned to their respective domain. They're not just simple configuration changes from each other

The simplified setup for modules in the language-specific IDEs alone makes them worth it IMO. It’s great that the plugins in IntelliJ cover basically everything but CLion, AppCode and Rider - but if I’m working on Python, JavaScript, PHP or doing database work I’ll still fire up Pycharm, WebStorm, PHPStorm and DataGrip respectively because there’s less overhead getting my project imported (and DataGrip is more useful as a standalone DBA tool because I open it and all of my connections are right there).

Given the individual license cost difference between IntelliJ Ultimate and the All Products Pack is minimal it’s worth it, especially given it’s cheaper than IntelliJ + CLion separately.

Re: Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

#208

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…

> 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.

Obviously the author cares about it. It’s basically an article from a personal blog, what makes you think that the author should write for your own use instead of theirs?

They are sharing their thoughts on the topic, and that’s it.

Re: Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason I use VS Code is when I want to quickly check a file or create a PoC. PyCharm or CLion are just too slow and frustrating, but for bigger projects there is no better option than those, despite being awfully slow.

On what platform are you using these IDEs? I use CLion daily and it is very fast on my Linux machine with a Ryzen 3700X CPU. (I have heard complaints that the JetBrains IDEs are much slower on Macs, which also corresponds with my limited experience of using their IDEs on a Mac.)

I think it’s less about the platform and more about the size of the code to index. Text editors are about as fast in a repo with 30,000 files as in a repo with 3. IDEs can take a few minutes to do the indexing necessary to support their code intelligence on bigger repos.

Re: Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in my experience Intellij looks better if you have coded in Inttellij first (especially Java) and then moved to othet tools. Intellij offers a lot of custom behaviours that IMO programmers start coding the "Intellij way" (let's call it Intellij muscle memory for lack of a better definition) on the other hand going from vi to Emacs to Sublime to VSCode is less of a problem and people tend to honestly judge strength an…

> in my experience Intellij looks better if you have coded in Inttellij first (especially Java) and then moved to othet tools. I have started with notepad and moved through vi, Eclipse, VSCode and then IntelliJ. Out of these I used Eclipse and IntelliJ for Java and IntelliJ wins hands down when it comes to the quality of the features, atleast for Java. > Intellij offers a lot of custom behaviours that IMO programmers…

> Almost all team members have used Eclipse / VSCode and atleast for Java, after they used IntelliJ, they haven't gone back to either.

I was also using it because my team was using it and it holds value to share a screen and watch the same thing or when debugging an issue replicating the same exact steps, having different tools can make it harder.

My point is that when you have a stable setup any setup is good if it's good for you, Intellij is better on some things but worse on other that I personally value more

the git integration for example, which works backwards compared to how git works: stage/commit/push

in Intellij I am presented with all the tracked files already staged, the commit message box is already filled with the last one, files are showed as a tree instead of the classic list with paths and I have to look for untracked files that are collapsed by default.

Magit is much simpler and intuitive IMO.

> I've had to do invalidate cache and restart about 2 times in last two years so while it is not a great use of my time when I have to do it, its not a big bother considering it is rare for me.

I wish it was like that for me.

Or probably I am simply doing something wrong but no amount of Google fu helped me to avoid the issue, the only thing that works is pushing the damned "invalidate and restart" button (and sometimes running mvn idea:idea from the command line, but I gather it is obsolete and not actively supported anymore)

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