Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code • Hacker News Board

Re: Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

#221

Post by ci5er » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 7:16 PM UTC

khaledh wrote: 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 pay (personally) for the entire Jetbrains tool set. They are damn good. And I guess to be fair, I haven't given a lot of time to VSCode, but TBH: I find that Sublime and IntelliJ cover the spectrum for me (which is Scala, Java, Kotlin, Python, C, Go and Typescript all with git support)

I'm not super exploratory, because it always seems that I have a project due in two weeks, but given that I have pickd up two of the BEAM languages, but am always lagging on learning Ruby and Haskell. These days - I'm starting to wonder about the utility of learning another language, other than re-learning Smalltalk out of nostalgia.

Re: Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

#222

Post by sidsidev » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 7:18 PM UTC

tharkun__ wrote: post #142

arcturus17 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It remains to be seen whether they will find this economical when they are not making any direct revenue on the product. I understand that VSCode is part of a grand strategic plan that goes beyond revenue, but I seriously doubt that they'd be willing to internally maintain the absolute truckload of code that would ensue from getting to feature parity with Jetbrains on languages like Java or Python. I'd wager at some…

A short read and should give enough examples and descriptions of the strategy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis... Once you've killed off the competition, a lot of other things don't really matter much any more. From the money perspective, it's a well known strategy to loose money to kill off the competition. It's just about who has the deeper pockets/better stomach for it. Microsoft has t…

You're missing that the product makes no money. Thinking in terms of killing off competition is pointless when you're not referring to the strategy.

Re: Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

#223

Post by dagmx » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 7:20 PM UTC

snuxoll wrote: post #207

dagmx wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah by the time you need two IDEs you might as well just get the suite.

It also worked out well for me because I bought Ultimate on sale, and the suite was discounted for existing owners. So it's really been good savings. Regardless, given the time savings the IDEs give me, they pay themselves off pretty quickly.

Re: Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

#224

Post by hpen » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 7:21 PM UTC

VS Code is overrated

Re: Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

#225

Post by sidsidev » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 7:22 PM UTC

skohan wrote: post #16

> The key technology here is probably the Language Server Protocol I've been working on an LSP implementation lately, and I have to say so far the reality falls short of the promise. I feel like what LSP should be is a clear, simple interface for implementing IDE-like features for any language, but my experience is that it is incredibly arcane and difficult to use. The main issue is the documentation. It has a high-l…

Marketing-level docs and then fine-grained API docs sounds very MS.

Re: Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

#226

Post by sidsidev » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 7:23 PM UTC

ignoramous wrote: post #213

> GitHub is now a MS property, so in the future VS Code is expected to be more and more integrated into GitHub. That pretty much catches all the young and hip audience in a MS owned behavior loop. Which certainly shows some very competent strategic planning. And so, it baffles me even more that AWS weren't in the conversation to acquire GitHub (or if they were, that they failed to acquire them). Seems like a huge mis…

Yeah or Google. They stopped Google Code (or whatever it was) to move it all to GitHub; I just assumed they'd then buy GitHub. Felt like a much more natural home for it.

Maybe Gitlab?

Re: Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

#227

Post by spullara » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 7:25 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #177

amitport wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

As much as that is true, I have a license for all of them and always use a few of them instead of the main IDE: CLion, Goland and Rider being the ones that are really much better for their respective domains because they are so different.

Re: Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

#228

Post by spullara » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 7:28 PM UTC

matsemann wrote: post #192

africanboy wrote: post #106

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…

> Intellij git integration in comparison, in my opinion, it's barely usable and generally counter intuitive. Disagree. I use it all the time. It's sooo nice to have the different changelists. Easy to make changes that I don't want to accidentally commit by putting them on a different changelist (like pointing to a different database). And it can be split even in the same file, much more easily to commit parts like th…

I think the git support used to be worse but now it is pretty great imho.

Re: Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

#229

Post by reidrac » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 7:28 PM UTC

runarberg wrote: post #168

voidfunc wrote: post #3

I don’t really see IntelliJ and VSCode as competitors. VSCode competes with atom and other full-featured text editors (vim, emacs) ... its got great adoption amongst the newer generation of programmers that think those editors are old school and user hostile. VSCodes Java, Python, and Golang support is miles behind IntelliJ. FWIW, on my team at Microsoft where we write a lot of Go, theres a 50/50 split between Intell…

Interestingly, as an emacs user, I am really rooting for the success of VSCode. The existence of the Language Server Protocol means that I have a horse in this race. Emacs users that use the same language server as VSCode users directly benefit from this relationship. So even though VSCode is competing with Emacs for market share, it is very much collaborating with Emacs (and other text editors that use LSP) in makin…

I feel the same. I couldn't do Scala with vim if it wasn't for LSP and Metals.

(and I'm aware that I still have less features than if I was using a full featured IDE, but I'm still very productive and also happy)

Re: Reflections on IDEA vs VS Code

#230

Post by coldtea » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 7:32 PM UTC

The examples the author uses to make the case that Idea is getting "fatter" and "more corporate" are actually things VS Code has too:

"What bothers me about JetBrains is the fact that they seem to be playing along. Judging by the talks on their recent conference, IDEA goes more elephantine, more corporate, more complex. (...) In this regard I will mention two announcements: the CodeWithMe technology and a lightweight "IDEA viewer" product. CodeWithMe allows one IDEA instance to run another instance remotely to allow for collaborative work. Even the color scheme and the shortcuts are provided by the master instance, if I understood that correctly. That is very Java and very corporate, no doubt. The IDEA viewer is another step in the same direction: let the IDE run somewhere else, maybe on a server, and let people use a lightweight client "on a laptop in a cafe". I seriously doubt it will work well in an average cafe though. Their WiFi tends to be unreliable. Given this degree of dependence of the client machine, spotty WiFi will cause a developer to smash his laptop against the coffee machine."

Talk about underming your own case.

CodeWithMe is what VS Code calls "Live Share" and "IDEA viewer" is what VS Code calls "Visual Studio Code Remote Development" (the SSH part), and has been available since forever in Emacs too.