Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot • Hacker News Board

Re: Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot

#11

Post by Squarex » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 9:00 AM UTC

marginalia_nu wrote: post #9

TiredOfLife wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one in VS Code seems fine. It's not quite intellij level, but what is. And speaking on llm and lsp. The new PHP lsp PHPantom (with help of llms) is approaching jetbrains offering fast.

That's just a wrapper for jdtls. I mean it works on some projects, but fails on many gradle builds and is basically just running the Eclipse IDE headlessly. This is probably the one contender: https://github.com/georgewfraser/java-language-server and it kinda works, but it's also a bit lacking.

oracle has some lsp based on netbeans, but it's not great either

Re: Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot

#12

Post by andylynch » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 9:08 AM UTC

ares623 wrote: post #7

oh I thought this was somehow extracting the proprietary LSP engine that IntelliJ has and using it with Emacs.

I think Jetbrains did that already; the Kotlin LSP server is derived from the (also open source) IntelliJ plugin

Re: Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot

#13

Post by sajithdilshan » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 9:12 AM UTC

> But what do you actually get with IntelliJ? A massive, monolithic Java application that frequently hogs 8GB+ of RAM, locks up your system while “indexing pre-built binaries,” and forces you into a closed proprietary ecosystem.

This is just exaggeration. I use IntelliJIDEA everyday (on mac) with multiple projects open and tbh they have optimized the IDE a lot to make it faster. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's getting better. Also it's not closed source. The core of the IDE is open source (https://github.com/jetbrains/intellij-community) and for some specific framework support (e.g. Spring) are available on Ultimate.

Re: Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot

#14

Post by spockz » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 9:17 AM UTC

marginalia_nu wrote: post #9

TiredOfLife wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one in VS Code seems fine. It's not quite intellij level, but what is. And speaking on llm and lsp. The new PHP lsp PHPantom (with help of llms) is approaching jetbrains offering fast.

That's just a wrapper for jdtls. I mean it works on some projects, but fails on many gradle builds and is basically just running the Eclipse IDE headlessly. This is probably the one contender: https://github.com/georgewfraser/java-language-server and it kinda works, but it's also a bit lacking.

Metal, the Scala LSP, seems to do Java just fine. When using it in VSC, I feel the limitations compared to IntelliJ are more coming from VSC than from the LSP. Dependencies etc just resolve fine, it is just the UI that is not as polished as IntelliJ’s.

I try VSC with Metal twice a year. It works fine for small projects. But for bigger projects it lacks the more holistic approach that IntelliJ has and feels more like a text editor with smarts bolted on than an IDE.

I’m using Zed a lot as well for Golang and a bit for Rust. For Java it is also hard to use and lacking the same polish.

Re: Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot

#15

Post by CafeRacer » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 9:20 AM UTC

sajithdilshan wrote: post #13

> But what do you actually get with IntelliJ? A massive, monolithic Java application that frequently hogs 8GB+ of RAM, locks up your system while “indexing pre-built binaries,” and forces you into a closed proprietary ecosystem. This is just exaggeration. I use IntelliJIDEA everyday (on mac) with multiple projects open and tbh they have optimized the IDE a lot to make it faster. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's…

This is actually not an exaggeration. Ive been using WebStorm when it worked well, then it became progressively slower to the point of being unusable even on small projects.

Re: Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot

#16

Post by Bishonen88 » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 9:27 AM UTC

CafeRacer wrote: post #15

sajithdilshan wrote: post #13

> But what do you actually get with IntelliJ? A massive, monolithic Java application that frequently hogs 8GB+ of RAM, locks up your system while “indexing pre-built binaries,” and forces you into a closed proprietary ecosystem. This is just exaggeration. I use IntelliJIDEA everyday (on mac) with multiple projects open and tbh they have optimized the IDE a lot to make it faster. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's…

This is actually not an exaggeration. Ive been using WebStorm when it worked well, then it became progressively slower to the point of being unusable even on small projects.

Counterpoint: use intellij on full stack apps with cdk, react, sqls and whatnot, multiple open at a time, without any problem.

Re: Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot

#17

Post by timanderson » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 9:29 AM UTC

marginalia_nu wrote: post #4

The fact we still don't have a decent Java language server is one of my canaries for the fact that LLMs still, generally speaking, can't ship. There is undeniably demand for this sort of thing, but nobody is coming to meet it. (jdtls, bless it for trying, is just not good)

How is the Oracle one? It has better reviews in VS Code marketplace than the Red Hat one (jdtls)

Re: Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot

#18

Post by whazor » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 9:38 AM UTC

marginalia_nu wrote: post #4

The fact we still don't have a decent Java language server is one of my canaries for the fact that LLMs still, generally speaking, can't ship. There is undeniably demand for this sort of thing, but nobody is coming to meet it. (jdtls, bless it for trying, is just not good)

why do you need a java language server? Let them use the same tooling you would use in CI

Re: Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot

#19

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 9:45 AM UTC

sajithdilshan wrote: post #13

> But what do you actually get with IntelliJ? A massive, monolithic Java application that frequently hogs 8GB+ of RAM, locks up your system while “indexing pre-built binaries,” and forces you into a closed proprietary ecosystem. This is just exaggeration. I use IntelliJIDEA everyday (on mac) with multiple projects open and tbh they have optimized the IDE a lot to make it faster. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's…

[deleted]

Re: Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot

#20

Post by affenape » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 9:45 AM UTC

Bishonen88 wrote: post #16

CafeRacer wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually not an exaggeration. Ive been using WebStorm when it worked well, then it became progressively slower to the point of being unusable even on small projects.

Counterpoint: use intellij on full stack apps with cdk, react, sqls and whatnot, multiple open at a time, without any problem.

I've tried using RustRover over WSL2 multiple times with every new release, but it's been a huge disappointment every time. My fans constantly spin like crazy, memory vanishes into thin air, and typing is super laggy - it even overwrites random sections of the file sometimes. On top of that, the built-in terminal is totally unusable because it craps out and freezes the app whenever there's a large output.

PyCharm, on the other hand, was always great to use. But since VS Code gives me pretty much everything I need for my daily work without demanding too much from my system, I've finally moved away from JetBrains.