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Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot

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

#31

Post by tecleandor »

I'm trying to avoid IntelliJ because I only need it for editing TeamCity build configuration files, that are written in a Kotlin based DSL [0], and autocomplete and linting are be very helpful.

I've tried Eclipse and VS Code but I don't get them to autocomplete or detect syntax correctly. Would any LSP help me with that? As I have no idea about Java, Kotlin or Gradle, everything is kinda confusing to me...

--

  0: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/teamcity/kotlin-dsl.html

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

#32

Post by marginalia_nu »

dtech wrote: post #28
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)

Nah, there is little demand for it that's the reason. LLMs don't need a LSP, they work better without it often. Most Java devs use IntelliJ or another IDE with its inbuilt thing. For everyone else the existing one is good enough for incidental usage. So ~no one cares

I care, which is existence proof that someone cares.

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

#34

Post by marginalia_nu »

adamddev1 wrote: post #21
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)

Exactly. I've been trying to say this. Some people think that because people can write CRUD APIs and end-user apps with AI, no-one will need to write code anymore. There is so much to be built in terms of tooling and libraries where we need tight, solid, well-crafted, original, unique code.

They have a real weakness when it comes to designing something that doesn't have a design precedent. There are no good java language servers, so it can't design a good java language server.

You can also show this with by e.g. asking an LLM to design an internet search engine in Java, for which there doesn't exist very many examples, and my own Marginalia Search and my devlog is one of few design examples it has to reach for.

Even mentioning nothing of MS just using similar constraints, you'll get a nearly identical design to Marginalia Search. Algorithm choices will be the same. Document and term IDs will encoded in a similar succinct fashion (in one of my experiments, the chosen design was binary compatible). Architecture will be the same. Services and components will to a significant degree have the same names and even using the same non-standard vocabulary. It isn't word for word identical, there sure are a lot of coincidental similarities that notably don't exist with search engines implemented in other languages.

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

#36

Post by tiew9Vii »

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…

I've used InteliJ on and off for 20 plus years. It's progressively got bloated and slower, not faster.

20 years ago it was the fast lean option when there was Netbeans and Eclipse. Today it's ok, still good feature wise but fast and lean it is not anymore when I've used it for Scala oand Kotlin.

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

#37

Post by akshaydeshraj »

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…

IntelliJ (actually Android Studio based on IntelliJ) was my first real IDE and real programming experience. I was so blown away !

Almost 15 years later, nothing else matches the out of the box experience of IntelliJ, atleast for JVM based languages.

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

#38

Post by pjmlp »

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…

Quite ironic, given that Emacs used to stand for "Eight Megabytes and Constantly Swapping" for the epoch hardware.

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

#39

Post by pjmlp »

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.

The problem is using Gradle, for starters.

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

#40

Post by pjmlp »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #30
TiredOfLife wrote: post #5

> and forces you into a closed proprietary ecosystem https://github.com/jetbrains/intellij-community ?

Exactly, I've been using their community edition for years for Kotlin development. Works fine for normal day to day development needs. I had a paid subscription for a while that I just let expire because I rely more on agentic coding tools these days and I just don't write a lot of code by hand at this point. The paid version adds a lot of deeper integrations and tools that you may or may not need. Personally, I don'…

I keep finding interesting that some devs refuse to pay for tooling like every other profession, yet they don't take pull requests as salary either.
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