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Why I Switched from Visual Studio Code to JetBrains WebStorm

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Re: Why I Switched from Visual Studio Code to JetBrains WebStorm

#61

Post by intothemild »

nnq wrote: post #54

Maybe people should realize that the problem is with the JS libraries ecosystem and how most are build in a way that "just jumping into a lib/framework to read its code and see what it does" can't seam to be feasible anymore . For example, in a React app if I'd want to jump from a `Route` import from react-router to it's readable code definition [1], NO IDE or editor around is capable a properly doing the jump, I eit…

Oh yeah.. In VS Code, where I wanted to go to the definition, and it took me to the Typescript file.. It's just insanely frustrating.

Your right it is the absolute worst possible behavior.

I get that information when I hover over the method/class/whatever.. I am looking up the definition because I want to see how this works.

Re: Why I Switched from Visual Studio Code to JetBrains WebStorm

#62

Post by jsmeaton »

owenwil wrote: post #10

I made a similar switch from VS Code to PHPStorm and had a remarkably similar experience. When I started using a proper IDE, I really began to get comfortable with the inner workings of what I was doing–debugging the frameworks I was using, jumping directly into methods and doing fairly broad refractors with their refactoring tools. I’ve found it’s made me a better developer by making that process simpler, while bein…

I really do think you (probably) need to use an IDE properly, so you can at least make a conscious choice about what you’re giving up, or use other tools that provide similar capabilities.

For example, I know a bunch of people that use print debugging, and don’t “get” visual step debugging. But most of those people haven’t used a proper debugger before.

I’m primarily a python dev using vscode. Pycharm debugger (and remote interpreter!) blow away the vscode debugger. But I can use CLI tools (ipdb) nearly as well as any visual debugger. It’s a conscious trade off that I make. Specifically, I prefer the editing experience in vscode over pycharm, but can bridge the gap in other ways.

Know your tools. Know the capability of other tools.

Re: Why I Switched from Visual Studio Code to JetBrains WebStorm

#63

Post by m0zg »

class4behavior wrote: post #52
m0zg wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a wonderful example of selection bias. Basically, vim/emacs is likely to select for people who are "good at computers" and reject everyone else. These people, in turn, are more likely than average to be excellent programmers. But I wouldn't necessarily draw the arrow of causation in this case. Not only does this not mean that IDE users are worse, it also doesn't mean that there are fewer great programmers among…

There is no selection bias because no selection has been done. It's up to you how you interpret the aggregated anecdotes. Such queries are meant to discover notable impact, based on which you might invest in a proper evaluation.

But there is selection. Most "normal" programmers can't even _exit_ Vim, let alone use it with any degree of proficiency.

Re: Why I Switched from Visual Studio Code to JetBrains WebStorm

#64

Post by foepys »

realusername wrote: post #24

It's always the same debate, on my case all the features of Webstorm he's listing I will likely never use them whereas the lag issues & the clutter interface of Webstorm just make it a no-start as my main editor.

How's it cluttered? You can simply hide everything. besides that, the default configuration only shows the main editor and two tool panels (left and bottom), the same as VS Code.

Re: Why I Switched from Visual Studio Code to JetBrains WebStorm

#65

Post by VvR-Ox »

founderling wrote: post #6

When you guys think about all the developers you know, do you rather see a positive or a negative correlation between the usage of high level tools and developer productivity? In other words, is your experience that developers who use an IDE are more productive then developers who only use a text editor? In my experience, the (very few) developers I know who only use VIM or Emacs are way more productive then those wh…

1. That depends on the developer

2. Dev's who use VIM/Emacs are probably already living in their computer so you can't really say if they are good because of the editor they use or the other way round

3. What do you mean by "productive"? Closing more tickets in a sprint? In the end not only individual efficiency is important but also the future of a project. With test you document stuff and ensure at least the tested things won't break (if it's mandatory the tests are executed on every build).

4. Of course tools matter. In our company there is people who still use eclipse and sometimes they just need their time to fix the IDE. My team exclusively uses intellij and I can't remember the last time we had to deal with such a mess.

Re: Why I Switched from Visual Studio Code to JetBrains WebStorm

#66

Post by LandR »

yoodenvranx wrote: post #51
founderling wrote: post #6

When you guys think about all the developers you know, do you rather see a positive or a negative correlation between the usage of high level tools and developer productivity? In other words, is your experience that developers who use an IDE are more productive then developers who only use a text editor? In my experience, the (very few) developers I know who only use VIM or Emacs are way more productive then those wh…

I think it really depends on the type of work you are doing. - If you do low-level stuff like writing a hardware driver or a kernel module you will most likely be fine with a normal text editor because all in all it's not that much code - My friends in a large PHP shop all use PhpStorm to work on large projects. They all tell me that you are way more productive in PHP with the specialized tools that PhpStorm offers.…

Absolutely this, I've worked on a project that was 450 assemblies and about 5 million lines codes split over a few thousands source files.

Without an IDE that can jump between those assemblies and source files it's an absolute nightmare.

Re: Why I Switched from Visual Studio Code to JetBrains WebStorm

#67

Post by VvR-Ox »

xfer wrote: post #49
not_kurt_godel wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of the hundreds of devs I've worked with, I can think of exactly two who use(d) vim to edit code with any regularity. Both are fairly proficient above-average devs overall, but I'm pretty sure they also use IDEs heavily and only use vim for quick things. Beyond a certain level of codebase complexity, there is simply no way to do the job with a text editor, even with fancy macros. Vim is an elegant tool, but is si…

Would you mind being a bit more specific than using vague language and analogy? What are all these modern development tasks?

+1 I use intellij for big projects because of the jump- and refactoring stuff but I know I could do it with VIM if I'd know it better.

A good example is SpaceVim that enables people who don't want to configure everything to use VIM as an IDE that provides most of the tools you'd need for developing.

E.g. it has a linter for python, mouse support and code-completion. I don't need much more to develop most of the time.

VIM is awesome and I think what most people whining about it ignore is the fact it runs in a terminal (vs. some big bloated piece of sh*t).

Re: Why I Switched from Visual Studio Code to JetBrains WebStorm

#68

Post by edwinjm »

founderling wrote: post #6

When you guys think about all the developers you know, do you rather see a positive or a negative correlation between the usage of high level tools and developer productivity? In other words, is your experience that developers who use an IDE are more productive then developers who only use a text editor? In my experience, the (very few) developers I know who only use VIM or Emacs are way more productive then those wh…

Haha. I've coded in plain text editors for years and now I'm using PHPStorm and I'm so much more productive with all the tooling it provides. Refactoring is so much easier, resulting is cleaner and easier to maintain code.

Re: Why I Switched from Visual Studio Code to JetBrains WebStorm

#69

Post by nnq »

intothemild wrote: post #61
nnq wrote: post #54

Maybe people should realize that the problem is with the JS libraries ecosystem and how most are build in a way that "just jumping into a lib/framework to read its code and see what it does" can't seam to be feasible anymore . For example, in a React app if I'd want to jump from a `Route` import from react-router to it's readable code definition [1], NO IDE or editor around is capable a properly doing the jump, I eit…

Oh yeah.. In VS Code, where I wanted to go to the definition, and it took me to the Typescript file.. It's just insanely frustrating. Your right it is the absolute worst possible behavior. I get that information when I hover over the method/class/whatever.. I am looking up the definition because I want to see how this works.

...10x more frustrating when you see that there are >1 y old bug reports about this but it's always delegated as lower priority than smth else and after (I think, not sure anymore...) someone fixed some underlying functionality that was supposed to make this possible, the actual functionality of usable jump-to-implementation is still not fully implemented!

And I'm not saying that the devs don't care or not doing wonderful work... just that they've ended up with a codebase where something like this is genuinely hard to do.

And when they'll finally get it will still be frustrating as hell because >50% of the time it would jump to some unreadable transpiled code because there's no actual standardized way to jump to the original source the final js got transpiled from. In an ideal world, if some React component was written in OCaml mixed with Clojure and transpiled to JS, I'd want to be able to jump to the implementation into that actual original OCaml or Clojure code. But I get it, whoever would be smart enough to get that working reliably would probably make better use of their time trying to cure cancer or solve climate issues or go to Mars etc.

Re: Why I Switched from Visual Studio Code to JetBrains WebStorm

#70

Post by Theodores »

edwinjm wrote: post #68
founderling wrote: post #6

When you guys think about all the developers you know, do you rather see a positive or a negative correlation between the usage of high level tools and developer productivity? In other words, is your experience that developers who use an IDE are more productive then developers who only use a text editor? In my experience, the (very few) developers I know who only use VIM or Emacs are way more productive then those wh…

Haha. I've coded in plain text editors for years and now I'm using PHPStorm and I'm so much more productive with all the tooling it provides. Refactoring is so much easier, resulting is cleaner and easier to maintain code.

Seconded. There is no going back. Sure I can do clever things in VIM and navigating with the home row keys is great, but it is just so much quicker with phpStorm. No closing tags go missing, even English language spelling mistakes don't slip through.

On first use I found there were a few frustrations and I still end up with lots of quotes where I type something= only for phpStorm to enter quotes for me that I am not quite expecting.

I also had a problem of finding 'jkjjkjk' in my code from vi habits of using the j key to move in the document.

For me phpStorm is where the real work happens, I know I am not really good enough to do it in vi whereas I once believed that. Sometimes you see a missing closing bracket highlighted in phpStorm and know you would have wasted a minute or two testing had it been done in vi.

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