Hacker News Reader

Comment by fusiongyro | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure you get something like flycheck out of the box, but what makes me use IntelliJ for Java is:

- navigating around the code: jump to interface, jump to implementations, jump to definition, etc. This sucks in Emacs even using etags.

- refactoring: highlight code, press a hotkey, now it's a function or a variable and all repeats have been replaced with references to it

Seeing a choice between Emacs and IntelliJ for Go, the decision comes down to how likely am I to use those two features. I don't do much Go, but the appeal of having that functionality is pretty significant. I would definitely try Gogland based on my experience with Java et al.

View on HN

You wouldn't use etags for navigating go code in Emacs. You would use go-mode.

Emacs doesn't implement navigating and refactoring go code in elisp, as it does for other languages. For go, there are editor-independent tools, like go-guru, which are used not only by Emacs, but also for vi, vscode and multitude of others. Or just from command line. I would consider golang to be the last language, that needs an Idea-based IDE.

So does go-guru allow you to navigate code in emacs or not?

Being able to navigate the code (and refactor it, really) in the same place you are viewing it is a big win for me. At least in the other languages I care about.

Yes, it allows you to navigate in emacs.

This shows you how: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_Y9xCEMj5S-7rv2ooHpZNH15...

> So does go-guru allow you to navigate code in emacs or not?

Yes (or at least, go-mode in total does): C-c C-j to go to a definition (annoyingly, not the stand M-. every single other language mode uses, why go-mode why), M-, to return up &c. Also, with projectile, searching an entire project (not just source) for strings & regexps is incredibly easy.

I'm not 100% certain, but there's a strong possibility that emacs invented code navigation.

I think it came from ctags, which was part of Unix since way back.

In Emacs there are guru and godef that make it a breeze to work with Go:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_Y9xCEMj5S-7rv2ooHpZNH15...

UPD: Now, if only there was something similar (in Emacs) for Java, Ruby and JS...

I don't use emacs but I would be surprised if those weren't supported. Vim-go, VS.Code both offer those features through community plugins. I would not be surprised if JetBrains were using the same code services used by those plugins.

> jump to implementations

not a trivial thing to implement for Go though. Last time I checked the Go plugin for Intellij was missing this functionality

Yeah, still missing. Just tried it.

This is indeed trivial to implement for Go in the sense of "implement" which allows for just calling out to guru ( https://godoc.org/golang.org/x/tools/cmd/guru ).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com