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Comment by bsaul | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how intellij will survive if vscode becomes a standard for pretty much every language.

Which makes me wonder if kotlin will also survive if intellij goes bankrupt.

I've used Intellij for the Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, JavaScript, TypeScript.

I can say that in no way I found VSCode be able to to take on it, even the JavaScript support and they way they have integration with many JavaScript frameworks and other languages frameworks is something I cannot find in VSCode.

Intellij IDEs are really fast, very well integrated and made to get me productive, I couldn't find that in VSCode.

Worth noting, I still use VSCode for JavaScript & HTML & CSS development, but only when it's not heavy development, otherwise Intellij IDEs.

> Intellij IDEs are really fast

I would strongly dispute this. I love the JetBrains IDEs and have been using IntelliJ IDEA for many years, but performance in general is definitely not one of its strong suits (though it has improved significantly over the years).

IntelliJ just feels very sluggish to me, and regularly lags and hangs on our (rather large) work codebase. Anything that causes the IDE to start indexing takes about a full minute before it is usable again. Then there's the occasional crash due to a bad plugin. And it definitely (at least for me) uses more battery on my MacBook than any other editor I've tried.

Having said all that, I try VSCode and other editors every couple months, but I always find myself coming back to IntelliJ IDEA for the reasons you mentioned. Currently, it's just a superior and "smarter" IDE, though I expect Microsoft to narrow the gap over time.

Are you sure you're not just running out of heap space? That problem appeared really quickly when we migrated our devs to IntelliJ, and slowed it down to a crawl. The default 750MB are just not enough for projects with 5000+ Classes.

IMO it shouldn't fall on the shoulder of users to manage the application's memory allocation on its behalf.

It's possible. I did increase mine a while back but I don't remember by how much—I'll try increasing it further and seeing if that helps. Either way, I agree with the sibling comment: As a user, I shouldn't have to worry about memory allocation at all, so even if that is the issue, that's one point against IntelliJ vs other editors.

> Intellij IDEs are really fast

Not on my Core Duo without turning lots of plugins off.

Eclipse and VS 2017 still manage to outperform it, without disabling anything.

And that continuous indexing that we cannot disable. :(

> And that continuous indexing that we cannot disable. :(

You can turn off the continuous indexing by "File > Power Save Mode"

I have used the full-blown Visual Studio.NET for over 15 years now, and JetBrains has got my $150 for the latest ReSharper update every one of those years.

VS Code is still years of dev work behind the baseline VS.NET, and likely will remain that way indefinitely (so that people like me can continue paying for the Real Thing). JetBrains will be happy to fill in the gap to bring one up to speed with the other.

They'll do just fine.

At least with regards to Java, IntelliJ is still miles ahead.

And maybe not the most popular opinion but I still prefer PyCharm over VSCode

Something to consider, VS Code being free means it will eat into IntelliJ's marketshare, even without all the features of IntelliJ. They'll be the people who need the advanced features who will continue buying it, but many people may not need the full suite, and will use VS Code to save money.

IntelliJ has a free version which is good enough in many cases: https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/features/editions_comparison_...

The IntelliJ community edition is free as well, and has features galore. (I'm an Emacs guy through and through, but some Java stuff makes me break out IntelliJ)

Yup, I use both VSCode (for JS) and Intellij (for Java). VSCode is no where close to having the functionality of Intellij Ultimate and I really don't see that gap closing much without some major new extensions being written.

I have thought the same thing. I have been a customer for years but I might let my ‘everything licence’ lapse at the end of my current subscription. VSCode is amazing for mainstream languages as well as Haskell etc.

IntelliJ (Ultimate at least) is miles ahead in comparison to VSCode. Adding, configuring and managing frameworks is a lot easier right now.

Also, don't forget Android studio is built on IntelliJ.

I am scared that it will end in an endless discussion á la "vim vs Emacs" somewhen.

I think jetbrains will do just fine.

Kotlin is free and used for Android. It will survive if JetBrains goes bankrupt. As for JetBrains and IntelliJ, I wouldn’t be concerned. Code has a long way to go to support Java development, and as evidenced by many, devs usually use multiple ides and editors.

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