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Comment by Cthulhu_ | Hacker News Reader

If your budget is a few hundred, an IntelliJ Ultimate license. For me it's a force multiplier. Built-in highlights of things that can be improved (e.g. linting) is a bonus. In the end, things like VS Code are just text editors.

I mean, you can't get a warning that the `[]` syntax isn't available in your old codebase's flavor of PHP (5.2) in VS Code. I think.

Alternatively: Take time off. If you have enough money to live on for a month, take it. Make a list of things you'd like to dig into, or just spend a month doodling. Or take half days off for a month and participate in something like Advent of Code. You can challenge yourself in various ways, like use an unfamiliar language for the month, or a different language every day. Do some tutorials and make stuff in Pico-8, embrace the limitations and embarrassingly unreadable code, which is amazing at the same time because you wrote it and it all fits in your head. Just throwing it out there.

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Second this.

I pay for Intellij Ultimate out of pocket, work would buy it but frankly it's easier to just have my own license and I use it a lot outside of work.

vscode is fantastic at what it does but one is a wheelbarrow, the other a dump truck.

> I mean, you can't get a warning that the `[]` syntax isn't available in your old codebase's flavor of PHP (5.2) in VS Code. I think.

You can get warnings when syntax isn’t available in your script’s flavor of shell in [neo]vi[m], emacs, or GNU ed with shellcheck, I’d be mildly surprised if there wasn’t a similar editor-agnostic linter for PHP.

I just tried this in VSCode using Intelephense and it detected the invalid syntax just fine ("PHP 5.4+ syntax found."). I've never done PHP development, but it only took a few clicks to set it up (install extension and go into preferences and change the language version).

Since VSCode is just using LSP under the hood, that means it would also work fine in Emacs, [neo]vi[m], Sublime, Atom, etc.

In the long run, I don't see how IntelliJ will be able to compete with LSP, as it gets polished up.

First of all, Intellij (and Visual Studio) are more than just LSP. They're debugging, source control, static analysis, test runners, profiling tools, database tools, etc.

Secondly, the state of LSP clients is a long way from matching Visual Studio or Intellij. When LSP is competitive with the major IDEs, I'll happily switch, but I don't see that in the next 5 years at least. As an example, try opening UE4 using any of the LSP implementations.

I'm well aware of the differences between IntelliJ and LSP, I've been an IntelliJ power user for years and have written plugins as well. Currently I've transitioned back to Emacs for most of my day-to-day coding, since LSP provides good enough completion, navigation, and static analysis, and DAP provides good enough debugging and test running. The rest of your list are non-issues for me, e.g. every editor I know of has good source control tools, and most profiling I do is not in an IDE, it's using special-purpose profiling tools.

LSP and DAP are open protocols supported by most editors and IDEs. I have a hard time believing that language implementers won't prioritize their implementation over IntelliJ. Which is a good thing, our development stacks should be open and free.

> Im well aware of the differences between IntelliJ and LSP

Apologies I didn't mean to imply you didn't, I only meant to point out that LSP isn't the only factor in choosing an editor. For some people,(e.g. me) lack of some of that tooling is important.

>since LSP provides good enough completion, navigation, and static analysis

My experience using lsp with clangd as the server on a large project was that it flat out didn't work. Try opening UE4 for example.

> The rest of your list are non-issues for me,

That's great for you, but others do use those tools regularly. It's also a feature that those tools work out of the box, consistently, meaning that a coworker can (occasionally) drive by commit/run/compile on my computer.

> I have a hard time believing that language implementers won't prioritize their implementation over IntelliJ.

Intellij/VS are going to keep improving in that time. As much as I'd love for all of my tooling to be open, I don't see that as realistic in the near future based on the current state of the tooling. I'd love to be wrong though!

The way I like to think of it: VSCode is a text editor with plugins, Jetbrains is an IDE.

I spent some time with vscode to install all the correct extensions properly. And for me back is currently on par with Jetbrains tooling, with the added benefit that vscode is faster.

Can you share your setup? I love VS Code and it would be great to optimize my workflow.

So worth it. I got PHPStorm when I started working at Automattic. I'd been developing in PHP for several years at that point, and didn't see the point in an IDE. But my previous job had been a low-end local company.

At Automattic, the expectations were so much higher. They'd give me a 3000+ line, 20+ file codebase to review, for example. There was plenty of time to complete the task, but with so much code to deal with I needed to very quickly develop some skills and tools to keep it all straight.

I learned a lot of keyboard shortcuts for PHPStorm for quickly noting filenames and line numbers in my review sheet, and wrote several macros for quickly writing out repetitive text. These things were essential because it was so easy to get lost or distracted even by flipping between my notes and the code. I could end up going through the same file 4 times if I wasn't careful (on a first pass, that is - it was normal to take several passes through a code base).

Does anyone have any tips or resources for getting more out of the Jetbrains IDEs? I've been using them for years but I still feel like there's so much I'm not taking advantage of.

My personal favorite is "find usages". You can destroy dead code which makes life a bit better in a large codebase. The pretty basic auto refactor is also nice

It seems like there are just a lot of those small things you get used to that are really nice

Jetbrains has a lot of videos on youtube. eg this Intellij one has a bunch of stuff I never knew existed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AMcN-wkspU

Start with going through the settings [1]. You will learn some new things along the way.

There's also a great WebStorm Guide [2], with many tips applicable to other languages as well.

[1] https://darekkay.com/blog/intellij-idea-settings/

[2] https://www.jetbrains.com/webstorm/guide/

Thanks, I'm wondering if there are more tutorials about writing plugins. There are a few shortcuts that do not exist and I'd love to implement with a plugin.

In 2014, I have written a just for fun plugin in about 2 hours (check out my write-up [1]). I've followed the "How to make an IntelliJ IDEA plugin in less than 30 minutes" [2] guide back then. Unfortunately, this guide seems to be outdated, but now there's an official guide [3].

[1] https://darekkay.com/blog/what-the-commit-plugin-for-intelli...

[2] https://www.cnblogs.com/meetrice/p/5184827.html

[3] https://jetbrains.org/intellij/sdk/docs/basics/getting_start...

Hi thanks a lot for the links! I wonder if it's as extensible as say Vim/Emacs.

As a vscode user, I opened up pycharm to see if I like it at all. It asked if I wanted to update ideavim plugins and I said yes. Now looking at ~200% CPU usage for about a minute. Still can't open my folder[1].

There's nothing I hate more than work software that I have to tinker with to keep working. Maybe it doesn't deserve the reputation it has for being a resource hog, or maybe it does?

https://i.imgur.com/TpfAvrB.png

I agree. I got license for the JetBrains All product pack. It's been a huge boost in my productivity for Python and C++ because the refactoring tools make mundane things so much faster.

Also, templating is incredibly powerful. I avoid copy / paste in favor of typing or generating things out. Copy/Paste is a really bad pattern and the overhead of having to put the code in makes me think about abstracting it much earlier than if I just copied and pasting things.

I've been using jetbrains products for years and just bought the personal ultimate license this weekend. Their products are great and their support his excellent!

I've only had one support interaction but it was fairly poor. Their keyboard layout support didn't correctly honour the keyboard layout in macOS that I used, and the response was "file a bug", pointing me to a public issue tracker where I found someone else had reported it 6 years previously. I think that bug has been open for 8 years now – I got an email when another poor customer found it and asked if there was any update. All the issue asks for is for their products to honour the keys the OS says are being pressed.

I think this is a must have for large projects. I wish their search options where like in a search engine though. VS Code is fine for quick edits but feels too basic to handle large codebase.

I actually was wondering if clion is worth the money..

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