Ask HN: What IDE do you use and why?

Eclipse.

Why? I guess it's mostly down to familiarity / expertise and the fact that it fundamentally "just works" and does what I need. Yes, there are some warts, but by now I've mostly normalized the pain or figured out how to manage around the warts.

I've tried some of the alternatives, including IntelliJ, and just don't find any of them compelling. Or at least not compelling enough to justify the switching cost.

I don't use an IDE, I use Sublime Text. Why? Because I work with JavaScript, Ruby and to a degree with Python and Bash if I have to. All scripting. I find most IDEs make my life harder.

I've used Eclipse for Ruby, JavaScript, Android and (way back) PHP and it was OK.

I've worked with XCode when I needed to do iOS stuff.

I've used IntelliJ and Android Studio and when I do Android (seldom) I still use it. I've even tried to get myself to JUST use IntelliJ IDEs for everything since they support just about everything I do but I devolve back to Sublime quickly.

Right now I am sort of transitioning to Visual Studio Code since it has a few more IDE like features without me giving up on the a lighter dev env that I can just call from the terminal.

So VS Code might be it for me. Whatever you use, the transition from one tool to the other is really uncomfortable (it is why I stuck with eclipse about 10 years ago and why I haven't fully transitioned to VSCode even though I've been using it for a year now) and I would guess that is what keeps most people using whatever they are using.

Emacs with vim keybindings. A lot of folks say the emacs or vim won't make you a better developer. I disagree - if you're a newer developer, then using either of these editors will make you a better developer; I'll explain why. Emacs and vim lend themselves to customization, hacking on, etc. What this does put you in a creator, rather than a consumer, mindset. Unlike a commercial IDE, if there's something your editor doesn't do or something you want to change, you often build the feature yourself, instead of asking or begging some company to add features.

That being said, neither of these editors will give you magic powers, and if you're looking for the lowest effort to benefit ratio, then you're better off with something like VS Code.

VSCodium. Why? I work in Angular, and almost nothing handles typescript as well as VSCode.

When I'm working in Java, I use Eclipse. It's very powerful and fairly comfortable. IntelliJ looks nice but i don't feel like I have a lot to gain by switching. Besides, Eclipse is open source and I prefer using open tools.

vim with a bunch of external Python scripts and Go Programs plus vimscript bindings to them.

Why:

Endless flexibility, easy to develop and use new features (I essentially write a few lines of python to teach it a new trick). Example: I want to email a part of a source file to a coworker: I simply type

    `mail:account:subject:to:addr[,addr...][:cc:addr[,addr...]]

on the line above the code, mark it + the lines I want to send, press <Leader>m and done. a few taps on `u` and the lines are gone again. Or I write issue notes in small md files, these include file links ... cursor over a link, <Leader>r and I jump right to the file, line + cursorposition. Issue file includes external link? `gx` and it opens in the browser.

And since vim integrates seamless with the terminal since version 8, I don't even need a multiplexer anymore :D

Android Studio, obviously when working on Android apps, which is my daily work. It's pretty much the standard tool for doing Android development: dependency management, profiling, debugging, etc.

I used to be a big fan of Eclipse for anything, but now already replaced it with a lighter setup: neovim + CoC.

JetBrains products. They're so well designed. Closest to 'smart' I've ever seen.

Lazarus / Free Pascal - I'm old, and I like Pascal. I can build GUI programs very efficiently with it.

When I'm not using Lazarus, I used Notepad++ because it can handle huge files without dying.

When I'm in Linux, I use nano

Visual Studio 2022 when doing .NET stuff when I'm on Windows

JetBrains Rider when doing .NET stuff when I'm on macOs

Visual Studio Code for Web Front-end development (React/TS)

Everyone should use whatever they are most comfortable with and which has the least friction with their most common Workflows.

Emacs, for the reason Churchill preferred democracy.

always vim and "been able to exit, successfully"