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Comment by pjmlp | Hacker News Reader

> To get a decent IDE support, you either used a language supported by JetBrains (IntelliJ or ReSharper) or.

VS, Eclipse, Netbeans, Delphi, C++ Builder, KDevelop, QtCreator,...

> Notably, the two-sided market problem was solved by Microsoft, who were a vendor of both languages (C# and TypeScript) and editors (VS Code and Visual Studio), and who were generally loosing in the IDE space to a competitor (JetBrains)

Nope, the IDE space on Windows has always been owned by Microsoft since Borland dropped the ball with their management crisis where to go next.

VSCode and LSP were created out of Monaco and Erich Gamma's stewardship, yep one of the four on the patterns book, and original Eclipse team.

"VS Code an Overnight Success… 10 years in the making"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hilznKQij7A

View on HN

> VS, C++ Builder, KDevelop, QtCreator

My understanding is that the state of semantic IDE features for C++ was pretty miserable until CLion and clangd came along.

That is, sure, there were a whole lot of “literally” IDEs — gui wrappers around editor/build system/debugger/compiler combos. In the post, when I say IDE, I focus on “refactoring rubicon” connotation of the term, not on the literal meaning (https://martinfowler.com/articles/refactoringRubicon.html).

Nope, there were plenty of VS plugins like Visual Assist, and the first IDE to offer something like LSP was a C++ one actually, Energize C++.

Here is the documentation to cadillac, https://dreamsongs.com/Cadillac.html, and the respective demo of their XEmacs based environment from 1993.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQQTScuApWk

Refactoring is one feature of IDEs, not the whole package.

Still, here is your refactoring rubicon in Visual Age for C++ (1999), http://www.edm2.com/index.php/VisualAge_C%2B%2B_4.0_Review

Maybe I'm "misremembering", but there was a version of SunStudio in the very late 90s that had "intellisense" style help for C or C++. It was really basic, but it was there.

It was based on NetBeans, SunForte.

https://www.developer.com/java/suns-forte-developer-7-simpli...

Still available under Oracle, now rebranded as Oracle Solaris Studio.

https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E24457_01/html/E21989/gkofj.html#...

Visual Studio was pretty decent for semantic assist for C++ at least as far back as '05 when I was doing my undergrad. It was night and day better than etags and whatever was available in the Linux world at that time, at least as far as I was able to get it configured.

Even longer than that. You could install Visual Studio 6 on Windows 95 and get intellisense/debugging that's quite good. A lot of newer languages still haven't caught up.

I've used KDevelop and QtCreator to write C++, and they had pretty good auto-completion and semantic information way before clang came along.

Example, these blog posts from 2009 showing that KDevelop already had semantic highlighting, smart auto-completion, quick fixes and whatnot https://zwabel.wordpress.com/

KDevelop had its own C++ parser at the time, and it was quite good. Same for QtCreator. They both moved to use libclang much later.

> VS, Eclipse, Netbeans, Delphi, C++ Builder, KDevelop, QtCreator,...

Speak for yourself. Editing C# is much better in Rider than VStudio.

Eclipse was a competitior, but I dread having to use it for anything nowadays. CLion just doesn't work correctly, yet.

For Rust VS Code is better, but only because of awesome rust-analyzer plugin.

Not keeping up with the times with VS?

Eclipse is still my get to go, InteliJ wants me to buy Clion + InteliJ licenses for features Eclipse does out of the box.

VSCode isn't an IDE, plus Rust is the new kid in town.

> VSCode isn't an IDE

Add enough plugins and it will be. Rust being new is one part, other part is that Jetbrains really insists on their plugins vs LSP.

I get Rust errors in Clion on programs that run normally. Bugs that rust-analyzer/cargo don't report.

Bolting 200 things to a bicycle doesn't make it a truck, and no amount of addons can turn VS Code into an IDE. The I means Integrated, and VS Code with plugins and LSPs is anything but.

It has a terminal, debugger, completion, git/source control clients, refactoring tools (more or less depending on the language, obviously), extensions... At what point does it become integrated enough? It's not a bicycle to begin with, it's a small car.

It becomes integrated when the tool internally works on an AST of a language and not on a textual buffer. That’s what makes it an IDE, that the basic text editing features and the compiler are both integrated.

This allows significantly more functionality than any type of LSP + editor ever can. The refactoring functionality is what makes an IDE into an IDE. I use every single feature of IntelliJ every day, and I actually would prefer even more refactoring functionality. LSPs can’t come close to this.

LSPs can compete with classic Visual Studio, but there’s a reason JetBrains started with ReSharper, replacing the refactoring engine of Visual Studio.

> That’s what makes it an IDE, that the basic text editing features and the compiler are both integrated.

Rather arbitrary distinction that doesn't even hold true for all IDEs out there.

By this definition neovim is an ide just because it has native support for treesitter. Yet I don't think it is one

Can you operate on AST elements? e.g., if you move a selected line of text up/down, does it move the text itself or does it move the underlying AST elements and adapt the text to the changed AST?

Can you select a function and drag and drop it into a different file or class and have the code automatically adapt, add/remove parameters, imports, etc as needed?

If you have two functions called doA, in different modules, and you have a file that imports doA from module 1, and you copy that doA call and paste it in a new file, does the IDE correctly add the import as well, or does it just paste the text and you have to import manually?

hey I recognize your over-attached tone and username, do you ever write comment about things rather than your lame preference? Last I remember you were making some point about Kotlin being created to sell intelij.

[citation needed]

I don't remember having any opinions on Kotlin. I've never seen it use in production, just tales.

You sure, you don't have me confused for someone else.

it seems to me I replied to the right comment, which is not yours.

Yeah, easy to lose track of threads on mobile.

As far as I can tell, the point about Kotlin is correct.

Do you want a refresher from JetBrains blog or do you manage to find it yourself?

Just because editing C# in Rider is better than in VS doesn't mean it isn't decent in VC

It's not about being decent, it's about being straight up better. It does get a bit sluggish, but that's more on Java being memory hungry.

What exactly is better in Rider?

Autocomplete, refactoring, UI, support for newest features, etc.

Anecdata time. I was working on codegen in C#. So I wrote the codegen in netstandard2.1. That is until a team member that used Visual Studio complained it didn't work for him. So I had to rewrite the thing in netstandard2.0 (shudder) and it worked.

I haven't seen anyone that wanted to go back to VS after using Rider. I did use it for a while, but after Rider it just seemed like an inferior version.

Can you be more specific?

How is autocomplete better in Rider? Faster coming up with suggestions? More helpful suggestions? IntelliSense and IntelliCode in latest VS versions is pretty decent...

Performance in VS has improved since going 64-bit.

What refactorings are unique to Rider?

UI? What features?

Your statements smells of preference and sound vague.

> smells of preference

Because it is. My preference, never claimed it wasn't one. But I don't know people that would recommend anything else. VS Code is faster but poorer refactors/debug experience. It was just a subjective concensus.

I haven't timed the IDEs nor do I intend to in near future.

I think overall the helpfulness was better, and support for bleeding edge features like CodeGen, but I haven't used VS in like year or two.

> What refactorings are unique to Rider?

I know Rider/ReSharper can fix variable names that are mentioned in comments, which VS can't do (and it gets on my nerves when I don't have ReSharper).

Please.

https://i.imgur.com/mD6Z4zO.png

Idk if it comes with VS out of the box or comes from

free extension called 'Roslynator', but eitherway it is there.

It's built-in, no need for extensions.

Of course it can. It's built-in (see image below) VS can rename variables contained in strings and comments.

Also, it's been a long time now since ReSharper was "needed" to work in VS. ReSharper also bogged down VS a lot.

Also, did you disregard my point about support for code gen. Netstandard 2.1 CodeGen in C# didn't work properly around 1 year ago in VS, while Rider had no problems with them.

But parent was about decent

>> To get a decent IDE support, you either used a language supported by JetBrains (IntelliJ or ReSharper) or.

>VS, Eclipse, Netbeans, Delphi, C++ Builder, KDevelop, QtCreator,...

As someone who does web dev in VS Code, and on the side does C# in Visual Studio, I'm always astonished at just how slow and painful typing code is Visual Studio, but then impressed by how far ahead of VSCode its refactoring features are.

There's the same trade off for C++: if you are very patient you can use CLion and enjoy great completion or if like me you're not a zen monk you use VSCode as a text editor with its 'not so great' IDE features (usually grep works better than VSCode for finding things).

Of course it depends on the size of the project, the plugin used for VSCode (I'm using Microsoft Intellisense).

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