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Comment by malkia | Hacker News Reader

I've been long user of JetBrains' products - and love them. I even use ReSharper in Visual Studio (which I still consider better IDE, but for Linux / Mac - JetBrains is my choice, and heck, sometimes even Rider/CLion/RustRover/GoLand on Windows too - especcially GoLand).

But... but... I've always wanted (and willing to pay) a single IDE with any plugin that works in it - not just so many different versions...

I'm a multiple programming language user - mostly C++, but also Python, Go, Rust, C#, etc.

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In jetbrains paradigm you should install IDEA and install python plugin, go plugin, etc. You only have to do it once

That should get you within 90%+ use cases

I think there was no C++ (ahem native) debugger in IDEA... but I'll check again, could be wrong really...

Sadly not, as Clion is not available as a plugin like almost all other IDEs: https://www.jetbrains.com/products/compare/?product=idea&pro...

Thanks!!! I also saw your other post about C# - maybe one day JetBrains would change their mind!

I'm trying latest IDEA (2025.1 EAP) and for the first time a bazel project that I have got parsed successfully (had to enable some old legacy flag though), so there is hope!

Did you use the google plugin or the new BSP based one by JetBrains?

Over the years I've tried both the google plugin, and now the BSP one.

Mixed results. Almost always works on Linux/OSX, but my dominant platform is Windows.

Yesterday tried it again (BSP one) with IDEA 21.5 EAP with nightly on the plugins, and things got synced, but was not able to find any targets (they are C++ targets), funny it found and listed a "filegroup"

But I have my hopes up, the BSP looks like it's doing the right thing discovering much faster the targets, and probably needs more work just to finish all edge cases (like mine - Windows).

Meanwhile Eclipse and Netbeans have been supporting mixed language development, and JNI debugging, for the last two decades.

IntelliJ has supported this for over a decade also, and having used Eclipse for PHP a decade ago, I think it's very generous to say that that was actually supporting non-Java languages as an IDE, rather than just a very slow and heavyweight text editor. I'd say Eclipse's weakness for Python, PHP, etc. at that time led to how long IDE-skepticism has been a thing.

No it wasn't, you have to have IntelliJ and Clion to debug JNI, and there are no plans on the roadmap to ever do otherwise.

In fact, the JNI tooling support on Android Studio is a custom implementation done by Android team themselves.

Isn't that mostly because Android uses its own VM, not a standard Java one?

That doesn't work and is a major problem for me. I have a Java project with C++ native code. Using a devcontainer so the C++ dependencies are installed seems like the right thing to do... Unfortunately, I need to use Idea for the devcontainer and can't use both it and clion. Separating it to two projects defeats the purpose as the Java code depends on the C++ code which will be in a different container.

VSCode supports multiple languages in one container just fine. My hacky solution is to use a hybrid container with IntelliJ for the Java code and then connect VSCode to it for doing C++. That means I will be forfeiting my CLion license. I contacted their support (which is reasonably responsive), they say they're working on a solution but I don't know when it will be practical for me.

I would happily pay through the nose for their language and refactoring features as some sort of LSP or plugin for other editors.

I use their products because that aspect is best-in-class for many languages, but the actual applications themselves leave a lot of be desired. Core text editing is pretty good, but so many Byzantine nested menus and odd Java fully-modal locks-out-the-background dialogs.

> Byzantine nested menus

crtl-shift-a

Was just going to post that yeah, ALL the JetBrains IDEs have a "Command Palette" with fuzzy search for all actions. I can't remember the last time I even went through the menu bar.

Have you tried Zen mode?

Back in the day I wrote a significant part of the first version of PyCharm. A part of he job was also making the same language-supporting code available as a plugin, and virtual feature parity between PyCharm standalone and the Python plugin inside IDEA (the paid version) was a requirement.

Maybe things changed after the 15 years that have passed since, but I don't see why would they.

They can't build the mothership, that means they only have one product. The problem I have is that they build these editors to their benefit, not mine. I had the same problem despite liking the tools initially. Between nvchad and vscode, I have all my bases covered for any situation/language.

It is possible to install the Python and Go plugins into IntelliJ. That's the setup used wildly in my current place of work.

It wouldn't surprise me if that was the case with Rust, C++, and possibly even C# too.

I'm sure there is some loss of UX and related features in this setup but there are always trade-offs.

No both C++ and C# need to be bought as separate IDEs:

Only Clion includes C++: https://www.jetbrains.com/products/compare/?product=idea&pro...

Only Rider includes C#: https://www.jetbrains.com/products/compare/?product=idea&pro...

Thanks. I don't use either but good to correct my guess.

Rider handles C++ but it looks like that's only for MSBuild projects.

Only on Windows. For other platforms it has very limited support for the Unreal engine and not much else.

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