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Comment by xtrumanx | Hacker News Reader

Is there a point in buying WebStorm if I purchase IDEA?

I've been using WebStorm lately and have been considering purchasing it but I'm also learning Scala on the side and would also benefit from IDEA. If IDEA can handle NodeJS and TypeScript is there a point to purchasing WebStorm as well?

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No, there's not really any additional benefit to owning both if you're already buying IDEA. WebStorm's features are essentially a subset of IDEA's. They have a slightly different release schedule (WebStorm seems to be more frequent), but everything that gets added to WebStorm ends up in IDEA reasonably quickly.

Please contact sales@jetbrains.com. If you buy IntelliJ IDEA I hope sales can help you with getting WebStorm for free (or with a discount). Scala support is part of IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition (which is free), but IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate has additional nice features.

Unfortunately, the Play framework plugin is only for the Ultimate edition (last time I checked).

I'm currently working my way through the Functional Programming in Scala course on Coursera using Eclipse. I'm not sure if I would make use of IDEA for now which is why I'm unsure whether to buy it or save myself $70 and get WebStorm only. Plus I think WebStorm currently supports TypeScript better than IDEA but that could change with an update.

I'll definitely pay the $99 if they throw in WebStorm. Is that something you've heard JetBrains has done in the past?

Honestly, for that class it probably doesn't matter much as it's focusing more on functional programming theory than anything complex in terms of application structure or environment. I did it in Eclipse when I took the first iteration of the course, and I didn't really have much trouble. Unless they've added alternate project files, you'd probably have to convert the worksheets and projects to the IDEA format, and that'd be a bit of a hassle.

That said, for general use I really like the Scala support in IDEA. I'd suggest playing around with the free version a bit - as you mention, Play support is only in Ultimate, but the Scala plugin itself works fine in Community. You can get a feel for how IDEA manages projects, handles debugging, that kind of thing.

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