I'm fed up with Jetbrains. I gave them money for many years and I loved intelliJ. It was the go-to IDE regardless of your code.
Then they started "simpler" IDEs like PHPStorm, but that was fine because I could supplement my IntelliJ with plugins that would basically give me PHPStorm and the like. IntelliJ remained the go-to tool for the polyglot.
The problem were the bugs. 3-4 years sometimes to fix glaring bugs well reported. Some were unheard.
They also made a big spiel about their millisecond to rendering right about the time where I switched to a 4K screen that rendered the IDE completely dead on its knees. The irony! Turns out Java wasn't so good for IDE in macOS retina displays.
You'd code in windowed mode, fine, you stretched open the IDE to fill the screen and every key stroke would then take seconds to render!!
Then one day, C-Lion.
All the sudden, we need a brand new IDE because you know, C++ is that different. OK fine. I don't plan on writing C++. Still though, felt like a cash grab. Then AppCode, then a plethora of other IDE that just feel like cheap IntelliJ-light opportunity to make money.
So I moved to VSCode, grudgingly. Had enough of unanswered bugs, poor performance and focus on everything else but the product that got them there.
VSCode is kinda great. But it's a perfect example of how much Microsoft could strap rockets to pig and make it fly. It's fast. You couldn't write a editor that fast using that technology.
But still VScode irks me with the MSFT part and the future enshitifcation that is all but inevitable.
Recently I found Zed [1]. Zed is what I wanted VSCode to be, and I highly recommended. Sadly it's still lacking in many languages like PHP but I hope one day they get there, because it's absolutely stellar.
I believe it's written in Rust and supports Rust really well. Give it a go. I can't tell if they'll be around in 5 years but I sure damn hope so.
So I'm sorry but I fell out of love with Jetbrains. And you might thing this is a cheap shot but I gave them well over a thousand dollars.
I don't have problems with bugs as often as I would expect considering the complexity of the IDE ! I'd say it's much better than Visual Studio which is directly comparable.
But there are many annoying issues open for a long time, two I'm struggling with currently :
- integrated terminal rendering performance is atrocious (and I hit this all the time since I use CLI a lot in my workflow)
- remote editing is a false promise feature - it's been there for a year but it's not even close to usable - this is a big deal for me as well and VS code is immeasurably better in this regard
I did a lot of C# recently and (ironically) VS code is terrible for this kind of language, Rider > Visual Studio.
I'm doing some Python now and PyCharm is just barely edging the VS Code. The remote experience is just not comparable and the terminal rendering performance is PITA.
If I was doing TS I wouldn't even bother with IntelliJ.
Yeah if you remember they actually started as Resharper I believe. This was a powerful tool for visual studio which made C# a lot better. It was like essentially the precursor of LSP.
MSFT standardised LSPs with the language server protocol (well, literally).
So if anything, Jetbrains knows C# just as well as MSFT ever have!
I don't understand why new editors like Zed go through the effort to create an incomplete Vim plugin, when NeoVim can act as backend for other programs which automatically includes one's entire configuration and plugins.
re: Jetbrains: I didn't mind splitting IDEs too much since you can choose to purchase a la carte if you don't need every development environment. I simply use Rider (C#/Unreal) and it came out cheaper than the one monolith that was IntelliJ some 5+ years ago.
re:VSCode: did you have any problems with ~~Atom~~ or Sublime Text? I love VSCode, but those tend to be the competitors that come up when talking about it. They lack the trillion dollar corportation attached to them so you may like them.
EDIT: oh it turns out Zed was made from the creators of Atom. I guess this is in good hands, in that case.
EDIT2: Darn, mac only for now. I guess I just have to wait. Also, I had no idea how much drama happened in the years since I last used Atom. I guess that recommendation is a no-go.
I use SublimeText since 2012 and paid for all 3 major versions of it, and it has good tools for Rust, but lacks interactive debugger. VS Code's debugger is very inconvenient, but at least it exists. Had to switch to VS Code for Rust.
Then they started "simpler" IDEs like PHPStorm, but that was fine because I could supplement my IntelliJ with plugins that would basically give me PHPStorm and the like. IntelliJ remained the go-to tool for the polyglot.
The problem were the bugs. 3-4 years sometimes to fix glaring bugs well reported. Some were unheard.
They also made a big spiel about their millisecond to rendering right about the time where I switched to a 4K screen that rendered the IDE completely dead on its knees. The irony! Turns out Java wasn't so good for IDE in macOS retina displays.
You'd code in windowed mode, fine, you stretched open the IDE to fill the screen and every key stroke would then take seconds to render!!
Then one day, C-Lion.
All the sudden, we need a brand new IDE because you know, C++ is that different. OK fine. I don't plan on writing C++. Still though, felt like a cash grab. Then AppCode, then a plethora of other IDE that just feel like cheap IntelliJ-light opportunity to make money.
So I moved to VSCode, grudgingly. Had enough of unanswered bugs, poor performance and focus on everything else but the product that got them there.
VSCode is kinda great. But it's a perfect example of how much Microsoft could strap rockets to pig and make it fly. It's fast. You couldn't write a editor that fast using that technology.
But still VScode irks me with the MSFT part and the future enshitifcation that is all but inevitable.
Recently I found Zed [1]. Zed is what I wanted VSCode to be, and I highly recommended. Sadly it's still lacking in many languages like PHP but I hope one day they get there, because it's absolutely stellar.
I believe it's written in Rust and supports Rust really well. Give it a go. I can't tell if they'll be around in 5 years but I sure damn hope so.
So I'm sorry but I fell out of love with Jetbrains. And you might thing this is a cheap shot but I gave them well over a thousand dollars.
[1] https://zed.dev