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Adam Crockett 🌀
Adam Crockett 🌀

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⚔️ Moving from VScode to Webstorm ⚔️

Yep it's one of those posts where I talk about how big my hammer is 🔨 and how much it wieghs and how many nails it can hit per hour... Oh right, nobody else really talks about tools like we do in this industry.

I personally don't get attached to editors and IDEs anymore, but I can say this, vscode is astonishingly good and I have used it since beta. It has come a long way.

So you might be thinking, vscode fanboy why are you switching?

There is nothing wrong with my #vscodesetup
But I now work with 99% java developers, and most of them are comfortable with jetbrains.

I decided to make a noble sacrifice for team productivity by getting hold of Webstorm. And it's quite a lot like my vscode setup, just out of the box. Sure it's missing some of my favourite features like ... Nothing, and it's not as pretty ... without a material skin, then it is pretty. Okay so it's about the same once customized, I recommend a vscode keymap and that's it really, it's fine.

What I gain is helpability, make it easier to be helped, that's how you should consider your editor.

At home, I may still use vscode, or just go all in.

Have you ever made such choices, do you enjoy Webstorm or vscode? Maybe you think I'm an idiot, let me know in the comments 😅

Top comments (25)

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exadra37 profile image
Paulo Renato • Edited

I enjoy Sublime Text, and run it from inside a Docker Container.

I tried VSCode for several times, but is to slow for a Sublime Text user.

Jetbrain products are even slower for a Sublime Text user, and it looks like you need to take a course just to learn to work with them... I am looking at you Android Studio ;)

One of my required questions when being interviewed for a new job is about the tools being used, and if I am free to choose what Operating System and editor I will use. If I am not free to choose them then I drop the offer at that stage. In my opinion each developer should be free to work with the tools he feels more productive with.

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rolfstreefkerk profile image
Rolf Streefkerk

This is imo pretty extreme, in a lot of cases a company can have a reason to harmonize tooling and to just dismiss this because of your preference makes you look inflexible.
There are more tools that work than just Sublime editor

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exadra37 profile image
Paulo Renato

There are more tools that work than just Sublime editor

Not saying the opposite.

This is imo pretty extreme, in a lot of cases a company can have a reason to harmonize tooling and to just dismiss this because of your preference makes you look inflexible.

I recognize it can be seen as an extreme position, but I am a Developer because of passion, not just because it's on more profession, therefore I prefer to work with the tools I like, provided that they do not affect the expected results from me.

This being said I don't see why I can't use my preferred editor where I feel it is better for me. For example to code Android Apps I just use Android Studio(see my orignal comment), despite my dislike of it, I recognize that is more productive to use it, then using Sublime.

What is "extreme" is companies "forcing" developers to use certain Operating Systems, I am looking at using MACs to develop for Linux, and then resorting to VMs to run the code, really!!! Ok I forgot that using a MAC is often more about status and aesthetics then about using the right tool for the job.

My philosophy is that If I need to code in .net I will use a Windows OS, If I need to code an iOS App I will use a MAC computer, and for the rest I will use a Linux OS.

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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett 🌀

I have a Mac, I don't like it but I do use it and it's 8 cores and does fine. I long for a Linux machine. But it's all about the same to me.

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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett 🌀

If we race editors there would be a clear winner 🐌🐌🐌🐌, but as a choice thing I choose the greater good haha.

I totally agree it should never be enforced, and wasn't for me. But there is a lot to be said for flexibly switching tools. Am I as productive right now, probably at about 50% but it's not too much of a stretch that I will be next month. I am new anyway so perfect time to re-evaluate.

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exadra37 profile image
Paulo Renato

I forced me to work with VSCode for two months in a row, but when I went back to Sublime to open a huge file***, and felt it's difference in speed I was simply not able to go back to VScode again.

*** Sublime Text is the only editor I know that really handles huge text files, like csv ones, VSCode just freezes.

I am new anyway so perfect time to re-evaluate.

I keep doing it time to time, but I always go back to Sublime Text, but I will give another try to VSCode in the future.

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Félix Dion-Robidoux • Edited

This reminds me that I really wanna get back into Jetbrains products. I used to swear by them when I studied web development back in 2013 all the way until 2017 when I had to switch to writing C#, and Rider was not a good alternative to Visual Studio at the time. Since then, I got used to Visual Studio, but neither VS2019 nor VS Code feel as robust and "complete" and as I want them to be for straight up web development, sadly.

I think you just convinced me to grab a personnal Jetbrains subscription once again. Hopefully they ironed out the problems with Rider by now.

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deciduously profile image
Ben Lovy

Seconding this. I've never had a bad experience with a Jetbrains product, and honestly don't really know why they never stuck for me. This is prompting me to try again.

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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett 🌀

If you make it like what your used to it might just feel a very small amount of discomfort, but it does have some very strong Git powers.

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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett 🌀

On the subject I might look at clion for rust.

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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett 🌀

Time is a great healer. Haha you convinced yourself, but I'm glad I reminded you. If it doesn't feel right just go back to normal.

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sroehrl profile image
neoan

I work with PHPStorm almost exclusively (it has everything WebStorm has plus additional features). Many of my students use VSCode and the truth is: VSCode is probably the best Open-source IDE around but has two major flaws:

For one, it needs love. Out of the box, it's a disappointing set of features. You can tweak it to become a powerful companion, but the beginner will simply not take advantage of that, not spend enough time with it nor understand what it is that's missing. The second problem is that even if tweaked, it still doesn't compare with the JetBrain IDEs. Not that it's far off, but it just doesn't get close enough to be considered to be of the same value.

And given the fact that JetBrain offers countless possibilities to use their tools for free (easiest one by having a .edu email), it baffles me why they aren't in use way more.

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Pacharapol Withayasakpunt

Reminds me of how often I have to either TypeScript: Restart TS server or Developer: Reload Window in VSCode. VSCode isn't that good, but I don't seem to have much choice with TypeScript.

I have tried WebStorm Trial, but is yet to be impressed.

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rados51 profile image
Rados51

Better then continous random errors from TS, that I dont even use :D

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Patryk • Edited

Commercial is too expensive for me to justify at the moment, and the free version of their tools, when available, is too limited, so I never tried it properly, except for IDEA (one Java project), and Android studio, which I believe is / was built upon it (it's been a few years).

Vscode works great for my needs (Django, Vue, and docker, for the most part), so i don't really see a need to waste time learning another IDE.

But it did take me a while to settle for vscode.

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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett 🌀

Hmm going to need to look into this.

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miguelthedev profile image
Miguel Sanchez

I made the switch too about a couple weeks ago. VSCode is awesome, but I find Webstorm to be better and more helpful.

Like you said, Jetbrains aren’t missing any features that VSCode offers. Except for the aesthetics, but that’s easily fixed with a theme, I use one dark pro.

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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett 🌀

Following your footsteps, I have found only one thing that's slightly anoying.

Multiline shift or cloning sort of works but in vscode it's marginally better, I use this feature alot and will have to watch where I place my cursor.

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Maciek Grzybek

I've recently switched to Webstorm, due to doing a lot of work in IntelliJ (we do some Kotlin backend in my company). I was really impressed at the beginning, especially by amazing intellisense and refactoring options, but... I switched back to VS code. WS felt really slow very often and I had to restart few times a day for some weird reasons (eslint kept complaining about some issue which wasn't there anymore, and it was all right in Vscode).

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Thái Lê • Edited

You're not an idiot, I think that's a good choice and joy. Me myself like the notepad, simple UI, not many buttons lol, and even it gives me no warnings nor errors, it's a joke ya know.

Yeah, I'm also a vscode/vscodium fan boy. But on dark theme, my plots on data science projects were really hard to watch, it mixed black point with those dark theme. So I decided to go on with Pycharm at night and vscode/vscodium at daylight. Both are good and helpful, even prevent me from boring

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Alexander Kim

WebStorm is a powerful IDE, everything is working out of the box. WS autocomplete/refactor features are way better than in VSC. Of course, it's slower than VCS, but on a decent machine it's not so slow. Also i'm using DataGrip inside WS, so convenient.

 
adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett 🌀

What horror have I unleashed, wildly off topic now.

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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett 🌀

👮 off topic police.

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Waylon Walker

A primary reason to use a vim keymap. I can't think of an editor that it's not an option in. It gets me 80% of the way setup and at least makes a new editor usable.