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People of DEV! What is your favorite IDE for coding and why? What are the features you like most?
P.s. I am trying to compare ide's and open to trying new ones!
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Top comments (90)
I use Vscode for almost all of my stuff sometimes I use android studio for flutter except that everything else on vscode.
cool. Is vscode heavy or slow to load? I often see it has advanced features but due to its size it loads slowly. Is that true?
It's somewhere in the middle ... a bit heavier than an editor like VIM, but much more lightweight than big IDEs like IntelliJ, Eclipse or Netbeans ... after you've started it once (which takes a little bit more time, but not that much even) then follow up sessions are typically very quick to start (you can just open files or directories from the command line, like
code readme.txtorcode .).So overall I certainly wouldn't say it loads slowly, it always feels quite snappy to me.
You use Brackets, right? Well I think they would be comparable, both built with web tech (HTML, CSS, JS) ... is it also an Electron app?
Interesting!
Yes I use brackets for web dev and eclipse for Java and c++. Ecipse is definitely too heavy for quick use.
Brackets I like bc of the live preview feature. And its super light. The only thing is its predictive text for html isn't the best. But the prediction for css is great.
So I'm just exploring anything new to try and compare to brackets which I've been using for years
Haven't used Brackets but I can imagine it would be quite comparable to VSCode ... maybe because Brackets is from Adobe it has more of an emphasis on design, VSCode doesn't really have that.
You should give brackets a shot! It's 2 best features are the live preview and the inline editor - super useful.
Does vscode have live preview?
Not that I know of, I think VSCode users just have a separate browser window opened next to VSCode ... but what exactly is the inline editor? It sounds like Brackets really has a bit of a unique focus and some features which VSCode probably doesn't have (but maybe also the other way around).
I have a live preview extension installation for webpages.
Yes, VSCode has a good live preview feature
It's an electron application, it is one of the features you'd just expect from your text editor running in a browser
Right. Thats good I guess nowadays every web dev ide has a live preview plugin.
Maybe VS Code might take some time to load because it comes with many preinstalled features and language support. I do mostly web dev so I have disabled most of pre-built elements like C++, C#, R... language features since I'll not be programming in C. It also comes with some preinstalled themes which I have also disabled the ones that I will never use. In my opinion disabling anything that you will not be using could increase the loading speed.
To disable built-in features and themes you can go to the extensions panel
Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+Xand type in the search bar@builtinand just disable the ones that you will not use.It's quite fast to load and is lighter than any other IDE like pycharm or Android studio.
im guessing Android studio is the standard ide for developing Android apps?
Actually I work on Flutter so it can be setup on VSCode or Android Studio and even native android development can be done using VSCode, I did it a while ago when I had a less powerful Intel Pentium and 4GB RAM machine now I have a I5-8300H and 8GB RAM machine which can handle all that easily so i use Android Studio.
Still if I need some quick edit or testing VSCode is my choice even for android.
VSCode, Intellij CE, and vim. I have configured both VSCode and Intellij CE to use the same shortcuts. Intellij is good for java but you will have to purchase it for other languages. VSCode works superbly for golang. Besides, VSCode has number of really cool plugins. For example, I can use REST-API call, Kubernetes, helm right there from the IDE.
Intellij actually has a lot of good plug-ins made by Jetbrain themselves for other language support aside from Java. Pretty much every vscode plugin also exists in intellij as well.
yes thats what I'm hearing vscode has great plugins. Cool man!
The rest api plugin in VSCode is so cool. There's one in Atom but the one in VSCode is a bit better. Really great for testing and design.
Spacemacs mostly. I like how I can do everything using just a keyboard. It's also very important that it does not force me to remember 1000 keyboard shortcuts, but also offers a command palette. I like the configurability, even though I'm sure I'm not squeezing even 50% our if it. Magit is cool, there's no better git integration IMO.
Github integration is nice!
How is it in terms of general workflow? is it good with suggesting variable names, html tags and etc?
It's good enough for me, but I'm mostly work with Ruby, so the bar is not set very high ;) For sure it works great with Elixir too. And I don't really use it at large scale for other languages.
ok i wanted to start learning elixir actually, so ill give spacemacs a try!
How is it compared to vim.
Ps. I don't intent to start the war, just curious as vim was had for me to get used to, and i don't know anything about spacemacs or emacs
My problem with Vim was always that you start from scratch and you need to build your own IDE from zero. Unlike with actual programming, I don't like that with tooling. Spacemacs gives me solid and out-of-the-box working defaults which are a bit bloated of course, but then I can gradually cut off things and configure others to my liking. Now, I know there's SpaceVIM nowadays, but it wasn't available (or I just didn't know that) when I picked Spacemacs. Otherwise I'd probably end up using it.
I still use Vim for editing single files and other ad hoc tasks though.
VS Code and Vim, though I'm trying to use Vim more personally. I keep running into crazy issues with the number of plugins I use in VS Code, and I like the keyboard-centric experience of Vim, just never give it enough time to make it all a habit.
A lot of my work recently is done with the Remote SSH plug-in which for Vim is just running Vim over SSH. Clone Vundle and my latest dotfiles, and away I go.
I could imagine having too many plug-ins is probably not a good idea and would slow down the app.
I've never heard of vim, is it used for web prog. or just general prog. ?
Vim is a terminal-based text editor which was built as an improvement upon Vi, so its roots (Vi) go back as far as the 70s, and it (Vim) was initially written in 1991. It has its own plug-in scripting language (Vimscript) but can also make calls out to other languages (Python, Node.js, etc. on the assumption you have installed them).
Being terminal-based, it's entirely keyboard driven, even moving the cursor between lines, characters, and words is done with keys. Vim is very barebones to start, it has support for syntax highlighting and the base functionality of calling commands, navigating through files or to lines, and editing text of course. However, you can install plugins for things like navigating the filesystem, autocomplete, linting, and more. Some extensions even make use of the same language server protocol that VS Code uses. So in that effect, it starts off as a general programming text editor, and can be extended to do web programming, systems programming, or any domain you care to. You can check the VimAwesome website for a list of plugins that are available to get you started (NERDTree for filesystem navigation, fugitive for awesome Git integration, and more)
Being terminal-based for me means I don't use a gigabyte of memory just opening a JavaScript file though, which for some of my devices is important. My older Surface Pro device has 4GB of memory, which chokes up once you start using VS Code as well as Chrome. It's also easier on older integrated graphics. But I'd like to keep using it as it has great touchscreen and gesture support on Ubuntu 20.04 for browsing the web and it's great for working in a terminal on the couch or in bed or at the coffee shop.
Furthermore, it's entirely free and open source code, and I don't need a proprietary version to do my work remotely (I cannot use the Remote SSH plug-in with VS Code without using their proprietary version of the product). The version of VS Code on their GitHub is actually not the same source code as what is used to compile the version you download from their website. You can check out VS Codium for a truly open source version, should you care for that kind of thing (from a security perspective, you can't know if you're safe if you don't know what you're actually running).
In all, a massively different experience from VS Code, but in many good and some bad ways. If you're a fan of the mouse, it may not be your favorite thing, and there's definitely a learning curve to a new style of navigation, but there's a lot of efficiency to be had from your hands never leaving the keyboard.
cool. Thanks for that man
As time passes editors/IDEs improve. I started from Notepad -> Notepad++ -> Sublime -> Brackets -> Atom -> Webstorm(Free) -> VS code. I work mostly on javascript and frontend libraries/frameworks and I feel VS code is best suited for my usage also it is totally free. With extensions and customization increasing day by day to make your development easy there is no doubt that this is attracting more people. Webstorm is powerful but getting to know your way around is a little difficult at the beginning and also it is not entirely free you will have to move to paid version after your trial period. If this is not the case I would have stayed for some more time on Webstorm.
very interesting, vscode does seem to dominate the scene with all its plugins.
Anything Jetbrains, it does the job very well when I'm working in projects. It's not that great when I'm editing single files that are not related.
jetbrains conpiles any language or is it designed for any specific languages?
It's designated for specific languages, most popular languages are covered and some of the least popular are supported by plugins.
Ok nice
I use Idea ultimate for almost everything. Except for little single file edits, i use vscode or sublime for them.
I changed my whole dev env from vscode to idea a couple months ago. Vscode is great but Except it is not. Even for typescript not all tools, plugins as smooth as idea. I was always having some issues while coding. But one thing, dont use idea if you have tam less than 16 GB.
ok so its very heavy and could intensive? IDEs are best when they are light!
Text editors must be light. Not IDEs
Repl.it because its an online ide that is more than just an ide. It also hosts projects and servers on their domain so you can share projects with other people. It also has its own community page to share with the world. It has 50+ languages too. For html projects or servers, you can connect your domain with a cname.
I've used it too its pretty great!
I use Visual Studio 2019 for game development in Unity. It is slow to load, but I then keep it open all day. The code completion is irreplaceable and the instant testing is a plus! Grab VS community and give it a try!
I sure will thanks!
I am currently working on a VR game - picopplanetdev.itch.io/vr-farm-game - and am using Unity and VS 2019 for it!
I use VSCode for small web projects and Pycharm Professional (Not FREE) for python and react, like this one. I also use Webstorm for Angular and Svelte
cool. I believe webstorm also isn't free right?
There is a free version. You can also use the Jetbrain python plugin for intellij CE for a free version of pycharm. Compared to vscode, Webstorm is much better. It has pretty much the majority of plugins you'd want and has better code organization imo. Intellij and webstorm also has the same github integration as vscode (all though, personally I think that's irrelevant and you should learn to use git as I've seen way too many people screw up code because they tried to use the ide's github integration).
Git in the command line is better than any "integration". Because in the command line, you're the one executing the commands, so you know exactly what happened
Gotta be Atom. I'm a sucker for open-source, for one thing, but I also appreciate Atom's vast customization and overall simplicity when first installed. Git/GitHub integration ships by default, which works flawlessly.
I also liked the githu integration on atom very neat!
Very interesting it seems most people (on this post at least) use vscode, judging from all your comments its the go to option and has some great plug-ins, like integrating with github and web dev and so on.
Thanks for all your comments, really appreciated and got me educated on modern ide's out there :)
jetbrains fosho
cool
Intellij mainly, the best tool out there (all the Jetbrains products). If I need something lighter I go for Sublime/VS Code
How would you compare it to brackets - thats what I'm using right now. Any advantages?
I use Intellij for more complex and structured projects in PHP, python, Android, Java, etc. That I know will grow over time because it helps me to keep things organized and manage things like version control, package managers, libraries and dependencies, and the likes, and because it's dynamic code completion is unmatched. I love vscode and I use it for quick and dirty projects where I don't have a large number of files and I just want to test things out or learn new stuff. I'm sure I could get most of the features I use in Intellij on code as well with plugins, I'm just too used to idea, and not motivated enough to do the switch honestly. Idea is definitely a behemoth though, I would not use it to open a single file in a folder to edit... It's like killing a mosquito with a shotgun lol...