Why I Switched from Visual Studio Code to JetBrains WebStorm

Maybe people should realize that the problem is with the <i>JS libraries ecosystem</i> and how <i>most are build in a way that &quot;just jumping into a lib&#x2F;framework to read its code and see what it does&quot; can&#x27;t seam to be feasible anymore</i>.<p>For example, in a React app if I&#x27;d want to jump from a `Route` import from react-router to it&#x27;s <i>readable</i> code definition [1], NO IDE or editor around is capable a properly doing the jump, I either get to a Typescript definition (VSCode does this - imo <i>the worst possible behavior</i>) or to some unreadable transpiler outputed code.<p>This creates <i>a huge divide</i> between <i>framework&#x2F;library&#x2F;component-author</i> and <i>&quot;lowly&quot; client&#x2F;user-programmers</i>.<p>Compare this to the Python ecosystem where basically <i>any</i> editor or IDE can help me jump to the right place in a library&#x27;s nice and readable code, and even in the worst case where the author didn&#x27;t bother to write either tests or docs I can still make use of foreign code just fine...<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;ReactTraining&#x2F;react-router&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;packages&#x2F;react-router&#x2F;modules&#x2F;Route.js" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;ReactTraining&#x2F;react-router&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;pa...</a>

I made a similar switch from VS Code to PHPStorm and had a remarkably similar experience. When I started using a proper IDE, I really began to get comfortable with the inner workings of what I was doing–debugging the frameworks I was using, jumping directly into methods and doing fairly broad refractors with their refactoring tools. I’ve found it’s made me a better developer by making that process simpler, while being very good at pushing me into optimizing my code, be it through PHPDoc or simply not being consistent in my implementation. I was surprised, but also, came to realize IDE platforms seem to be stigmatized by many developers in the web industry: they seem too heavy or not useful, but I’d argue it made me 10x more productive once I took the time to use one.

When you guys think about all the developers you know, do you rather see a positive or a negative correlation between the usage of high level tools and developer productivity?<p>In other words, is your experience that developers who use an IDE are more productive then developers who only use a text editor?<p>In my experience, the (very few) developers I know who only use VIM or Emacs are way more productive then those who use an IDE.<p>The reason seems to be that they tend to &#x27;sit back and think&#x27; about the task at hand. And then come up with elegant solutions. While the developers who use a lot of tooling seem to hope that the tooling will kinda force them to do the right thing. But from what I witness, that never works out.<p>I see a similar thing happening with coders who do a lot of tests (test driven development), some tests and no tests. Developers who don&#x27;t write any tests are often the most productive.

Very biased article and by the way, tslint will also warns you if you don&#x27;t use promise:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;palantir.github.io&#x2F;tslint&#x2F;rules&#x2F;no-floating-promises&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;palantir.github.io&#x2F;tslint&#x2F;rules&#x2F;no-floating-promises...</a>

I love the jetbrains toolbox. I do unity development with Rider, Android development with Android studio, web development with webstorm, python automation and ai learning with pycharm, java development with idea and I use it as diff&#x2F;merge tool like the author (additionally you can toggle blame mode, which shows you the last person who edited the individual lines, at what time and with a color coding that highlights recent changes). Having a familiar user interface for all these IDEs and on top of that available on Mac, Linux and Windows won me over. I started with Rider for unity since I mostly use macOS and Monodevelop did not spark joy (vs for Mac didn’t exist yet and I prefer the user experience of the jetbrains IDEs).

I can understand that people may perceive VS Code and WebStorm as alternatives. Though, as rightly pointed out by the author, the former is an editor while the latter is an IDE. The whole post just says that in 10 different redundant ways.

Having used both, I can say without hesitation that they&#x27;re both fantastic works of software. I personally use vscode as my daily driver now because it has all of the features I care about from WebStorm but it&#x27;s free.<p>(I also have a license for Sublime Text and used that for years. I still prefer vscode now. But a developer&#x27;s IDE&#x2F;editor is a deeply personal choice and everyone should use whatever software they&#x27;re most comfortable and productive with.)

While VS Code presumably can do almost everything Webstorm (and other Jetbrains products) can, my experience in my fairly large software company is that most of the people that use VS Code don&#x27;t actually bother to install the plugins to bring it up to feature parity. Out of the box functionality is underrated, even seemingly among devs who have the skills and knowledge to tinker.

I would like to try to switch to a JetBrains IDE. Especially the refactoring tools look to be much more advanced then Atom or VSCode.<p>At my workplace, most developers are either full stack or backend (python). As such, we have a grab bag of PyCharm licenses. However, I am purely a frontend developer, so frontend related tools are much more important to me then python support.<p>Unfortunately, the last time I tried PyCharm the integration with linters, toolchains, different template languages etc. was quite limited. Or perhaps I couldn&#x27;t find the needed extensions or where or how to configure the right settings. I don&#x27;t know if this is a JetBrains IDE thing, or simply because PyCharm is so geared towards Python development only.<p>The projects I work on are integrated in different backend systems. So one might be a C# project with Razor templates. Or it&#x27;ll be some PHP with another templating language. Or it might just be mustache or handlebars. It might be a SPA in Angular, Vue or React. It might be purely Node.JS project. Some projects have Webpack, some have a Gulp toolchain. Linters might differ between projects. Folder structure also differs, one might have the git repository in the root. Another will have it one or two levels down. Some use a python virtualenv. Others use a docker container. Others use no enviroment management at all.<p>In my experience, because of the different nature of the projects, the PyCharm editor offered little extra functionality over Atom&#x2F;VSCode, while missing a lot of simple extensions that Atom&#x2F;VSCode does have. I was also quite a bit slower to start up.<p>Is it possible to configure &#x2F; extend PyCharm to offer the same frontend related functionalities as WebStorm, or is a separate license needed? And is there support, or are there extensions, to support different toolchains, linters, templating languages etc. per project? The backend language support can be limited, as long as the very basics are there, and I&#x27;d like advanced frontend support for refactoring, debugging, etc.

Currently I use WebStorm, but I also always have a spacemacs window open, to do the things that WebStorm can&#x27;t do.<p>Fresh example from yesterday: I open a .graphqlconfig file in WebStorm, which is a JSON file. Good luck making WebStrom open it as a JSON file... One minute later, I&#x27;ve opened the file in emacs, M-x json-mode, M-x mark-whole-buffer, M-x json-reformat-region, did the changes I needed to do, carried on with my life.<p>So it&#x27;s not that WebStorm (or any other fluffy high-level tool) is perfect or &quot;enough&quot;. There is always this one thing that will make your life miserable if you are religious with these things.

I&#x27;ve used both. Webstorm is definitely slightly better in most things. Little things like better handling of closing tags or more useful context menu.<p>VSCode is massively easier to configure and has a lot more plugins. Most major plugins are covered by Webstorm or plugins, but it&#x27;s the small things that give you an extra push.<p>Webstorm is more polished. VSCode is faster and more configurable. They are nearly equal rivals in my book, except one thing. Git integration in VSCode is horrendous. I work with git constantly while I code and the lack of proper support is a considerable productivity hurt.

I use WebStorm&#x2F;IntelliJ&#x2F;Rider&#x2F;VS+Resharper at work. And use Emacs off work, occasionally use WebStorm&#x2F;Rubymine. Recently I picked up VSCode and I think it&#x27;s good.<p>For most of the functionalities, I think WebStorm still won. But VSCode typescript completion is great. WebStorm typescript completion is somewhat strange.<p>However, the mindset of WebStorm follows IntelliJ, of course. You cannot switch projects or single file as simple as code editors. Although it can be achieved but it still feels weird. IntelliJ is constantly trying to improve this like scratches, but it will be still different from code editors.<p>And something off topic, I found IntelliJ&#x2F;WebStorm is pretty much following Emacs for a lot of features. Like the VSC system is very alike Magit and they deprecated their RestClient and use an editor-based approach just like Emacs RestClient, or simply scratches. Seems a very good strategy to copy from Emacs community at least for MVP.

One thing that the JetBrains editors have that isn&#x27;t found elsewhere is support for SVG.<p>Once you take SVG to a certain level the desktop graphics programs no longer help, they add too much cruft and you also can&#x27;t do things like have the origin of your drawing in the middle of the canvas. Having the origin in the middle makes things easier to mirror, rotate and so forth, which you might need if building an icon set.<p>Being able to live-edit a SVG opens new possibilities, you don&#x27;t have to assume that you need the graphic design tools to &#x27;draw a box&#x27; and you can keep shapes such as circles as circles, not some huge long list of points specified to 9 decimal places.<p>Right now I am building a SVG drawing that needs to take numbers to draw it to scale, I would never be able to do this without building a prototype in a JetBrains editor.

I use IntelliJ IDEs for statically typed languages (and Ruby&#x2F;Rails), the refactoring&#x2F; navigation is top notch and search is super quick.<p>For web work I use VS Code because it has the best plugins for Vue, React, etc. I would also use it for less popular languages.

I&#x27;ve used a lot over the years – always in VIM mode. As I have moved to GO recently I was using VS Code but found it bugging out at times. I switched over to Goland (I used to be heavy in WebStorm). It just works. I am happy.

It&#x27;s always the same debate, on my case all the features of Webstorm he&#x27;s listing I will likely never use them whereas the lag issues &amp; the clutter interface of Webstorm just make it a no-start as my main editor.

As the author points out, refactoring is terrible with Code. I use it as my primary editor but often fondly think about how well Android Studio does refactoring. I&#x27;m going to give Web Storm a try.

Wait until they see ReSharper&#x2F;Rider&#x2F;IntelliJ.

There also this cool text editor, simple and fast, called Pluma and available on Ubuntu Mate which I really enjoyed using.

Tldr: nothing fundamental but WebStorm has a few features that the author likes that VS Code doesn&#x27;t have.

On average, VSCode is enough. Consider a Rails project. For Jetbrain, you better use RubyMine for the Ruby part, it&#x27;s the same as WebStorm, but for Ruby projects.<p>Now you better use WebStorm for the frontend part, right ?<p>In case of VSCode, one Editor to rule them all, both backend (Ruby) and frontend(Typescript) part.

WebStorm is a bit of a resource pig. Running the stack plus WS plus browser has exhausted RAM, 16GB mind you, on a lot of our teams laptops.

have you found vim in your heart?