Agree that it is a crazy resource hog and I don't like the AI integrations either. But I gotta say for UI and features it is very good. I haven't been able to get VSCode or neovim to offer the same kind of easily actionable code diagnostics and suggestions as JetBrains IDEs do out of the box. I'm not saying it's not possible, but I couldn't quite match it even with a fair bit of tinkering.
I like the AI integrations (they me use Claude Sonnet 3.7, Gemini 2.5 and GPT 4.1 with my all products pack) and quite enjoy their Junie tool, much better than my attempts at getting Aider working.
UI seems pretty okay, at least on the 2025 versions of the tools (in compact mode, Inter 12 as the custom UI font on a 1080p monitor) but still quite the resource hog.
Oh well, I’m actually going to try their Fleet as well after reinstalling my OS because it was worse than VSC the last time I tried it, might be better now.
It's not. The functionality gap between VSC and Fleet has further widened, and its future looks even more unsure now they backed out the Kotlin native stuff back to the main IDEs.
The community edition of intellij and pycharm is Apache 2.0 licensed and you can use those for commercial development. Pycharm is about similar to vs code (I've used both). But intellij blows the Java & Kotlin support in vs code out of the water. It's not even remotely close. Reason, Java has several decent OSS IDEs as an alternative and those would win by default if the only option was a paid IDE. Clion and Rustover are somewhere in between I suspect.
VS Code plugins vary from language to language. And commercial non OSS tools for native development are pretty common (e.g. Visual Studio, XCode, etc.). So, I guess Jetbrains feels more comfortable charging for Clion and Rustover for commercial development because they know they are that good. But nothing wrong if you don't appreciate what is on offer.
Yes these tools use some memory and CPU. But then I use a decent laptop as well so it doesn't matter to me. Pretty normal to be spending on proper tools if you do this stuff professionally.
You and I have had vastly different experiences. PyCharm, like the rest of their tooling, will catch the most amazing bugs and LSPs don't hold a candle to that
I’m intrigued—what’s your setup? Do you use any advanced refactoring features like Change Signature or Extract Selected Members? It’s been a couple of years since I last tried setting up Java in VS Code, and I’m curious how far things have come. Intuitively, I’d expect JetBrains to have the upper hand in this area, since they can build specialized UIs for complex tasks, rather than being constrained by the limitations of the Language Server Protocol.
Incorrect, many of them do, and make the determination that a few nice to have features doesn't outweigh the cost, lock in, and incongruence with the use of open source software where possible.
I know several world class developers who have invented corner stone technologies that use text editors without any plugins and just run the compiler in a separate window. It turns out that you actually are not held back by not having your hand held by an IDE, it was just a skill issue.
Nowadays I just use an LLM. None of these features are relevant anymore. Unless JetBrains has a proprietary LLM that is better at coding than what ever else is on the market (they don't) then there's no reason to pay money for their products.
I am not even particularly bullish on AI, but not seeing how LLMs have made IDEs irrelevant is like using Vim and crying foul about IDEs without trying one out.
My example, my coworkers use VS code, so I review their code and my IDE is highlighting a few bugs in a function, bugs like $x is not defined , so I ask if thir IDE does not show any warning for that code, and yes, VS Code had ZERO warnings. The dev copy pasted some code but forgot this $x variable in, either he needed to copy it or remove it.
So I am sure someone will say that after you install VS code you should install X and Y plugins or some npm packages that you trigger later in the build to catch this errors. With Intellij I get them without screwing around with VS code plugins or vim plugins, and I also feel good that I pay some developers to work on a tool I use then use Microsoft product that would instantly fuck me over when Intellij would be killed by this unfair competition. Or did I read recently Microsoft already started with their bullshit related to the extensions and AI ?
