I wonder if you have had the chance to use a Jetbrains IDE with a professional license. Doing so gives you access to more or less the content of all the other "flavors" as plugins (it's basically all IntelliJ underneath).

For example, I've been using PyCharm for both our python backend _and_ our React + Typescript frontend, all in the same project window, with the same features regarding syntax, linting, refactoring, tests, debugging, etc.

I have. IntelliJ ultimate edition still has fewer features for PHP specifically than Phpstorm.

Presumably not because it actually has fewer features, but because "the debugger" now has 150 options instead of like 5.

Also, these super-featured IDEs still won't support languages that Jetbrains doesn't have a specific IDE for. For instance, Delphi. Sure they'll support syntax highlighting somehow, and there might be one plugin.

VSCode probably has 20+ search results if you look up Delphi

As someone who used to develop in Delphi for my day job, but has been mostly out of the loop for the last ~10 years, this really got me curious: do people actually use VSCode for Delphi? I mean, Delphi already comes with an IDE, including a GUI ("Forms") designer - that was its killer feature back in the nineties, that you could slap together a GUI app as quickly as in good ol' Visual Basic, but backed by a compiled language. Maybe the text editor is better in VSCode, but still I imagine it's pretty hard to deliver the same experience as with the "native" Delphi IDE? So I can understand that JetBrains doesn't see a huge market for that (unless they could become the official Delphi IDE, like they did with Android Studio).

I have current Delphi project with heavy GUI. I'd be out of my mind to use VS Code for it. I use VS code for scripting stuff where it more or less shines (JS, Bash scripts etc). Same for C++ - Visual Studio/QT Creator and CLion fill my needs way better than VS Code can ever do.

No clue, I just picked a random not super mainstream language as an example.

I'm sure vscode is terrible for Delphi, but I'm willing to bet that the experience (with whatever third party plugins exist) will be better than any jetbrains product.

And I think JetBrains' strategy is fine in that regard: either do it well or don't do it at all.

Generally, they should come in the next version. Or that was their stance for PyCharm/IntelliJ ultimate.

It also kills performance when you have so many languages configured.

I did not try that myself, but I think that you can switch enabled plugins with a simple text file. So you should be able to write simple BAT files to launch Idea for different sets of plugins if you need to.

Or may be there are better ways to do so. Anyway just enable what you need.

Just 5row money at the problem and configure your machine with more memory. Docker for Mac already eats a ton so I’m not sure there aren’t other good reasons to do so.

It does not for C/C++, you need CLion for that.

You can also use Resharper C/C++ in Visual Studio and Rider C++ for Unreal Engine.

I've been using it for the last 3 years. At first it was slow, and running out of memory (it was in-process in Visual Studio, which is limited to 32-bits), but now that they've moved a lot to out-of-process it's much better!

I don’t know what version you use but Visual Studio 2019 is so full of bugs that it crashes multiple times a day or I simply restart it as some features such as codelens simply stop working and it becomes cumbersome to find references. Im sure they’d get their s__t together in the next version but so far I’m stuck with a crappy IDE. I’ve had a similar VS experience in the past and while it works it’s okay when I can upgrade i am super reluctant to do so. Yes, MS does push half baked versions quite often

And Rust, as the debugger only works for Rust in CLion.

I use PyCharm and WebStorm daily, and CLion for Rust projects at the moment.

Debugging is also available in PyCharm starting with the 2021.1 EAPs:

https://intellij-rust.github.io/2021/03/01/changelog-142.htm...

This has been my experience with JS as well. No difference between Webstorm or IDEA with a few minutes spent on configuration.

It really depends on the language and IDE.

For example I used to just own Idea Ultimate and use the language plugins, but the workflows were always inferior to using the dedicated IDE for that language.

So I now have the full JetBrains suite and use a mix of Rider, CLion, PyCharm Pro, AppCode etc...

Yeah, I basically use IDEA as Rubymine instead of using Rubymine. It's a fantastic polyglot IDE, and for my uses it supports all the latest Ruby + Javascript workflows.

There are some contradicting layout schemes across the languages and for that I'm glad Jetbrains provides the language specific flavors.

There is most certainly a lot baked into the language-specific editors that isn’t in IDEA proper.

That said, the fact that they all share IDEA’s gubbins makes it massively easier to jump between languages and frameworks for small jobs than I ever thought would be possible.

Having a set of tailored environments that also share keybindings and most common features makes for a fantastic (and really under-appreciated) value proposition.

That is incorrect. It is the same code running underneath.

There are differences in default config, and sometimes the independent versions have a faster release tempo, but it's the same language code.

I'd love to be proven wrong, but I don't believe this is correct.

The IDE shell is the same, but in (for example) Rider there are features that are in Rider but not in IDEA.

Likewise RubyMine. I suspect WebStorm and PhpStorm, too.

There just isn’t a C#/.NET plugin for IDEA that replicates the Rider functionality, though. Same with CLion and AppCode. They do ship Ruby and Python and PHP plugins. The JavaScript/web dev stuff is baked into all of their IDEs.

Which means IDEA does not contain all the features of the individual IDEs.

The thing is, I’m confident in saying the plugins don’t replicate 100% of the feature set of PhpStorm or WebStorm either, but I’d defer to someone from JetBrains who has first hand experience.

If you're confident, what features don't they have?

I subscribe to all their products so I can verify this :) I'm not sure why they don't have C# or C plugins but my guess is that it's because there's enough extra work in those IDEs that they want more money for them. Rider contains the ReSharper backend, which is a completely different application from IntelliJ.

Turns out 99% of my work is in something like Java, Python, or JS. Once you include other JVM languages, C++, PHP, and Ruby, IDEA's coverage is huge. They even have C#, Objective C, and Switft offerings, but there's something to be said for staying in those ecosystems.

One thing to note is that you can use IntelliJ and install the official plugins for each language. For example you can bring the WebStorm functionality to IntelliJ, or install the database plugin to get an embedded Datagrip window. (Which is really neat because you can then get SQL syntax highlighting and such based on your actual DB)

Well just note that this doesn't work with all combination of languages. Try installing CLion on webstorm for example.

IntelliJ ultimate is the main IDE. Everything else is a version of IntelliJ that has been configured for a specific language. IntelliJ should, theoretically, be able to behave like any of the sub-IDEs, but the reverse is not true.

Theoretically yes. In practice no. Each IDE has workflows and features tuned to their respective domain.

They're not just simple configuration changes from each other

The simplified setup for modules in the language-specific IDEs alone makes them worth it IMO. It’s great that the plugins in IntelliJ cover basically everything but CLion, AppCode and Rider - but if I’m working on Python, JavaScript, PHP or doing database work I’ll still fire up Pycharm, WebStorm, PHPStorm and DataGrip respectively because there’s less overhead getting my project imported (and DataGrip is more useful as a standalone DBA tool because I open it and all of my connections are right there).

Given the individual license cost difference between IntelliJ Ultimate and the All Products Pack is minimal it’s worth it, especially given it’s cheaper than IntelliJ + CLion separately.

Even just using the correct language terms is helpful. IntelliJ modules contain packages, because that's how Java works, which makes it super confusing when your modules are python packages and its subunit (called package in the UI) is a python module.

Yeah by the time you need two IDEs you might as well just get the suite.

It also worked out well for me because I bought Ultimate on sale, and the suite was discounted for existing owners. So it's really been good savings. Regardless, given the time savings the IDEs give me, they pay themselves off pretty quickly.

As much as that is true, I have a license for all of them and always use a few of them instead of the main IDE: CLion, Goland and Rider being the ones that are really much better for their respective domains because they are so different.

How does the open source IDEA plus php plugin experience compare to phpstorm?

The plugins for alternative languages (PHP, Python) are available only for IntelliJ Ultimate / paid. It's not available in free / open source IntelliJ

So either [1] you buy IntelliJ Ultimate & get Java + other languages (PHP, Python, Ruby, etc except .NET and C++)

or [2] you buy the language specific IDE (cheaper) like PhpStorm, PyCharm, etc

That didn’t used to be the case. You used to be able to add the Python plugin to the free IDEA ide and that would give you java + pycharm - but only the free tier features of pycharm.

However, if you used the paid IDEA, adding the Python plugin gave you full PyCharm capabilities EXCEPT that IDEA was always based on version N of the core IDE platform where PyCharm was based on N+1 version, i.e. the smaller pycharm IDE sometimes had some newer platform features than the IDEA ide which led to occasional differences between IDEA + Python plugin vs PyCharm.

I switched to VSCode last year and let my licence lapse for Intellij so things may have changed.

What i will say, despite having moved to VSCode and being entirely happy - Intellij is the better platform. It’s the difference between 80% and 99% though, and the VSCode 80% is good enough. If i went back to full time dev, i would buy another jetbrains licence.

Intellij allows you to install pretty much most of the features from all the other jetbrains IDEs as plugins. Additionally most of their IDE's have the ability to code in several other languages seperate from the core experience. Almost all of their IDE's can for example integrate with the javascript ecosystem.

I think you're making a mistake here. Essentially behind the scenes there's one jetbrains IDE. This IDE is a single platform that can take plugins and code in any language and be customizable to your hearts content.

ON the surface however Jetbrains doesn't exactly release this IDE to the public. They deliver different configurations and different defaults on TOP of this IDE, then they lock it down a little and ship each one of these profiles under a different name. All these IDE's are basically different bundles of plugins running on the exact same core platform.

That's why CLion is only a couple years old and still really good. It's because all Jetbrains needed to develop was a plugin and shove it into an existing ecosystem.

This is no different then Vscode when you think about it. Both are coding platforms that can be plugged with new features, it's just that jetbrains locks some of this customization down and sells their IDEs with bundles of plugins that offers a better core experience.

What makes Jetbrains better is this focused and higher quality bundle of features that feels cohesive. What makes jetbrains worse is that this central platform they're developing for is bloated. Everything is slow, takes forever and can lock up.

If Jetbrains just did something to speed up the platform then pretty much IMO it beats anything Vscode has to offer.

A faster/lighter JetBrains IDE would beat everything in VSCode... except for price. CLion and WebStorm and PhpStorm cost money, there's no dedicated Rust IDE yet, and you have to pay money for CLion or (IntelliJ Ultimate) (not Community) to debug Rust programs.

There is already a Light Mode version of IntelliJ designed to compete with Sublime Text and maybe VS Code. It's not entirely obvious that it exists and they need to market it way better, but if you run "idea whatever.txt" from the CLI and the IDE isn't already open, you'll open in light mode. It starts nearly instantly because it's not loading all the plugins and project infrastructure.

I didn't know about light mode. I'll definitely try it out.

And still, it's really cheap if you consider the amount of work you have to put into configuring other products like VS Code where you end up with an inferior experience. I think it pays off.

For a professional, jetbrains basically pays for itself within a day of starting to use it (in my opinion). I know a lot of people prefer VS code, but I frankly cannot imagine why.

Well being free is still a benefit. And it is much faster then then any jetbrains IDE.

I prefer jetbrains like you, but some people like their apps to be really snappy.

The only thing where I really perceive VS Code to be faster is startup

The rest might be a tiny bit slower but it more than makes up for it with better UI/UX, code always feels a bit awkward

This really depends. If I open 20 large projects in the same vs code workspace it literally dies.

Doing the same in Jetbrains IDE is painful, but possible.

> Almost all of their IDE's can for example integrate with the javascript ecosystem.

That’s mainly because they don’t have a Javascript specific editor. I cannot even syntax highlight groovy files in PhpStorm, even though I’m paying for the full pack.

But I think that is literally my only gripe with Jetbrains :)

> That’s mainly because they don’t have a Javascript specific editor.

I guess Webstorm doesn't exist in your book?

I'm pretty sure the reason is that you might want to use the same ide for backend and frontend (e.g. GoLand, PyStorm,...)

IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate + PHP (and other) Plugin doesn't work?

Not to their other ides, just for Intellij.