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Chris Bongers

137 likes

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45.5K reads

47 comments

Kamal Sahmoud
Kamal Sahmoud
Aug 8, 2022

Of course jetbrean is very good editor and i use it before for php projects (php-storm) and for front-end apps (web-storm), but why i must stop vs-code, THE FREE EDITOR that give me every thing, and replace it to jetbrean, i guess i am not agree with u ;)

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·1 reply
Dennis A. Torres Rodriguez
Dennis A. Torres Rodriguez
Dec 31, 2022

Pointing the obvious here but, the article headline is why he stopped using it. He doesn't encourage anyone to follow his steps. I personally mainly use Jetbrains' ecosystem, but use VSC as fallback for stacks not yet supported by Jetbrains or if I want overview source code without actually run it nor test it. My experience is that VSC gives what it promises, a multiplatform and multipurpose code editor. If anyone wants and can afford a powerful and robust IDE go for Jetbrains products.

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JL
JL
Aug 5, 2022

Thanks for the writeup! I'm a huge fan of all Jetbrains' products and've been using Webstorm for quite a while. Webstorm feels infinitely better than VSC, and I kinda agree when it says "the smartest JavaScript IDE." It has awesome support for frameworks too (React, any library, Vue, whatever), and everything just feels smart. The only downside is that it costs a good deal, but there is a free version (I've never tried it, but apparently it's not very limited), and if you're a student you can get a Jetbrains pro account for free!

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·1 reply
Chris Bongers
Chris Bongers
Author
·Aug 7, 2022

I do really appreciate the student version they have. And yes the price is their biggest downfall if you ask me.

The best free IDE would still be VSC.

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Chris Benjamin
Chris Benjamin
Aug 5, 2022

Great article, had never considered using Webstorm before but you make a compelling case to at least give it a try! I love the detail and pictures.

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Chris Bongers
Chris Bongers
Author
·Aug 7, 2022

Thanks Chris,

Would strongly suggest giving the trial a go. And see how you feel about it.

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Rodrigo Durán
Rodrigo Durán
Aug 8, 2022

I work with python where I use a lot Pycharm and I really liked the only think that makes me work with VScode instead of Pycharm is when you work with docker containers. VScode is a lot better at that.

1) My main issue that made me change to VScode we the need to debug a test inside a docker container. The test fails because it can't find the DB container (that is in the same network as the python container). VScode solves that right out of the box (don't need to change anything)

2) VScode its really light when compare against Pycharm

PS: I have the paid version of pycharm so I comparing the full versions of it.

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·1 reply
Chris Bongers
Chris Bongers
Author
·Aug 8, 2022

Yeah the devContainers is definitely a good pro for VSC! Good point you make Rodrigo.

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Ákos Kőműves
Ákos Kőműves
Aug 5, 2022

I switched to RubyMine this year. Mainly because I work on huge projects with hundreds of thousands of files (big monolith architecture) and VSCode simply can't track stuff at this scale.

Autocomplete, jumping to source, etc doesn't work on this size of a project.

Not to talk about the low-quality plugins.

RubyMine is not free and it has an initial load time until it indexes all my files (usually <5 minutes) but after that, it's really fast and I don't mind waiting 5 minutes to have a nice experience afterward.

I still do all my small projects and demos in VSCode.

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·2 replies
Chris Bongers
Chris Bongers
Author
·Aug 7, 2022

I think indeed they really strive on big projects. I see a lot of people argue on this topic that VSC is super fast, yeah pretty sure it is, if you have zero plugins and write hello world.

My personal experience is that is really can't= handle large scale applications as well. But then again, maybe that's also my config playing parts.

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Ákos Kőműves
Ákos Kőműves
Aug 8, 2022

I use like 10 VSCode plugins and it's reasonably fast for most projects that most people are going to use VSCode for. And those are not large-scale projects - thankfully. 😄

I think it's a fantastic editor and served me really well for many many years but it definitely has its limits.

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HaryMalter
HaryMalter
Aug 23, 2022

I disagree with this article.

Whatever you think, there is no lighter, more powerful and more practical on the market than VSCode.

Without speaking about the multitude of the available modules, it is without comparison possible superior to for example PhP Storm.

Those who claim otherwise are people who don't know how to use VS Code.

Any good developer should not use webstorm, let's be serious for 5 minutes and stop trying to sell products that sponsor us to the detriment of reality.

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·1 reply
Chris Bongers
Chris Bongers
Author
·Aug 24, 2022

You seem very biased towards VSC.

My first point is that I'm not even trying to sell or prove anything, merely sharing my experience so I don't understand how you can disagree with my experience using something.

Besides that, I still love VSC and for a lot of people it's a perfectly fine solution. Did you personally ever try out the Inteliji products, before having such a negative feeling towards them?

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Elijah Trillionz
Elijah Trillionz
Aug 6, 2022

Awesome article Chris. Since the day I tried WebStorm, I've never returned.

Though I still use VSC for some basic code editing. But when it comes to my projects, it's WebStorm.

It often reminds me of how I transitioned to TypeScript.

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·1 reply
Chris Bongers
Chris Bongers
Author
·Aug 7, 2022

Yep exactly. I still use it from my blog as the workflow there kind of works for me.

But all my projects are indeed WS.

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Jeremy Moore
Jeremy Moore
Aug 7, 2022

Nice! I have to agree. I prefer JetBrains' products for my workload. VS Code is nice for something simple and basic, but for full-blown projects, a complete IDE is hard to beat.

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·1 reply
Chris Bongers
Chris Bongers
Author
·Aug 8, 2022

Yep, still default to VSC just for a quick edit on a file, or my blog as it's such simple architecture.

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Dev By RayRay
Dev By RayRay
Dec 13, 2022

Wow, man! I went the opposite way years ago 😅

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Chris Bongers
Chris Bongers
Author
·Dec 14, 2022

Oh you didn't like the JetBrains line?

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Dev By RayRay
Dev By RayRay
Dec 15, 2022

Chris Bongers it was mainly because of the license costs that I was searching for an alternative. But that was back in 2016, I guess. Back then I choose Sublime Text. And when I discovered VS code, I never looked back 😅

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Priyanshu Shrivastava
Priyanshu Shrivastava
Dec 15, 2022

Have to agree with JetBrains always amazes me with their awesome code editors i always prefer pycham and intellige idea for writing python and java code and after reading it i might switch to web-storm

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iamGpower
iamGpower
Aug 9, 2022

Excellent article Chris, I would also love to see a comparison as regards memory footprint.

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Tuğrul Yıldırım (Full Stack Web Developer)
Tuğrul Yıldırım (Full Stack Web Developer)

I have been using JetBrains IDEs since last year. They are even more powerful with GithubCopilot extension. Love them.

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Rajeshkumar Reddy
Rajeshkumar Reddy
Aug 31, 2022

Sure, I will leave the awesome free tool for some cosmetic features with price tag on it. Definitely i will do. Thank you for sharing.

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Chris Bongers
Chris Bongers
Author
·Sep 1, 2022

Awesome, I'm glad to read you are willing to give it a try.

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Jaron
Jaron
Oct 9, 2022

The only problem I got with Webstorm is the lack of Astro Support. I tried a work around with a file provided by them but it did not work.

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Chris Bongers
Chris Bongers
Author
·Oct 10, 2022

Yeah Astro might be a bit to new. Last time I checked the VSC extension was also still under development, is that working now?

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Jaron
Jaron
Oct 10, 2022

Well it already hit stable. Also the VSCode extension is stable by now. Tho they said they would support Astro in the new editor because JetBrains API would change then. Chris Bongers

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MR. E
MR. E
Oct 9, 2022

In my experience, I moved to VSC from php/webstorm, from the start it was hard because you know Xstorm is a complete IDE, and to work similarly you need to set up VSC, a lot. But after that, I tried it on multiple huge large-scale codebases, at work and at home when you need multiple projects open, and VSC is always faster and more customizable, without needing to wait for JetBrains indexing, that's why I stuck with it. So I'm really interested, how you managed to make VSC slower?

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Chris Bongers
Chris Bongers
Author
·Oct 10, 2022

It mainly becomes slow from plugins you'll need for linting/formating and so on. Besides that I never seen WebStorm do a indexing round, but I know PHPStorm does it all the time.

Also to note I'm on Mac which seems to do way better in terms of performance from what I read in the comments.

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MR. E
MR. E
Jan 13, 2023

Chris Bongers im on m1 mac, for plugins, i have the same amount of them on both ide

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abdoul razak mahamadou ali
abdoul razak mahamadou ali
Oct 13, 2022

Hello, I registered just to answer you.

First of all what you pay on webstorm, vscode does it too, then it's free and offers more functionality than webstorm if you know how to use it and especially configure it and finally I don't agree with you

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Chris Bongers
Chris Bongers
Author
·Oct 14, 2022

Thanks for registering just for my article, and taking the time to reply.

If VSCode does everything for you that's perfectly fine, I'm not against it at all. It's merely me sharing why WS works better for me personally 🙏

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David Afolabi
David Afolabi
Sep 16, 2022

Well, all I could say is this is an awesome write up. Besides the caption "Why I stopped..." and not "Why you should stop..." makes more relevant ✨

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nam phan
nam phan
Oct 11, 2022

To each their own but paid stuff always better than free stuff in long term. Personally i am happy with webstorm

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Albert Vallverdu
Albert Vallverdu
Oct 11, 2022

I've tried a couple of times to switch from vscode but every single time I just gave up because it wasn't working for my workflow and I was wasting more time trying to make it work than coding.

The first time was because on the main project I was working, it was using Flow and the linter was ok but not as perfect as vscode.

And the second time was because, nowadays I mainly work connecting from a Mac mini to the work laptop usinng SSH and within vscode you can do it with a Microsoft plugin with no issues at all but with WS was impossible, at least on Feb-2022.

I'll give it a try to this new IDE from them when they release it fleet but something tells me I'll go back to vscode

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Chris Bongers
Chris Bongers
Author
·Nov 3, 2022

Yeah eventually if something works for you and you are so used to it, why even switch right.

I mean VSC did the job for a long time for me without complaints.

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Trong Duong
Trong Duong
Jan 12, 2023

I disagree with you. I think you know the WebStorm IDE, a JetBrains product. The IDE is always good more than an editor. It needs many CPU, and RAM, for running (Compare the number of resources used).

The Editor like VSCode can be considered lighter than IDEs if we use extensions sensibly. But finally, I like your perspective, to some extent, I agree with you

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Wojtek X
Wojtek X
Oct 11, 2022

I strongly oppose, and will ever oppose, using anything from jetbrains. Why? Because JetBrains supports Russians. Thats enough!

They support php fundation financially. Two people with most commits to php/php-src repo on GitHub are:

  • Dmitry Stogov,
  • Nikita Popov.

Both Russians, both well supported by JetBrains.

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Adrian
Adrian
Oct 11, 2022

Not very convincing, to be completely honest. All points can be easily countered by an existing feature or plugin in VSCode.

Good for you for finding something you like and seemingly fits you better than VScode, but I was expecting a bit more from what is in the end a comparison article.

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Alexi Taylor  🚀
Alexi Taylor  🚀
Oct 11, 2022

WebStorm > VSC

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Priyanshu Shrivastava
Priyanshu Shrivastava
Dec 15, 2022

brilliant

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Min Min Latt
Min Min Latt
Jan 5, 2023

Okay, cool, and I think this is an eye-catching title. You stopped using it, good for you. But I'll keep using it. It's hard for me to switch from one IDE to another easily. 🫢

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Omar Khaled
Omar Khaled
Jan 8, 2023

Thanks for this article! I was using VSC for a long time but when I discovered PhpStorm I don't want to go back to VSC cause VSC was not great for PHP especially when it comes to enterprise projects VSC was just lagging and was a pain to use after I switched to PhpStorm I was impressed by the performance, no lag and too many features the only thing that is a problem is the license cost, 10$ per month is a lot in Egypt

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Becaye Baldé
Becaye Baldé
Jan 11, 2023

I love JetBrains products. I have used them for PHP, Python, Angular, and NodeJS and they are awesome, really! But for Javascript Frameworks, I switched back to VS Code since it is so minimalistic and fast, if you need a feature, you just download the extension. Eventually, when I'm stuck on some complex projects, I occasionally use Webstorm as it is better at finding problems.

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tiff
tiff
Jan 16, 2023

If you have to configure which package manager to use to run React/Astro/Vue etc scripts for EACH script IN THE SAME package.json file you know you've jumped the shark. I'd rather use the CLI instead of having to go through all of that just to run pnpm dev

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Sailesh Dahal
Sailesh Dahal
Jan 17, 2023

All JetBrains product are great, You cant go back once you start using them :-D

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