I've been programming with various IDEs and text editors for over 30 years. In my formative programming years (1990s) I relied heavily on Borland and Microsoft IDEs. In the 2000s it was a combination of Visual Studio (C/C++/C#) and various editors (PHP, HTML/CSS/JS). In the 2010s I started working across multiple languages: C#, Java, Python, Ruby, Elixir, Scala, JavaScript (also dabbled with Lisp, Go, and Rust); using various tools: Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, VS Code, Atom, Sublime, Vim, and even Emacs.
My opinion: JetBrains IDEs beat every single other IDE/editor hands down (Visual Studio -- not Code -- comes close). The level of integration and polish is unmatched. I use PyCharm on a daily basis at work and the level of productivity I get out if it is far beyond what I get from any other IDE/editor. I've been developing a hobby kernel recently using C, and initially used VSCode; it was OK. Then I thought I'd give JetBrains CLion a try and I never looked back. I happily paid for license and it's been a well spent investment.
I had the same experience, used Visual Studio for C++, and years after C#, and Eclipse for Java projects. When JetBrains came along it really shined.
I tried VS Code a couple of years ago for a few months for some scripting languages, it really is not bad, however JB IDEs are better for Java, Python, Ruby,.. even for frontend development - support for Angular and React is great.
I bought the "all products pack" for individuals - it something like 15 bucks per month - for me it would be silly not to use it.
I pay (personally) for the entire Jetbrains tool set. They are damn good. And I guess to be fair, I haven't given a lot of time to VSCode, but TBH: I find that Sublime and IntelliJ cover the spectrum for me (which is Scala, Java, Kotlin, Python, C, Go and Typescript all with git support)
I'm not super exploratory, because it always seems that I have a project due in two weeks, but given that I have pickd up two of the BEAM languages, but am always lagging on learning Ruby and Haskell. These days - I'm starting to wonder about the utility of learning another language, other than re-learning Smalltalk out of nostalgia.
The only reason I use VS Code is when I want to quickly check a file or create a PoC. PyCharm or CLion are just too slow and frustrating, but for bigger projects there is no better option than those, despite being awfully slow.
On what platform are you using these IDEs? I use CLion daily and it is very fast on my Linux machine with a Ryzen 3700X CPU.
(I have heard complaints that the JetBrains IDEs are much slower on Macs, which also corresponds with my limited experience of using their IDEs on a Mac.)
I think it’s less about the platform and more about the size of the code to index. Text editors are about as fast in a repo with 30,000 files as in a repo with 3. IDEs can take a few minutes to do the indexing necessary to support their code intelligence on bigger repos.
I never really realised this, but IntelliJ feels almost instant on my fedora workstation whereas there is a certain sluggishness on Mac in the ui. Resizing panels, context menus, the terminals.
There’s more too bootstrap so the IDE is slower. Plus setting the project up properly and so on. It’s not as simple as typing ‘$ code <dir>‘ and starting to write as the editor pops up instantly. People’s definition of fast and instant are different. There’s absolutely no way an IDE can start faster than a text editor, otherwise text editors wouldn’t exist.
Don't get me wrong, I still consider VS to be an extremely powerful IDE. I think it's the best IDE for .NET development, and maybe C++. It also has the best debugger, period. But when it comes to supporting multiple languages, it lacks the consistency, extensions, and integration that JetBrains IDEs enjoy. Admittedly, I haven't used it professionally in about 5 years, so many things may have changed.
There's also something I can't express about productivity when I'm using a JetBrains IDE. I remember over a decade ago when I added ReSharper as a plugin to VS and all of a sudden I felt the IDE come to life, with a level of assists I haven't seen in VS proper. Of course VS has caught up now, but ReSharper was way ahead of it in those days.
It's also clear that MS is focusing their efforts with VS on cloud integration (VS Online, Azure, etc), rather than sweating the little details that make you even more productive day-to-day. That's probably why they let VS Code eat the bottom of the market, knowing that MS shops will still pay for MSDN subscriptions.
Thank you for your answer. VS has indeed changed a lot, especially in the "ReSharper" department. My only qualm would be the performance (startup, loading solutions etc). JetBrains might be better there too.
My opinion: JetBrains IDEs beat every single other IDE/editor hands down (Visual Studio -- not Code -- comes close). The level of integration and polish is unmatched. I use PyCharm on a daily basis at work and the level of productivity I get out if it is far beyond what I get from any other IDE/editor. I've been developing a hobby kernel recently using C, and initially used VSCode; it was OK. Then I thought I'd give JetBrains CLion a try and I never looked back. I happily paid for license and it's been a well spent investment.