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Ask HN: State of Free IDEs

3 points by dfrey1 ↗ HN
I recently got a new Mac Pro, and I'm setting it up. Which free IDE/setup would you recommend? In general, I'm a fan of JetBrain IDEs, but I don't want to pay for a license.

I have never been fully satisfied with my VSCode setup (and I occasionally found it pretty slow).

So tell me, HN hive-brain - what should I use?

11 comments

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andrewfromx
A free option for java/kotlin is always https://developer.android.com/studio which is based on (correct me if I'm wrong) https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ right?

But c'mon, we all know vim is all you need.

syncbehind
>But c'mon, we all know vim is all you need.

That's a funny way to spell emacs.

But who am I kidding, I don't code. I could, but then who would waste all of my time reading HN?

throwawaysalome
(correct me if I'm wrong)

A free option for java/kotlin is Jetbrains IDEA Community Edition, more commonly know as "IntelliJ" to the millions of developers who view paying for software as an injustice. Android Studio is merely a re-skin of it, with lots of Android-specific extensions.

matt_s
Code editing and workflow are really personal choices and subjective. I moved from IDE's to Sublime Text because of IDE slowness and annoyances. I made this move back when I did Java stuff and used Eclipse. I've tried VS Code a few times and just can't get into a flow, it feels slow. I find code suggestion popups to be annoying and usually never what I was going to type anyhow.

So I'd say try out text editors rather than IDES: Sublime (free to try out), vim, emacs, etc. They have enough options and plugins, etc. to make them really powerful.

Kinda funny that you have really good hardware and still found VS Code was slow at times. I imagine JetBrains costly subscription options are similar.

asicsp
I use GVim, so can't personally recommend an IDE. You mention not wanting to pay for Jetbrain, but don't they have free versions with less features?

Also, check out https://www.kdevelop.org/

foobarbaz33
Emacs and LSP servers work pretty well for some languages. Works great for Go. ripgrep and/or ctags cover any weird languages.

    brew tap d12frosted/emacs-plus
    brew install emacs-plus
throwaway019254
IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition + install plugins you need. Done.
schwartzworld
The upside of using intellij is that when you get a job you can probably get your work to pay for a license and then you are already used to the tooling.
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eiiot
Are you getting full use out of VSCode? The main advantage of VSCode (in my opinion) is the community plugins (Vim Keybindings, Tailwind, etc.). What do you feel is missing from your VSCode setup?

Also it's interesting that you find VSCode slow. At least on Mac, I feel like JetBrains is usually less performant.