Ask HN: What is the must have feature of your IDE

Smart and fast definition and reference lookups. That's all I really need but it's surprising how many IDEs are broken in this aspect.

* Syntax hilighting (any text editor can have this) * Find Resource by starting to type the filename * Follow function calls * integrated debugger

I love the combination of Tmux and VI. This is because of the tight integration with the shell and the fact that I can work completely without a mouse.

Alas I am a Java guy and restricted to IntelliJ at work. It's a great IDE but I never feel as 'at home' as I do in the shell.

My favorite and most used refactoring feature in any IDE is Extract Method. It's a simple one, but I use it repeatedly when cleaning up both my own code and legacy code. My code would be much uglier without it.

Must have features for me are code completion "intellisense" to borrow a term. Proper and diverse syntax highlighting, Function/Method signature helpers, code/file navigation, and a clearly defined layout of the interface. Additionally, the IDE should have a clearly defined purpose and all utilities and support functions should reflect this. SOme good examples IMO are visual studio, and jetbrains IDEs of which I primarily use webstorm

Code jump. Intellisense. Refactoring is really sweet too, but that I can do with just find/replace (carefully).

Syntax highlighting, code completion, jump to definition and code linting, search and replace (regexps) in project... and of course a nice and, most importantly, fast code editor.

So, I use Sublime Text. Although it technically isn't an IDE, with some plugins installed (SublimeCodeIntel, SublimeLinter, and others), it works wonderfully as is if was. And it's blazing fast too.

I really love Sublime, so here are a few features which stop be from switching to apps such as Chocolat.

- Multiple Cursors, at first you think this is just a gimmick, but it soon shows its usefulness. I use this feature all of the time.

- Jump to definition.

- Useful and intuitive key bindings.

- Console output.

Search, Search and Replace in multiple files.

The ability to turn off features.

Well, mine is Emacs.

> What are the features of your IDE that you think separate it from the rest? What can you not live with out.

Extensibility. I can live without any other built-in features, because I can always write them myself in short order. Imagine a programming language in which you can't write your own functions. You wouldn't want to use that, would you?

Ability to turn off anything I don't want.

Nothing distracts my focus from my core work more than the IDE doing something I didn't intend. This is especially irritating when I accidentally switched modes or put myself somewhere else with no idea what I did or how to undo it.

So I should be able to turn it off and never worry about it again.

The caveman in me loves textpad.

I use vi(m) because it's available everywhere. I have no particular opinion on whether it's otherwise better than anything else, and I kind of suck at using it.

Emacs keybindings, extensibility (that would include configurability.)

I'm an Emacs user. I don't have a very long init.el but appreciate being able to deactivate stuff I don't use, especially things like scrollbars, toolbars, etc.

Using IDEs I feel overwhelmed (too many GUI elements) and powerless (mostly because I'm not familiar with them, but discoverability is important too, see Emacs' apropos.)

Smart completion based on type info(Intellij Idea, Scala & Java code)

Discoverability. I want to be able to download a library (through whatever means), and then figure out how to use it from within my code. I want to be able to type the name of a class, object, namespace, whatever the language has for that, that corresponds to the name of said library and then just play with it. I want docs for every method and class (or function, object, whatever) that I enter, in a tooltip, at my fingertips. I want autocomplete, not because I am too lazy to type, but because I want to call functions that actually exist. I want my IDE to tell me which parameters a function expects and what to think about when calling it.

Seriously guys, if I wanted to continuously switch between my editor and a browser with API docs, I'd be using a text-editor. If I wanted to spend 80% of my time going through badly commented undocumented source code written by colleagues or outright (friendly, OSS-contributing) strangers, I'd join a Ruby shop. I want an IDE with discoverability, and a language that supports this well.

My other must-have feature is integrated debugging. An IDE without integrated debugging isn't and IDE, it's a text editor with some plugins.

Correct syntax highlighting. (Ie, based on proper parsing and semantic analysis, not simple regex matching of keywords). Autocompletion. Go-to definition. Automatic, configurable code styling (i.e. AStyle). Visual debugging support (Click for breakpoints, step through code, watch variables/memory etc).

Insane-fast code completion, jump to definition, bracket/brace/quote/tag auto-closing. Just the boring usual things :)

Codejump, auto-complete, pop-up docs, error highlighting, debugger, some refactoring.

Quality debugger integration and easy navigation in code.

1. Refactoring. Mostly needed:

  - project wide renaming of functions, classes, ... inside the main editor (not through a "Refactoring dialog")

  - "extract method" at the press of a hotkey

2. Code generation to support "using things before defining them" (like what CTRL-1 in eclipse does). So I can e.g. use a class in a test that does not exist yet and have the IDE generate a stub of that class for me.

3. Automatic organization of imports. I don't want to have to lookup and type package names.

4. Everything needs to work without a mouse

cannot live without (from VS): - syntax highlighting obviously - THIS IS BIG: open IDE with unlimited number of instances. I forgot which IDE annoyed me on this one... IntelliJ? - reference lookup - intellisense - code (unit test) coverage map, unit test project integration - ability to make my own extension, add-on, macros, etc - SCM integration, detect file change and indicates which files have been changed in source panel. - code map ...

want but have not encountered: - source panel file structure that allow me to open files in different apps of my choice. detects file type. - simple, un-confusing, customizable UI - all shortcuts need to be customizable ...

This comment only on the first question: Ability to reverse engineer the program flow and provide a sequence diagram based on a run. THis should have the ability to specify a filter so unnecessary noise/well understood parts of the program flow can be skipped

I can live without vim keybindings, but it's annoying.

"Find in Files" and "Find and Replace in Files".

    grep
    sed -i

This might sound stupid, but I like IDEs that look good. Honestly, they all have pretty much the same feature set. I like to use applications that are pleasing to stare at for hours on end (and don't require much customization to get there).