Am I the only one using Intellij?
I started working with it in corpo, mainly java/spring boot, JSP🤢 .
Even when working on my own with TS, Angular, React, NextJS I couldn't switch. I tried so many times, but it doesn't click.
Am I missing something, or am I doing something wrong? (I mean, if possible I'd skip the Intellij subscription)
I'm sure some of you will know.
P.S. Also I'm now working with flutter, I know Theo doesn't like it but it is what it is.
12 Replies
IntelliJ is pretty awesome, although the halfbaked ai features have been bugging me a bit lately.
Do you have a more specific issue, is something not working or do just hate Java ?
Why switch? If you are already used to spring boot and java then stick to it, or you have a very specific reason for going to TS.
And theres nothing wrong with flutter its fine dont worry about it. Oh and tbh just stick to intelij ultimate if you dont wanna deal with 3rd parties for stuff like mem dumps and profilers ( i assume you use those )
Good question, lately I've been working a lot more with typescript, NextJS, nodeJS and flutter, also will pick up a freelancing gig with laravel, and java seems to fall out of my path for the future at least for now.
I want to make sure I'm not wasting my time with subpar solutions as I want to properly use AI in my workflows and all the hype seems to be around cursor or vs code. Honestly didn't see anyone talking about how good Junie is :)))
So I want to know if setting up a development environment with cursor or vs code with other extensions would result in a more efficient (time & money) dev process for me rather than using Junie in IntelliJ (of course also taking into account the IDE features lost if moving away from ItelliJ).
TBH since Kotlin got traction I started hating java :))). I guess the main thing I want to find out is that: Am I wasting my time working with IntelliJ and Junie rather than cursor or other solutions that might be more efficient :thinkies:
I'd switch to keep up with the best/latest solutions in AI dev tools, (intellij seems to always be a bit late to the party). Other than that, you're right, sticking with it will save a lot of haslte when needing full fledged IDE features.
Tbh ( hot take ) ai is useless for me like absolute dogshit whenever i do anything remotely close to prod or smth challenging. But so far i tested ai it works decently for TS but that might be cause im lacking in TS myself so i cant really give a judgement on that.
My only usecase for ai has been a google replacement just to save me some time searching from forum to forum
If you really wanna have some fun with ai coding use claude code cli as it has intelij support
tbh thats the only took thats somewhat useful for me when working in large codebases ( 100k+ lines code ), but still only using it for question answering or looking through systems i forgot the name of never for the actual coding itself
Personally im still unable to find a usecase for ai coding aside prototypes really.
But its fantastic for saving some time looking through code from my experience
Interesting takes, I've never thought of using the CLI tools that much since the interface for Junie is pretty good. I'm considering giving them a proper chance other than vibe coding some shitty app.
I think I'll stick with Junie ($200/year) as it lets me do the first implementation for new features, refactoring, extracting components etc pretty easily. I think the only thing I'm missing then is a more powerful TAB complete.
I'm working on an inherited codebase in flutter and AI has been very helpful in refactoring bad code design, extracting and reusing components, and also implementing first versions of components from mock-ups using existing patterns. Of course only like 50% of the generated code gets pushed, the rest is mostly refactored or discarded. It helps with productivity a lot, and while I'm waiting for it to finish, I can easily prompt something on my other ongoing projects.
Interesting as my ai flutter experience wasnt quite good but might be complexity thing. And only like 50% is still a insane amount as mine is less then 5% at best. I tried using ai and making apps with it but i just really never could but eh whatever
Frontend community is probably still biggest around VSC (for now). There's tons of clones and those all also probs come close. IMO You should keep Idea for your backend because it's the tool you know and just run one of the VSC flavors for working on FE.
Yeah, I feel you. I can't be bothered to even try to understand some of the shit code that is in this repo so I guess that's why AI has been helpufl and as far as complexity goes, it's mosly UI and passing info from here and there, nothing too complex.
What I really miss is writing code which is what I love to do in the first place, I now spend a lot of time with prompting, and reading the code instead :))) I don't think I'll ever pass a coding interview ever again
Thanks, I should Use that on my next NextJS project, and if it doesn't help me better than IDEA does I'll just switch back
I had a ai phase as well but each day passing by im using those tools less and less, it does more harm then help
The thing is you will start to underestimate yourself while in reality you are better then the ai from my experience
If you are really too far in the ai rabbit hole just stop using it for a month or 2 and get yourself to trust your own abilities again
Thanks man, that's deep. Didn't think of it that way. To be honest I kind of fell behind in the last year and I just started to catch up. That's also why I joined here and why I'm trying to understand what is actually happening 😄
Yeah no worries, Just make sure to not let the ai control you as 50% ai generated code in your repo is really a huge amount
True that!