{"slug": "intellij-idea", "name": "IntelliJ IDEA", "category": "editors", "category_name": "Editors and IDEs", "description": "JetBrains' integrated development environment for Java, Kotlin and other JVM and web languages.", "recommenders": 17, "commenters": 43, "warners": 8, "score": 12.571, "rising": 2.4, "first": "2025-11-13", "latest": "2026-10-25", "why": "HN commenters like IntelliJ IDEA for its git, diff and code review tools, accurate code navigation and refactoring, and its JVM debugger.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 17, "neutral": 22, "compare": 1, "warn": 8}, "spark": [0, 0, 3, 0, 1, 0, 2, 1, 4, 1, 0, 5], "listed": true, "loved": ["Git and code review", "Rich feature set"], "caveat": "Resource hog", "short_quote": "I use IntelliJIDEA everyday (on mac) with multiple projects open and tbh they have optimized the IDE a lot to make it faster.", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": "github.com/jetbrains/intellij-community", "official_url": "https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/", "pricing": "freemium", "aliases": ["IntelliJ IDEA", "IntelliJ"], "verdict": [{"text": "HN commenters like IntelliJ IDEA for its git, diff and code review tools,", "cites": [{"id": 803783568, "item_id": 50236473, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50236473", "by": "sa46", "date": "2026-10-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "IntelliJ supports pretty decent GitHub code review in the editor.", "excerpt": "IntelliJ supports pretty decent GitHub code review in the editor. It shows the modified code in the gutter and review comments. I use it when I need to deeply understand a PR.", "context": "", "use_case": "GitHub PR code review", "switched_from": "", "story": "JetBrains Thinkrail"}, {"id": 803524512, "item_id": 50220282, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50220282", "by": "bni", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "IntelliJ is excellent for doing the code review. The git and diff is top notch.", "excerpt": "IntelliJ is excellent for doing the code review. The git and diff is top notch. Then there is the DataGrip stuff, I use it all the time. And the HTTP client (.http files!) is also good. It has built in scripting. Notice here that none of these activities is writing code. This enhances the understanding of what I am building with the agents. I\u2019m sure the lazy dev will just skip this and will never see any of this, jus", "context": "", "use_case": "code review", "switched_from": "", "story": "ThinkRail from JetBrains"}, {"id": 744100881, "item_id": 46506305, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46506305", "by": "__jonas", "date": "2026-01-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I would pay for a fast, standalone git UI that is as good as the IntelliJ one.", "excerpt": "I agree with that comment chain about the intelliJ diff view so much https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/26770#discussioncomment-13051899 I don't even need that to be built into the editor \u2013 I would pay for a fast, standalone git UI that is as good as the IntelliJ one. I use Sublime Merge right now and it's kind of ok but definitely not on the same level", "context": "", "use_case": "diff view", "switched_from": "", "story": "I switched from VSCode to Zed"}]}, {"text": " accurate code navigation and refactoring,", "cites": [{"id": 784315744, "item_id": 49019734, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49019734", "by": "laszlojamf", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "IntelliJ always got it right, whereas with the other editors it was hit-or-miss.", "excerpt": "I agree that IntelliJ is a monster of a resource hog, but I have yet to find an editor where code navigation is as good. That's basically all I use it for these days, in the days of LLMs, and I still think it's worth it. VSCode, especially for golang, is terrible. I might be holding it wrong, but I've really tried, and it's just not good enough. Before LLMs, when I still refactored by hand, coworkers who were using v", "context": "", "use_case": "code navigation and refactoring", "switched_from": "", "story": "Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot"}, {"id": 799665696, "item_id": 49979106, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49979106", "by": "edukite", "date": "2026-10-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Intellij when I used to use it had a lot great features like refactoring, extracting part of code as a function", "excerpt": "Depends on what exactly you want to change. Lsp can do a lot but only in very simple changes. Intellij when I used to use it had a lot great features like refactoring, extracting part of code as a function, renaming and creating empty classes/boilerplate but that's it In current job I can order LLM to take data sink from other endpoint and write new with given URL. It will fetch from endpoint, check what it gives, co", "context": "", "use_case": "refactoring", "switched_from": "", "story": "JetBrains reports revenue growth, net financial loss for 2025"}]}, {"text": " and its JVM debugger.", "cites": [{"id": 784433200, "item_id": 49027075, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49027075", "by": "sajithdilshan", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I haven't found another IDE which is as powerful as IDEA when it comes to debugging a JVM language project.", "excerpt": "I remember it was pretty slow even like early 2020s. But since they have introduced the new UI design IDE, somehow they have optimized it. I think they made it modular so only the core module that is needed are loaded and some modules are loaded only if it's needed by a plugin. Also, they have optimized indexing as well. I remember the whole thing slowed down when it starts to index a medium size gradle project, but ", "context": "uses community edition daily", "use_case": "JVM development and debugging", "switched_from": "", "story": "Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot"}, {"id": 767373681, "item_id": 47960855, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47960855", "by": "brabel", "date": "2026-04-30", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "nowadays the IntelliJ debugger with the OpenJDK is enough for me", "excerpt": "I used this in the past: https://ssw.jku.at/dcevm/ Though nowadays the IntelliJ debugger with the OpenJDK is enough for me. I know what works and what doesn\u2019t so I rarely feel frustrated.", "context": "", "use_case": "Java debugging", "switched_from": "DCEVM", "story": "Why I Still Reach for Lisp (& Scheme) Instead of Haskell"}]}, {"text": " The most common complaint is heavy memory use and slowness,", "cites": [{"id": 800472144, "item_id": 50029509, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50029509", "by": "yogthos", "date": "2026-10-10", "stance": "warn", "quote": "it takes forever to start using gigs of memory", "excerpt": "I have yet to have a good experience with any JVM based app on the desktop with or without Clojure. Take a look at something like in IntelliJ as an example. It doesn't have a Clojure runtime, and it takes forever to start using gigs of memory. Like you said, it makes Electron apps look lean. I ended up switching to using VSCode because it just runs a lot better and uses less memory. And when it comes to Clojure speci", "context": "", "use_case": "IDE", "switched_from": "", "story": "Clojure in the age of language models"}, {"id": 784324864, "item_id": 49020304, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49020304", "by": "mdawwg", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "warn", "quote": "in the last few years performance and memory usage has gotten pretty bad.", "excerpt": "I'm also on a mac, but in the last few years performance and memory usage has gotten pretty bad. Though we use Intellij for mostly Angular / Node projects. A colleague of mine had reverted to an older major release because it runs better on our Macs. He ended up switching over to a popular open source IDE and hasn't looked back.", "context": "works on a Mac with Angular/Node projects", "use_case": "Angular / Node development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot"}, {"id": 784332096, "item_id": 49020756, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49020756", "by": "c16", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "warn", "quote": "But the resource hog and I guess focus on writing a mediocre AI side panel really killed it for me.", "excerpt": "I've been using Goland/IntelliJ since I graduated. Been paying for it for years. But the resource hog and I guess focus on writing a mediocre AI side panel really killed it for me. The main improvements lately were: - line/function prediction - Claude Code plugin And I can use Claude Code in any terminal. So I've switched to zed.dev and use Claude there. Wish it had the line prediction though.", "context": "paying JetBrains customer for years", "use_case": "IDE", "switched_from": "", "story": "Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot"}, {"id": 784315744, "item_id": 49019734, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49019734", "by": "laszlojamf", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "IntelliJ always got it right, whereas with the other editors it was hit-or-miss.", "excerpt": "I agree that IntelliJ is a monster of a resource hog, but I have yet to find an editor where code navigation is as good. That's basically all I use it for these days, in the days of LLMs, and I still think it's worth it. VSCode, especially for golang, is terrible. I might be holding it wrong, but I've really tried, and it's just not good enough. Before LLMs, when I still refactored by hand, coworkers who were using v", "context": "", "use_case": "code navigation and refactoring", "switched_from": "", "story": "Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot"}]}, {"text": " with one user reporting frequent cache and indexing problems on a big Java codebase.", "cites": [{"id": 799698945, "item_id": 49981184, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49981184", "by": "akkad33", "date": "2026-10-06", "stance": "warn", "quote": "every two days I had to wrangle with intellij cache, clearing it or what not", "excerpt": "I switched to vscode because the complexity and runtime overhead of intellij were no longer justified with Claude writing most of the code. I work on a big java code base and every two days I had to wrangle with intellij cache, clearing it or what not. With Claude I'm working in multiple work trees at the same time and this just amplifies every issue intellij had with slow indexing and broken caches. And TBH nowadays", "context": "works on a big Java code base", "use_case": "Java development", "switched_from": "", "story": "JetBrains reports revenue growth, net financial loss for 2025"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Git and code review", "summary": "Commenters rate its in-editor PR review, diff view and merge tool highly.", "quotes": [{"id": 803524512, "item_id": 50220282, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50220282", "by": "bni", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "IntelliJ is excellent for doing the code review. The git and diff is top notch.", "excerpt": "IntelliJ is excellent for doing the code review. The git and diff is top notch. Then there is the DataGrip stuff, I use it all the time. And the HTTP client (.http files!) is also good. It has built in scripting. Notice here that none of these activities is writing code. This enhances the understanding of what I am building with the agents. I\u2019m sure the lazy dev will just skip this and will never see any of this, jus", "context": "", "use_case": "code review", "switched_from": "", "story": "ThinkRail from JetBrains"}, {"id": 803783568, "item_id": 50236473, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50236473", "by": "sa46", "date": "2026-10-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "IntelliJ supports pretty decent GitHub code review in the editor.", "excerpt": "IntelliJ supports pretty decent GitHub code review in the editor. It shows the modified code in the gutter and review comments. I use it when I need to deeply understand a PR.", "context": "", "use_case": "GitHub PR code review", "switched_from": "", "story": "JetBrains Thinkrail"}, {"id": 744100881, "item_id": 46506305, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46506305", "by": "__jonas", "date": "2026-01-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I would pay for a fast, standalone git UI that is as good as the IntelliJ one.", "excerpt": "I agree with that comment chain about the intelliJ diff view so much https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/26770#discussioncomment-13051899 I don't even need that to be built into the editor \u2013 I would pay for a fast, standalone git UI that is as good as the IntelliJ one. I use Sublime Merge right now and it's kind of ok but definitely not on the same level", "context": "", "use_case": "diff view", "switched_from": "", "story": "I switched from VSCode to Zed"}]}, {"label": "Rich feature set", "summary": "Users praise its broad, well-integrated features and long-running commitment to quality.", "quotes": [{"id": 746923088, "item_id": 46682693, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46682693", "by": "plmpsu", "date": "2026-01-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have been using JetBrains products since 2003, and it's rare to encounter such a long-term commitment to quality and users", "excerpt": "As opposed to the subpar software quality produced these days by the big tech companies (who even knows if Microsoft Outlook for macOS even has a functional product team), JetBrains have been continuously delivering new features and innovations in their products in ways which make my work and life better and easier. I have been using JetBrains products since 2003, and it's rare to encounter such a long-term commitmen", "context": "JetBrains user since 2003", "use_case": "software development", "switched_from": "", "story": "25 Years of IntelliJ Idea"}, {"id": 767232993, "item_id": 47952062, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47952062", "by": "atombender", "date": "2026-04-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I've wasted insane amounts of time on bugs and on filing detailed bug reports that are never looked at.", "excerpt": "I've been using Jetbrains IntelliJ IDEA as my main IDE for Go, Rust, TypeScript, etc. for the last 3 years, and this Christmas I switched to Zed, and I'm not looking back. I was admittedly skeptical of Zed in the beginning, because they started out with so few features, and it seemed impossible to really switch permanently to it and still be as productive. The Jetbrains platform has got such an amazingly rich set of ", "context": "", "use_case": "main IDE for Go, Rust, TypeScript", "switched_from": "", "story": "Zed is 1.0"}, {"id": 803524512, "item_id": 50220282, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50220282", "by": "bni", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "IntelliJ is excellent for doing the code review. The git and diff is top notch.", "excerpt": "IntelliJ is excellent for doing the code review. The git and diff is top notch. Then there is the DataGrip stuff, I use it all the time. And the HTTP client (.http files!) is also good. It has built in scripting. Notice here that none of these activities is writing code. This enhances the understanding of what I am building with the agents. I\u2019m sure the lazy dev will just skip this and will never see any of this, jus", "context": "", "use_case": "code review", "switched_from": "", "story": "ThinkRail from JetBrains"}]}, {"label": "Improved performance", "summary": "Some daily users say recent versions are faster, with indexing now in the background.", "quotes": [{"id": 784301136, "item_id": 49018821, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49018821", "by": "sajithdilshan", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use IntelliJIDEA everyday (on mac) with multiple projects open and tbh they have optimized the IDE a lot to make it faster.", "excerpt": "> But what do you actually get with IntelliJ? A massive, monolithic Java application that frequently hogs 8GB+ of RAM, locks up your system while \u201cindexing pre-built binaries,\u201d and forces you into a closed proprietary ecosystem. This is just exaggeration. I use IntelliJIDEA everyday (on mac) with multiple projects open and tbh they have optimized the IDE a lot to make it faster. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's ", "context": "", "use_case": "daily development IDE", "switched_from": "", "story": "Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot"}, {"id": 784433200, "item_id": 49027075, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49027075", "by": "sajithdilshan", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I haven't found another IDE which is as powerful as IDEA when it comes to debugging a JVM language project.", "excerpt": "I remember it was pretty slow even like early 2020s. But since they have introduced the new UI design IDE, somehow they have optimized it. I think they made it modular so only the core module that is needed are loaded and some modules are loaded only if it's needed by a plugin. Also, they have optimized indexing as well. I remember the whole thing slowed down when it starts to index a medium size gradle project, but ", "context": "uses community edition daily", "use_case": "JVM development and debugging", "switched_from": "", "story": "Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot"}, {"id": 803527664, "item_id": 50220479, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50220479", "by": "t_mahmood", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's been really robust", "excerpt": "I use only one, IntelliJ IDEA, which has all integrated, except Rider I believe. It has full Rust, Java, Python, Web stack, things that I work with. There were few issues here and there occasionally, but last few months I have not faced any issues, and it's been really robust. It gets slow with LLM providers running in the background on my 7 year old laptop though. But on desktop it flies.", "context": "", "use_case": "Rust, Java, Python, web development", "switched_from": "", "story": "ThinkRail from JetBrains"}]}, {"label": "AI integration", "summary": "Users note built-in AI tooling with agents, model switching and bring-your-own-key support.", "quotes": [{"id": 787761680, "item_id": 49235105, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49235105", "by": "pohl", "date": "2026-08-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use IntelliJ at my current gig", "excerpt": "I use IntelliJ at my current gig\u2014and the CoPilot plugin for AI, because it\u2019s what I have access to\u2014and it has become ClaudeCode-esque of late: sub-agents, skills, tool-calling, hooks\u2026and continues to improve. It\u2019s unfortunate how the AI-in-a-sidebar UI kind of hides how sophisticated it has grown, but it\u2019s a glass of ice water in hell in an environment where you can\u2019t easily procure what you want.", "context": "", "use_case": "IDE at work", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenChamber: An Agentic Development Environment"}, {"id": 793955072, "item_id": 49622192, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49622192", "by": "comrade1234", "date": "2026-09-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "in IntelliJ I can switch between maybe a dozen models with a drop-down", "excerpt": "Does it really? Or is it that they're all pretty much good enough and so you just go with what's cheapest or what you're used to? For example, in IntelliJ I can switch between maybe a dozen models with a drop-down but the only time I do it is when whatever model I'm currently using has an outage. Another example, our product has some ai features (not coding related). I use spring-ai and so I can change models just in", "context": "", "use_case": "coding with AI models", "switched_from": "", "story": "AI Has a Discovery Problem"}, {"id": 776357042, "item_id": 48522315, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48522315", "by": "saratogacx", "date": "2026-06-13", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use intelliJ for much of my development", "excerpt": "I've been using GLM-5/5.1 for about 6 months and it has been a fairly capable model. I've seen a lot of mixed opinions that tend to align with harness usage so it is worth trying out a couple with a model before writing it off. For example, I'm using crush and have had a good experience while others using CC have had a much more mixed experience. For task complexity, I treat it as I would sonnet with the same care in", "context": "", "use_case": "development", "switched_from": "", "story": "GLM 5.2 Is Out"}]}, {"label": "Navigation and refactoring", "summary": "Code navigation and large refactors are described as more reliable than in other editors.", "quotes": [{"id": 784315744, "item_id": 49019734, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49019734", "by": "laszlojamf", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "IntelliJ always got it right, whereas with the other editors it was hit-or-miss.", "excerpt": "I agree that IntelliJ is a monster of a resource hog, but I have yet to find an editor where code navigation is as good. That's basically all I use it for these days, in the days of LLMs, and I still think it's worth it. VSCode, especially for golang, is terrible. I might be holding it wrong, but I've really tried, and it's just not good enough. Before LLMs, when I still refactored by hand, coworkers who were using v", "context": "", "use_case": "code navigation and refactoring", "switched_from": "", "story": "Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot"}, {"id": 799665696, "item_id": 49979106, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49979106", "by": "edukite", "date": "2026-10-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Intellij when I used to use it had a lot great features like refactoring, extracting part of code as a function", "excerpt": "Depends on what exactly you want to change. Lsp can do a lot but only in very simple changes. Intellij when I used to use it had a lot great features like refactoring, extracting part of code as a function, renaming and creating empty classes/boilerplate but that's it In current job I can order LLM to take data sink from other endpoint and write new with given URL. It will fetch from endpoint, check what it gives, co", "context": "", "use_case": "refactoring", "switched_from": "", "story": "JetBrains reports revenue growth, net financial loss for 2025"}]}, {"label": "JVM debugging", "summary": "One user calls its debugger the most powerful for JVM projects, and another finds it sufficient.", "quotes": [{"id": 784433200, "item_id": 49027075, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49027075", "by": "sajithdilshan", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I haven't found another IDE which is as powerful as IDEA when it comes to debugging a JVM language project.", "excerpt": "I remember it was pretty slow even like early 2020s. But since they have introduced the new UI design IDE, somehow they have optimized it. I think they made it modular so only the core module that is needed are loaded and some modules are loaded only if it's needed by a plugin. Also, they have optimized indexing as well. I remember the whole thing slowed down when it starts to index a medium size gradle project, but ", "context": "uses community edition daily", "use_case": "JVM development and debugging", "switched_from": "", "story": "Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot"}, {"id": 767373681, "item_id": 47960855, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47960855", "by": "brabel", "date": "2026-04-30", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "nowadays the IntelliJ debugger with the OpenJDK is enough for me", "excerpt": "I used this in the past: https://ssw.jku.at/dcevm/ Though nowadays the IntelliJ debugger with the OpenJDK is enough for me. I know what works and what doesn\u2019t so I rarely feel frustrated.", "context": "", "use_case": "Java debugging", "switched_from": "DCEVM", "story": "Why I Still Reach for Lisp (& Scheme) Instead of Haskell"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Resource hog", "summary": "Many commenters say it starts slowly and uses gigabytes of memory.", "quotes": [{"id": 800472144, "item_id": 50029509, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50029509", "by": "yogthos", "date": "2026-10-10", "stance": "warn", "quote": "it takes forever to start using gigs of memory", "excerpt": "I have yet to have a good experience with any JVM based app on the desktop with or without Clojure. Take a look at something like in IntelliJ as an example. It doesn't have a Clojure runtime, and it takes forever to start using gigs of memory. Like you said, it makes Electron apps look lean. I ended up switching to using VSCode because it just runs a lot better and uses less memory. And when it comes to Clojure speci", "context": "", "use_case": "IDE", "switched_from": "", "story": "Clojure in the age of language models"}, {"id": 784324864, "item_id": 49020304, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49020304", "by": "mdawwg", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "warn", "quote": "in the last few years performance and memory usage has gotten pretty bad.", "excerpt": "I'm also on a mac, but in the last few years performance and memory usage has gotten pretty bad. Though we use Intellij for mostly Angular / Node projects. A colleague of mine had reverted to an older major release because it runs better on our Macs. He ended up switching over to a popular open source IDE and hasn't looked back.", "context": "works on a Mac with Angular/Node projects", "use_case": "Angular / Node development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot"}, {"id": 784332096, "item_id": 49020756, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49020756", "by": "c16", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "warn", "quote": "But the resource hog and I guess focus on writing a mediocre AI side panel really killed it for me.", "excerpt": "I've been using Goland/IntelliJ since I graduated. Been paying for it for years. But the resource hog and I guess focus on writing a mediocre AI side panel really killed it for me. The main improvements lately were: - line/function prediction - Claude Code plugin And I can use Claude Code in any terminal. So I've switched to zed.dev and use Claude there. Wish it had the line prediction though.", "context": "paying JetBrains customer for years", "use_case": "IDE", "switched_from": "", "story": "Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot"}]}, {"label": "Cache and indexing", "summary": "One user had to clear broken caches every few days and saw slow indexing on a big codebase.", "quotes": [{"id": 799698945, "item_id": 49981184, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49981184", "by": "akkad33", "date": "2026-10-06", "stance": "warn", "quote": "every two days I had to wrangle with intellij cache, clearing it or what not", "excerpt": "I switched to vscode because the complexity and runtime overhead of intellij were no longer justified with Claude writing most of the code. I work on a big java code base and every two days I had to wrangle with intellij cache, clearing it or what not. With Claude I'm working in multiple work trees at the same time and this just amplifies every issue intellij had with slow indexing and broken caches. And TBH nowadays", "context": "works on a big Java code base", "use_case": "Java development", "switched_from": "", "story": "JetBrains reports revenue growth, net financial loss for 2025"}]}, {"label": "Weak AI features", "summary": "Some find its AI side panel mediocre and its inline suggestions useless.", "quotes": [{"id": 784332096, "item_id": 49020756, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49020756", "by": "c16", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "warn", "quote": "But the resource hog and I guess focus on writing a mediocre AI side panel really killed it for me.", "excerpt": "I've been using Goland/IntelliJ since I graduated. Been paying for it for years. But the resource hog and I guess focus on writing a mediocre AI side panel really killed it for me. The main improvements lately were: - line/function prediction - Claude Code plugin And I can use Claude Code in any terminal. So I've switched to zed.dev and use Claude there. Wish it had the line prediction though.", "context": "paying JetBrains customer for years", "use_case": "IDE", "switched_from": "", "story": "Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot"}, {"id": 740614656, "item_id": 46288416, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46288416", "by": "rPlayer6554", "date": "2025-12-16", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Intellijs inline code suggestions (also based on a local LLMs) are usually useless to me.", "excerpt": "Just to be clear, they are NOT deactivating IntelliSense which suggests classes and functions. This is an AI inline code suggestion tool using local LLMs. Not great but may or may not impact your workflow. I love using agents, but Intellijs inline code suggestions (also based on a local LLMs) are usually useless to me.", "context": "", "use_case": "inline code suggestions", "switched_from": "", "story": "VS Code deactivates IntelliCode in favor of the paid Copilot"}]}, {"label": "Unaddressed bugs", "summary": "One long-time user says detailed bug reports were never looked at.", "quotes": [{"id": 767232993, "item_id": 47952062, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47952062", "by": "atombender", "date": "2026-04-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I've wasted insane amounts of time on bugs and on filing detailed bug reports that are never looked at.", "excerpt": "I've been using Jetbrains IntelliJ IDEA as my main IDE for Go, Rust, TypeScript, etc. for the last 3 years, and this Christmas I switched to Zed, and I'm not looking back. I was admittedly skeptical of Zed in the beginning, because they started out with so few features, and it seemed impossible to really switch permanently to it and still be as productive. The Jetbrains platform has got such an amazingly rich set of ", "context": "", "use_case": "main IDE for Go, Rust, TypeScript", "switched_from": "", "story": "Zed is 1.0"}]}, {"label": "Git terminology", "summary": "One commenter dislikes that its git client uses its own terminology and lifecycle.", "quotes": [{"id": 784384081, "item_id": 49024005, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49024005", "by": "koiueo", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "warn", "quote": "And I hate it with a passion. The fact they they introduced their own terminology, their own lifecycle", "excerpt": "And I hate it with a passion. The fact they they introduced their own terminology, their own lifecycle, always makes me doubt what will happen when I use any feature of their client. Magit OTOH stays much closer to the true git. Although for anything slightly more esoteric I still prefer native git cli.", "context": "", "use_case": "git integration", "switched_from": "", "story": "Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot"}]}], "who": [{"by": "justauserid", "context": "codes in a language they largely don't know", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50219744", "date": "2026-10-24"}, {"by": "sajithdilshan", "context": "uses community edition daily", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49027075", "date": "2026-07-23"}, {"by": "jillesvangurp", "context": "OSS contributor", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49020415", "date": "2026-07-23"}, {"by": "jwpapi", "context": "independent developer building a platform", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48902906", "date": "2026-07-13"}, {"by": "atomicnumber3", "context": "works on team where coworkers use other IDEs", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48594357", "date": "2026-06-18"}, {"by": "malkia", "context": "Xoogler on an Ads team", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48128755", "date": "2026-05-13"}, {"by": "cletus", "context": "Xoogler (2010-2017)", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48125501", "date": "2026-05-13"}, {"by": "fabianholzer", "context": "uses it at work", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47901098", "date": "2026-04-25"}, {"by": "plmpsu", "context": "JetBrains user since 2003", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46682693", "date": "2026-01-19"}], "tags": ["for Java developers", "for code review", "for Vim users", "for Kotlin Multiplatform"], "use_cases": ["ide", "java development", "development", "daily work development", "github pr code review", "rust, java, python, web development"], "compared": [{"slug": "visual-studio-code", "name": "Visual Studio Code", "co": 11, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 2}, {"slug": "zed", "name": "Zed", "co": 6, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 2}, {"slug": "eclipse", "name": "Eclipse", "co": 3, "switched_from": 3, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "emacs", "name": "Emacs", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 2}, {"slug": "claude-code", "name": "Claude Code", "co": 7, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "antigravity", "name": "Antigravity", "co": 1, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "evil-mode", "name": "Evil-mode", "co": 1, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48990219", "title": "Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot", "mentions": 9}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50219186", "title": "ThinkRail from JetBrains", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49977072", "title": "JetBrains reports revenue growth, net financial loss for 2025", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50233294", "title": "JetBrains Thinkrail", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48073979", "title": "A History of IDEs at Google", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50107843", "title": "Lombok Is Still Relevant in the Age of Java Records", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"neutral": 1}, "2025-12": {"neutral": 1, "warn": 1}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 1}, "2026-02": {"neutral": 2}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-04": {"neutral": 3, "warn": 1}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 2, "neutral": 1}, "2026-06": {"neutral": 4, "recommend": 1, "warn": 1}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 4, "neutral": 2, "warn": 3, "compare": 1}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-09": {"neutral": 2}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 5, "warn": 2, "recommend": 5}}, "quotes": [{"id": 803788816, "item_id": 50236801, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50236801", "by": "comrade1234", "date": "2026-10-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use IntelliJ for work every day", "excerpt": "So is this DOA? I use IntelliJ for work every day and I have a project that will work for agentic coding but that I want to experiment with...", "context": "", "use_case": "daily work development", "switched_from": "", "story": "JetBrains Thinkrail"}, {"id": 803783568, "item_id": 50236473, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50236473", "by": "sa46", "date": "2026-10-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "IntelliJ supports pretty decent GitHub code review in the editor.", "excerpt": "IntelliJ supports pretty decent GitHub code review in the editor. It shows the modified code in the gutter and review comments. I use it when I need to deeply understand a PR.", "context": "", "use_case": "GitHub PR code review", "switched_from": "", "story": "JetBrains Thinkrail"}, {"id": 803527664, "item_id": 50220479, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50220479", "by": "t_mahmood", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's been really robust", "excerpt": "I use only one, IntelliJ IDEA, which has all integrated, except Rider I believe. It has full Rust, Java, Python, Web stack, things that I work with. There were few issues here and there occasionally, but last few months I have not faced any issues, and it's been really robust. It gets slow with LLM providers running in the background on my 7 year old laptop though. But on desktop it flies.", "context": "", "use_case": "Rust, Java, Python, web development", "switched_from": "", "story": "ThinkRail from JetBrains"}, {"id": 803524512, "item_id": 50220282, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50220282", "by": "bni", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "IntelliJ is excellent for doing the code review. The git and diff is top notch.", "excerpt": "IntelliJ is excellent for doing the code review. The git and diff is top notch. Then there is the DataGrip stuff, I use it all the time. And the HTTP client (.http files!) is also good. It has built in scripting. Notice here that none of these activities is writing code. This enhances the understanding of what I am building with the agents. I\u2019m sure the lazy dev will just skip this and will never see any of this, jus", "context": "", "use_case": "code review", "switched_from": "", "story": "ThinkRail from JetBrains"}, {"id": 803519824, "item_id": 50219989, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50219989", "by": "brabel", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "IntelliJ IDEA is just great", "excerpt": "I love JB, IntelliJ IDEA is just great, but I am using it less and less with agents now. I see JB Toolbox has \"Junie CLI\" available for me. Have you tried both that and ThinkRail or Air? Which would you recommend for someone who is currently mostly working on the Claude App (which also manages worktrees seamlessly, which looks like what ThinkRail does)?", "context": "", "use_case": "IDE", "switched_from": "", "story": "ThinkRail from JetBrains"}, {"id": 803515904, "item_id": 50219744, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50219744", "by": "justauserid", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "since I have used Intellij and android studio a lot maybe I'll give it a try", "excerpt": "I would like to use a harness that integerates with an IDE very easily. This will be helpful for me when coding in a language I largely don't know. I can kinda check things quickly in front of me. I know it just needs an editor and maybe a language server setup \u2013 but the cost of visual context switching is still costly heavy for us humans. Often things out of sight are also out of mind. I was aiming for VS Code but s", "context": "codes in a language they largely don't know", "use_case": "IDE with agent harness", "switched_from": "", "story": "ThinkRail from JetBrains"}, {"id": 802500192, "item_id": 50156262, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50156262", "by": "watwut", "date": "2026-10-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Idea with eclipse shortcuts. I have lombok plugin.", "excerpt": "I use Idea with eclipse shortcuts. I have lombok plugin. Ctrl-O for a popup window of all methods. The lombok generated constructor is there. Highlight it and then shortcut for call hierarchy. Ctrl-h or ctrl-alt-h I am not sure now.", "context": "", "use_case": "Java development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Lombok Is Still Relevant in the Age of Java Records"}, {"id": 800472144, "item_id": 50029509, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50029509", "by": "yogthos", "date": "2026-10-10", "stance": "warn", "quote": "it takes forever to start using gigs of memory", "excerpt": "I have yet to have a good experience with any JVM based app on the desktop with or without Clojure. Take a look at something like in IntelliJ as an example. It doesn't have a Clojure runtime, and it takes forever to start using gigs of memory. Like you said, it makes Electron apps look lean. I ended up switching to using VSCode because it just runs a lot better and uses less memory. And when it comes to Clojure speci", "context": "", "use_case": "IDE", "switched_from": "", "story": "Clojure in the age of language models"}, {"id": 799698945, "item_id": 49981184, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49981184", "by": "akkad33", "date": "2026-10-06", "stance": "warn", "quote": "every two days I had to wrangle with intellij cache, clearing it or what not", "excerpt": "I switched to vscode because the complexity and runtime overhead of intellij were no longer justified with Claude writing most of the code. I work on a big java code base and every two days I had to wrangle with intellij cache, clearing it or what not. With Claude I'm working in multiple work trees at the same time and this just amplifies every issue intellij had with slow indexing and broken caches. And TBH nowadays", "context": "works on a big Java code base", "use_case": "Java development", "switched_from": "", "story": "JetBrains reports revenue growth, net financial loss for 2025"}, {"id": 799681040, "item_id": 49980065, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49980065", "by": "dools", "date": "2026-10-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "It was about 4 months into using it that I figured out that the IDE was really doing nothing.", "excerpt": "This is interesting to me because I only started using JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA specifically to do AI coding. It was the first time I'd used an IDE, the first time I'd built a cross platform app, first time I'd used Kotlin, and the first time I'd tried AI coding. The journey started with choosing KMP as the stack, then I figured \"here's the company that released KMP, they have an IDE, they have AI, I'll use that\". It ", "context": "", "use_case": "AI coding with Kotlin", "switched_from": "", "story": "JetBrains reports revenue growth, net financial loss for 2025"}, {"id": 799665696, "item_id": 49979106, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49979106", "by": "edukite", "date": "2026-10-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Intellij when I used to use it had a lot great features like refactoring, extracting part of code as a function", "excerpt": "Depends on what exactly you want to change. Lsp can do a lot but only in very simple changes. Intellij when I used to use it had a lot great features like refactoring, extracting part of code as a function, renaming and creating empty classes/boilerplate but that's it In current job I can order LLM to take data sink from other endpoint and write new with given URL. It will fetch from endpoint, check what it gives, co", "context": "", "use_case": "refactoring", "switched_from": "", "story": "JetBrains reports revenue growth, net financial loss for 2025"}, {"id": 799474257, "item_id": 49967141, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49967141", "by": "nickserv", "date": "2026-10-05", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "dev work (InteliJ)", "excerpt": "I use it for a bit of everything: dev work (InteliJ), basic 3D modeling/printing (freeCAD, Blender, Orca), light video editing (OBS, Kdenlive), gaming (wine) ... Could probably go with an Arch based distro, but the Ubuntu/Debian base is useful for the good compatibility.", "context": "", "use_case": "dev work", "switched_from": "", "story": "The work by Valve's Timur Krist\u00f3f on improving old AMD GPUs on Linux"}, {"id": 793955072, "item_id": 49622192, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49622192", "by": "comrade1234", "date": "2026-09-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "in IntelliJ I can switch between maybe a dozen models with a drop-down", "excerpt": "Does it really? Or is it that they're all pretty much good enough and so you just go with what's cheapest or what you're used to? For example, in IntelliJ I can switch between maybe a dozen models with a drop-down but the only time I do it is when whatever model I'm currently using has an outage. Another example, our product has some ai features (not coding related). I use spring-ai and so I can change models just in", "context": "", "use_case": "coding with AI models", "switched_from": "", "story": "AI Has a Discovery Problem"}, {"id": 792556322, "item_id": 49534770, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49534770", "by": "jillesvangurp", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "For most programming I prefer full IDEs. (intellij for the last few years).", "excerpt": "Can't say I miss nedit. But it was alright for the mid nineties when I used it on university workstations (a mix of Sun, HP, and SGI hardware). I also got into Jedit for a while. Nice editor and the plugin system it had was pretty advanced for the time. This before we had the option of using something like javascript to do the same kinds of things (like vs code and other editors now do). Java had the ability to dynam", "context": "", "use_case": "programming", "switched_from": "", "story": "Fine, I'll build my own text editor"}, {"id": 787761680, "item_id": 49235105, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49235105", "by": "pohl", "date": "2026-08-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use IntelliJ at my current gig", "excerpt": "I use IntelliJ at my current gig\u2014and the CoPilot plugin for AI, because it\u2019s what I have access to\u2014and it has become ClaudeCode-esque of late: sub-agents, skills, tool-calling, hooks\u2026and continues to improve. It\u2019s unfortunate how the AI-in-a-sidebar UI kind of hides how sophisticated it has grown, but it\u2019s a glass of ice water in hell in an environment where you can\u2019t easily procure what you want.", "context": "", "use_case": "IDE at work", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenChamber: An Agentic Development Environment"}, {"id": 784433200, "item_id": 49027075, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49027075", "by": "sajithdilshan", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I haven't found another IDE which is as powerful as IDEA when it comes to debugging a JVM language project.", "excerpt": "I remember it was pretty slow even like early 2020s. But since they have introduced the new UI design IDE, somehow they have optimized it. I think they made it modular so only the core module that is needed are loaded and some modules are loaded only if it's needed by a plugin. Also, they have optimized indexing as well. I remember the whole thing slowed down when it starts to index a medium size gradle project, but ", "context": "uses community edition daily", "use_case": "JVM development and debugging", "switched_from": "", "story": "Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot"}, {"id": 784384081, "item_id": 49024005, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49024005", "by": "koiueo", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "warn", "quote": "And I hate it with a passion. The fact they they introduced their own terminology, their own lifecycle", "excerpt": "And I hate it with a passion. The fact they they introduced their own terminology, their own lifecycle, always makes me doubt what will happen when I use any feature of their client. Magit OTOH stays much closer to the true git. Although for anything slightly more esoteric I still prefer native git cli.", "context": "", "use_case": "git integration", "switched_from": "", "story": "Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot"}, {"id": 784334257, "item_id": 49020891, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49020891", "by": "TacticalCoder", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Heck, I bought IntelliJ when the world was ending in the Mayan calendar", "excerpt": "> IntelliJ (actually Android Studio based on IntelliJ) was my first real IDE and real programming experience. I was so blown away ! I switched to IntelliJ back when people where still arguing which of the two between Eclipse or NetBeans was better (fools!): that is, before some of the commenters here were born. Heck, I bought IntelliJ when the world was ending in the Mayan calendar, it was something like 75% off beca", "context": "", "use_case": "JVM development", "switched_from": "Eclipse", "story": "Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot"}, {"id": 784332096, "item_id": 49020756, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49020756", "by": "c16", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "warn", "quote": "But the resource hog and I guess focus on writing a mediocre AI side panel really killed it for me.", "excerpt": "I've been using Goland/IntelliJ since I graduated. Been paying for it for years. But the resource hog and I guess focus on writing a mediocre AI side panel really killed it for me. The main improvements lately were: - line/function prediction - Claude Code plugin And I can use Claude Code in any terminal. So I've switched to zed.dev and use Claude there. Wish it had the line prediction though.", "context": "paying JetBrains customer for years", "use_case": "IDE", "switched_from": "", "story": "Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot"}, {"id": 784326640, "item_id": 49020415, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49020415", "by": "jillesvangurp", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I pay for plenty of SAAS stuff when I need to or when it adds value. Just not for Intellij.", "excerpt": "I don't see the OSS world as transactional. For example, I contribute some modest OSS projects for free without expectation of direct compensation. Lots of other people do similar things. That's what makes OSS work. Some of that stuff is supported by big corporations that employ the people that work on those things and have a financial interest in making sure those things continue to exist. As a result, I get to stan", "context": "OSS contributor", "use_case": "IDE", "switched_from": "", "story": "Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot"}, {"id": 784324864, "item_id": 49020304, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49020304", "by": "mdawwg", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "warn", "quote": "in the last few years performance and memory usage has gotten pretty bad.", "excerpt": "I'm also on a mac, but in the last few years performance and memory usage has gotten pretty bad. Though we use Intellij for mostly Angular / Node projects. A colleague of mine had reverted to an older major release because it runs better on our Macs. He ended up switching over to a popular open source IDE and hasn't looked back.", "context": "works on a Mac with Angular/Node projects", "use_case": "Angular / Node development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot"}, {"id": 784315744, "item_id": 49019734, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49019734", "by": "laszlojamf", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "IntelliJ always got it right, whereas with the other editors it was hit-or-miss.", "excerpt": "I agree that IntelliJ is a monster of a resource hog, but I have yet to find an editor where code navigation is as good. That's basically all I use it for these days, in the days of LLMs, and I still think it's worth it. VSCode, especially for golang, is terrible. I might be holding it wrong, but I've really tried, and it's just not good enough. Before LLMs, when I still refactored by hand, coworkers who were using v", "context": "", "use_case": "code navigation and refactoring", "switched_from": "", "story": "Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot"}, {"id": 784301136, "item_id": 49018821, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49018821", "by": "sajithdilshan", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use IntelliJIDEA everyday (on mac) with multiple projects open and tbh they have optimized the IDE a lot to make it faster.", "excerpt": "> But what do you actually get with IntelliJ? A massive, monolithic Java application that frequently hogs 8GB+ of RAM, locks up your system while \u201cindexing pre-built binaries,\u201d and forces you into a closed proprietary ecosystem. This is just exaggeration. I use IntelliJIDEA everyday (on mac) with multiple projects open and tbh they have optimized the IDE a lot to make it faster. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's ", "context": "", "use_case": "daily development IDE", "switched_from": "", "story": "Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot"}, {"id": 784296176, "item_id": 49018511, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49018511", "by": "TiredOfLife", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "https://github.com/jetbrains/intellij-community ?", "excerpt": "> and forces you into a closed proprietary ecosystem https://github.com/jetbrains/intellij-community ?", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot"}, {"id": 783361681, "item_id": 48960105, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48960105", "by": "StumpChunkman", "date": "2026-07-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "IntelliJ was my daily driver for Java dev for a while", "excerpt": "Have you tried Rider? I've been using that for C++ Unreal development and absolutely love it. It does help that IntelliJ was my daily driver for Java dev for a while.", "context": "", "use_case": "Java development", "switched_from": "", "story": "LG monitors silently install software through Windows Update without consent"}, {"id": 782446496, "item_id": 48902906, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48902906", "by": "jwpapi", "date": "2026-07-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use intellij with two two stroke keybinds", "excerpt": "I\u2019m using NEO layout with all the coding keys on layer 3. I\u2019m using both pinkys to jump into layer 3. I can therefore code a lot on home row. I use intellij with two two stroke keybinds (f.e. => Alt + E -> M => Extract Method) and vim motions in editor. I use ai next edit and autocomplete inside editor as I\u2019m right on the loop. Most changes I need to do are few lines of codes or big architectural changes. I\u2019m at 40k ", "context": "independent developer building a platform", "use_case": "coding with keybinds and vim motions", "switched_from": "", "story": "AI Is a Bad Tool"}, {"id": 778560432, "item_id": 48660027, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48660027", "by": "mike_hearn", "date": "2026-06-24", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I have a private IntelliJ plugin that feeds markdown documents through an LLM", "excerpt": "I actually implemented that! I have a private IntelliJ plugin that feeds markdown documents through an LLM and then highlights internal contradictions with the usual yellow background used for warnings. I use it when writing specs.", "context": "", "use_case": "plugin to find contradictions in specs", "switched_from": "", "story": "In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words"}, {"id": 777509712, "item_id": 48594357, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48594357", "by": "atomicnumber3", "date": "2026-06-18", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use IntelliJ.", "excerpt": "Idk, I can imagine a specific weird usecase. I use IntelliJ. My coworkers don't. They don't want my .idea folder in git. (You're probably thinking \"ok, yep, gitignore!\" And you're right except my boss ideologically does not want any *hint* of what IDE you use in the repo. Including in the gitignore. So each person putting .vscode or .idea in their local config's ignore actually makes sense. (Relative to the nonsensic", "context": "works on team where coworkers use other IDEs", "use_case": "IDE", "switched_from": "", "story": ".gitignore Isn't the Only Way to Ignore Files in Git"}, {"id": 776357042, "item_id": 48522315, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48522315", "by": "saratogacx", "date": "2026-06-13", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use intelliJ for much of my development", "excerpt": "I've been using GLM-5/5.1 for about 6 months and it has been a fairly capable model. I've seen a lot of mixed opinions that tend to align with harness usage so it is worth trying out a couple with a model before writing it off. For example, I'm using crush and have had a good experience while others using CC have had a much more mixed experience. For task complexity, I treat it as I would sonnet with the same care in", "context": "", "use_case": "development", "switched_from": "", "story": "GLM 5.2 Is Out"}, {"id": 775936322, "item_id": 48496020, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48496020", "by": "bison_fan", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "warn", "quote": "a bloated, sluggish text editor like VSCode and IntelliJ", "excerpt": "Like others, I really like Zed as a text editor. I was a Sublime user before but I switched to Zed because it was even faster and cleaner than Sublime. The multi-buffer editing is a nice step up of multi-cursor editing. I just want a fast text editor with a few conveniences for development. I don't care about any of the collaboration or AI tools that they are working on and I hope that these efforts don't detract fro", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Software Is Made Between Commits"}, {"id": 775875088, "item_id": 48492193, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48492193", "by": "hbn", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "IntelliJ which has a great built-in \"Darcula\" theme", "excerpt": "White on gray is the only dark mode that doesn't hurt my eyes. I use light mode for practically everything except IntelliJ which has a great built-in \"Darcula\" theme (which is now opt-in in favor of a more standard dark mode that I hate) which looks similar to DF's theme. White on black or dark gray makes my eyes bug out. I have pretty good vision but that's the only thing that actually hurts my eyes.", "context": "", "use_case": "dark theme in IDE", "switched_from": "", "story": "Sweet Jeebus, macOS 27 Golden Gate Removes the Dumb Icons from Menu Items"}, {"id": 775706338, "item_id": 48481646, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48481646", "by": "michaelmrose", "date": "2026-06-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I'm not altogether unhappy with IntelliJ or VSCode", "excerpt": "I'm happy to hear any thoughts you have on the best way to make use of it. Presently I use emacs and cider but I'm not altogether unhappy with IntelliJ or VSCode", "context": "", "use_case": "Clojure development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Biff.core: system composition for Clojure web apps"}, {"id": 770060080, "item_id": 48128755, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48128755", "by": "malkia", "date": "2026-05-13", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "we used the Eclipse, then we started switching the IntelliJ.", "excerpt": "Xoogler here (2014-2017). My team (part of Ads) used primarily Java, and we used the Eclipse, then we started switching the IntelliJ. Cider was used also a lot, but I've heard even back then some folks were free to use whatever they like - vi, emacs, you name it.", "context": "Xoogler on an Ads team", "use_case": "Java development", "switched_from": "Eclipse", "story": "A History of IDEs at Google"}, {"id": 770008017, "item_id": 48125501, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48125501", "by": "cletus", "date": "2026-05-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "This made it possible, even preferred, to use IntelliJ, which is what I did.", "excerpt": "There's more history than this. Disclaimer: Xoogler (2010-2017). When I first started the environment you used depended entirely on language. In the C++ and Python space, there was the vim and emacs divide. With Java it was more complicated. Some still used vim/emacs but a lot of people used Eclipse. Now Eclipse was a real problem at Google because of the source control system. Java IDEs are primarily built to import", "context": "Xoogler (2010-2017)", "use_case": "Java development at Google", "switched_from": "Eclipse", "story": "A History of IDEs at Google"}, {"id": 767925521, "item_id": 47995345, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47995345", "by": "mike_hearn", "date": "2026-05-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "in a good IDE (IntelliJ has good support)", "excerpt": "A specification isn't a series of change requests! Using Jira as your source of truth is no different to just recording all your prompts. There's nothing you can easily review to spot contradictions or how things interact with one another. I've been doing \"specmaxxing\" for a few months now. Unlike the author I don't use Yaml, I use a mix of Markdown and Gherkin. If you haven't encountered Gherkin before, it's not new", "context": "", "use_case": "running Gherkin specs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Specsmaxxing \u2013 On overcoming AI psychosis, and why I write specs in YAML"}, {"id": 767373681, "item_id": 47960855, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47960855", "by": "brabel", "date": "2026-04-30", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "nowadays the IntelliJ debugger with the OpenJDK is enough for me", "excerpt": "I used this in the past: https://ssw.jku.at/dcevm/ Though nowadays the IntelliJ debugger with the OpenJDK is enough for me. I know what works and what doesn\u2019t so I rarely feel frustrated.", "context": "", "use_case": "Java debugging", "switched_from": "DCEVM", "story": "Why I Still Reach for Lisp (& Scheme) Instead of Haskell"}, {"id": 767232993, "item_id": 47952062, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47952062", "by": "atombender", "date": "2026-04-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I've wasted insane amounts of time on bugs and on filing detailed bug reports that are never looked at.", "excerpt": "I've been using Jetbrains IntelliJ IDEA as my main IDE for Go, Rust, TypeScript, etc. for the last 3 years, and this Christmas I switched to Zed, and I'm not looking back. I was admittedly skeptical of Zed in the beginning, because they started out with so few features, and it seemed impossible to really switch permanently to it and still be as productive. The Jetbrains platform has got such an amazingly rich set of ", "context": "", "use_case": "main IDE for Go, Rust, TypeScript", "switched_from": "", "story": "Zed is 1.0"}, {"id": 766417568, "item_id": 47901098, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47901098", "by": "fabianholzer", "date": "2026-04-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use IntelliJ at work on a daily basis", "excerpt": "I use IntelliJ at work on a daily basis, and I assume that holds for a significant chunk of folks, who use Java in a professional capacity.", "context": "uses it at work", "use_case": "Java development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Anyone still using JetBrains products today?"}, {"id": 761885713, "item_id": 47617857, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47617857", "by": "niyazpk", "date": "2026-04-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "IntelliJ IDEA (10% - for Java)", "excerpt": "2024: I used to split time between IntelliJ IDEA (10% - for Java) and VSCode (90% - for everything else). 2025: Stopped writing so much Java, so used VSCode exclusively for Python, TS etc, with Claude Code or Cline. 2026: Time is split between Codex App (40%), Claude App (30%) and VSCode with Claude Code (30%). Some other thoughts: * Overall I feel like opening an IDE in the traditional sense is coming to an end. * T", "context": "", "use_case": "Java development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What is your dev set up like?"}, {"id": 759684514, "item_id": 47480282, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47480282", "by": "roryokane", "date": "2026-03-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "", "excerpt": "Did you know that VS Code added support for the same four-pane view as p4merge years ago? I used p4merge as my merge tool for a long time, but I switched to VS Code when I discovered that, as VS Code\u2019s syntax highlighting and text editing features are much better than p4merge\u2019s. I also use the merge tool of JetBrains IDEs such as IntelliJ IDEA (https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/resolve-conflicts.html#resolve-confli", "context": "", "use_case": "merge conflict resolution", "switched_from": "", "story": "A Coherent Vision for the Future of Version Control"}, {"id": 744100881, "item_id": 46506305, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46506305", "by": "__jonas", "date": "2026-01-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I would pay for a fast, standalone git UI that is as good as the IntelliJ one.", "excerpt": "I agree with that comment chain about the intelliJ diff view so much https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/26770#discussioncomment-13051899 I don't even need that to be built into the editor \u2013 I would pay for a fast, standalone git UI that is as good as the IntelliJ one. I use Sublime Merge right now and it's kind of ok but definitely not on the same level", "context": "", "use_case": "diff view", "switched_from": "", "story": "I switched from VSCode to Zed"}]}