Having bunch of plugins built-in is not any better than having a bunch of plugins
this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2025
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I would argue it's worse. You can't choose the things that are actually beneficial to you and how you work.
You can, they are not built in but bundled
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Security-wise, yeah? IIRC Microsoft is very nonchalant with checking that there's nothing malicious in the plugins on their marketplace.
Having a bunch of plugins built-in means also supported in updates and play nice with each other
You guys use editors? Real programmers only need a mechanical hard drive, a magnetized needle and a steady hand.
or: C-x M-c M-butterfly
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describing IntelliJ as "good".
Shots fired back. 😈
quietly scoots his entire github repo for his neovim configuration and 200+ plugins behind his back
Haha yeah totally
What on earth do you need/use 200+ plugins for? Can you name a tenth of the uses off-hand? 😅
A lot of them are dependencies of other plugins.
Stuff like icons support, and every little feature. Neovim is extremely minimalist to start, so you need plugins just to get something as simple as a scrollbar lol
Things like git status of files and file lines, all your LSPs, syntax highlighting (for each language you work with), file explorer, you name it, there's a lot.
But what's nice about nvim is for any of these given features, there's numerous options to pick from. Theres probably a dozen options to choose from for what kind of scrollbar you want in your editor, as an example.
So you end up with a huge amount of plugins in the end, for all your custom stuff you have configured.
You have to setup yourself (though theres a lot of very solid copy pasteable recipes for each feature):
- Scrollbar
- Tabs(if you want em)
- bookmarking
- every LSP
- treesitter
- navigation (possibly multiple of them, I use both a file tree, telescope, and harpoon)
- file history stuff
- git integrations, including integrating it with the numerous other plugins you use (many of them can integrate with git for stuff like status icons)
- Code commenting/uncommenting
- Code comment tags (IE TODO/BUG/HACK/etc)
- your package manager is also a package (I like lazy for wicked fast open speeds, neovim opens in under 1s for me)
- hotkey management (I like to use
which-key) - prose plugins (lots of great options here too, I use nvim for more than just coding!)
- neorg, so I can use nvim for taking notes, scheduling stuff, etc too
- debugger via
nvim-dap - debugger UI via
nvim-dap-ui - lualine, which is a popular statusline plugin people like to have at the bottom of their IDE for general file info
new-file-templatewhich lets me create templates for new files by extension (IE when I make a.csfile and start editting it, I can pick from numerous templates I've made to start from, same for .ts, .lua, etc etc)- git conflict, which can detect and work with detected git merge conflict sections in any type of file and give me hotkeys to do stuff like pick A / B / Both / Neither, that sorta stuff
The list goes on and on haha
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neovim users spending 3 days rewriting old unmaintained extension for telescope
Lol wow, intelliJ? Shit's slow as fuck
I have 60ish plugins for VS Code and IntelliJ is still slower / sluggish.
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Plugins on a universal open source IDE are a better system than specialised proprietary IDEs (that also share "core" code but it's not open source).
Fight me.
Fair warning though: I know these
/weakSpot
:g/your confidence/d
:x
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Lol "as good as intellij" what the actual fuck.
I cannot imagine how much worse you'd have to make vscode to make it as shit as intellij is. And even vscode is pretty shit.
Kotlin would be a great language if it wasn't hampered by that IDE.
Maybe I just have a shitty computer, but I feel like as good as intelliJ is, it's very slow compared to VScode. And fuck me if I'm trying to do anything in Android Studio.
It is slower. It's a fully fledged IDE, VSCode is not so it will always be way faster, but that's again this meme, JetBrains IDE's are super powerful so I guess you can say what it lacks in speed it got in power. It's also written in Java so it's memory heavy, but it is what it is.
I use both and I enjoy both. I would never however use JetBrains to open and edit a single file, its way to slow for that.
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vscode is actually a pretty decent code editor for my needs. I use VSCodium which is basically the same thing except lacking support for a few proprietary extensions (most notably the Microsoft C/C++ extension, so I use clangd instead which for some reason was way easier to set up with copr repo on fedora than either on windows or with flathub on fedora...)
Being plugin based avoids bloat (doesn’t matter for code-oss because it’s electron)
It also plays into their goal to make VS Code seem open source while being the opposite! A lot of the functionality is in the marketplace but non Microsoft products aren't legally allowed to use it and you're not allowed to distribute builds of the plugins.
Use VS Codium instead.
You are allowed wtf. If the plugin author didn't distribute it elsewhere, it's on them. MS doesn't forbid them from uploading the extension build elsewhere, they just wanted their marketplace not getting requests from not-their-client which is a fair point for a for profit company.
You are allowed wtf.
No. If you're using something other than Visual Studio Code you have to manually download plugins and the MS specific ones use licenses like this.
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items/ms-vscode.cpptools/license
SCOPE OF LICENSE. The software is licensed, not sold. This agreement only gives you some rights to use the software. Microsoft reserves all other rights. For clarification Microsoft, or its licensors, retains ownership of all aspects of the software. Unless applicable law gives you more rights despite this limitation, you may use the software only as expressly permitted in this agreement. In doing so, you must comply with any technical limitations in the software that only allow you to use it in certain ways. For example, if Microsoft technically limits or disables extensibility for the software, you may not extend the software by, among other things, loading or injecting into the software any non-Microsoft add-ins, macros, or packages; modifying the software registry settings; or adding features or functionality equivalent to that found in Microsoft products and services. You may not: a) work around any technical limitations in the software that only allow you to use it in certain ways; b) reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the software, or otherwise attempt to derive the source code for the software, except and to the extent required by third party licensing terms governing use of certain open source components that may be included in the software; c) remove, minimize, block, or modify any notices of Microsoft or its suppliers in the software; d) use the software in any way that is against the law or to create or propagate malware; or e) share, publish, distribute, or lease the software (except for any distributable code, subject to the terms above), provide the software as a stand-alone offering for others to use, or transfer the software or this agreement to any third party.
Look at the usages of "In-Scope Products and Services" in Visual Studio Marketplace's Terms of Service. https://cdn.vsassets.io/v/M253_20250303.9/_content/Microsoft-Visual-Studio-Marketplace-Terms-of-Use.pdf
Then specify MS plugins. If you only said plugins on MS marketplace, you are blaming MS for things they didn't do
It also plays into [Microsoft's] goal to make VS Code seem open source while being the opposite! A lot of the functionality is in the marketplace but non Microsoft products aren't legally allowed to use it and you're not allowed to distribute builds of the plugins.
My use of "their" may have been too ambiguous. I thought it was clear from the context that I was talking about Microsoft's program, marketplace, and plugins specifically. When you use VS Code with things like C it's like "hey, download this extension!" So from your perspective that's a thing VS Code can do, because it's so seamless and easy to add in. But what you don't realize is that you're downloading a proprietary, closed source extension. When you use VS Codium you can't (easily) get those extensions (without breaking Microsoft's terms of service). It's the same shit that Oracle pulls with their JDK distribution and a big part of why OpenJDK usage is much more common post 2019ish.
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Well, IntelliJ is also plugin based, it's just that most of the plugins are bundled and enabled by default and maintained by the same set of people as the core IDE, so there's consistent quality.
NGL I'd use jetbrainz products more if they weren't that pricey and more portable
Most of their IDEs you can use for free for non-commercial purposes and even if you need to buy them; when you compare software development to any other profession our tools are incredibly cheap. You can get all the Jetbrains IDEs for less than 300€. Compare that to a HDL simulator or a 3D CAD application like Autodesk. These easily cost several thousand euros each year.
Autocad costs that much because Autodesk behaves anti-competitively and has locked firms into their proprietary tooling / file formats / training and the firms have no choice but to keep paying them.
Their predatory behaviour towards the engineering industry is literally why I taught myself programming and switched to software development.
They are a prime example of why you shouldn't build your company around closed source proprietary software, but open source software that can be forked or self hosted in a worst case scenario.
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Switched to Zed recently, after finding out it's basically flawless on Linux now (it was pretty bad initially) and after about 20 minutes uninstalled vscodium for good.
It's a very solid editor and one less electron thing on my system.
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If you're working on a large project/product then sure, but VS Code is just so damn good, it's so much fucking faster than IntelliJ, has so many more options and is typically just more intuitive to me. Whenever I can I typically use it.
VSCode is just Emacs with a weirder Lisp. (/s)
(You can tear my Emacs from my cold dead hands)
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Recently switched to a new contract, which resulted in me switching from IDEA Ultimate to vscode. This picture is terribly accurate.
In intellij I usually do code reviews by checking out the code and comparing the branch to origin/main to step through the changes. Just a right click menu option to compare branches.
I took for granted that this is just a thing IDEs should do, so I looked in vain for a while before googling it and finding out I need a plugin for that. (If I'm wrong please help me find the button, I still believe it must be in there somewhere. Surely the owners of GitHub can compare branches?)
I don't use VSCode, so I may be wrong, but I think it has version control integration out of the box (maybe just for git), an with it you can review merges and stuff
I'll try this today and comeback here
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Yes, I’d rather have 35 different IDEs for every task I need to do. Much better than One To Rule Them All.
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Meanwhile IntelliJ: let's copycat VSCodium UI
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