As an IntelliJ user (and lover), it also gives you annoying update prompts basically every time I open it. There's always some plugin or another needing a reboot.
It has a lot of pros and cons compared to VSCode, but upgrade politeness isn't one of them. The frequent reindexing will often take you out of the flow too. It's very easy to move faster than IntelliJ can keep up with, especially on a slower computer.
And in terms of perceptual load, its interface is way more cluttered than VSCode, with multiple overlapping panels that each have several modes and tabs they can be in, and an unclear closing hierarchy that will often close some but not all of them (like shift-esc won't work reliably).
>multiple overlapping panels that each have several modes and tabs they can be in, and an unclear closing hierarchy that will often close some but not all of them (like shift-esc won't work reliably)
Yes, this is the default. But it's pretty easy to change. Most of my windows are on hotkeys and mostly unpinned so they get out of the way. Some are pinned, so to close you hit the hot key again. For example, project view is ctrl 1 (or option 1 on mac) and I often close it - the highest source of not-useful visual clutter, imho. terminal is ctrl 2, which simulates some nice early linux utilties that would slide a terminal on and off the screen. The same set up for the run/debug tabs, database tabs, and so on. 90% of the time I'm just looking at the editor and a terminal. The way God intended.
It kinda depends which stack you work in, too. I think the JS/PHP/Web side of things tend to be a second-class citizen in IntelliJ especially (vs Java), but also in WebStorm. Things like npm scripts and Docker are first-class citizens in VScode but take multiple clicks to discover in IntelliJ, and even then it shares a panel with other functions, and some things end up in the "Run" tab while others end up in a separate npm panel while others launch their own sub-terminal... it's really easy to quickly lose track of them, sadly :(
It's not so much that I want an individual hotkey for each window, but a UI tailored for the 90% of my time (coding, dev server/docker status, npm scripts). The debugger is another big one that I wish had its own UI instead of just being mixed into the bottom pane with all the terminals from last week, etc.
I'm really hopeful that Fleet can drastically simplify all this, while still keeping the powerful indexing, diffing, and refactoring (the three main reasons I stick to Jetbrains instead of VScode)
>[npm, Docker] multiple clicks to discover in IntelliJ
I think this is where discernment matters. I tried both plugins, but ended up never using them. They didn't pull their weight. The terminal will always be the "canonical" way to interact with everything - but for Docker I like Desktop. I've always had good luck with it. And for npm, I'd much rather run it in a terminal. But gradle or maven? Happy to run in IntelliJ. I haven't really investigated why one feels so different than the others. But yeah it's annoying when e.g. Docker uses the Run tab. That seems wrong.
It has a lot of pros and cons compared to VSCode, but upgrade politeness isn't one of them. The frequent reindexing will often take you out of the flow too. It's very easy to move faster than IntelliJ can keep up with, especially on a slower computer.
And in terms of perceptual load, its interface is way more cluttered than VSCode, with multiple overlapping panels that each have several modes and tabs they can be in, and an unclear closing hierarchy that will often close some but not all of them (like shift-esc won't work reliably).
Some workarounds:
* Distraction-free mode reduces the noise: https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/guide/tips/distraction-free-m....
* Jetbrains is also working on a whole IDE rewrite to a cleaner UI: https://www.jetbrains.com/fleet/