Post #1579183

2026-03-01 04:20 UTC

Any recommendations on a good general use IDE? I've enjoyed Geany a bit here and there myself but honestly I'm just using vim for most things these days. CLI is just so quick and efficient for most use cases, but I still hold out hope for something different.

Replies (1)

@davel@lemmy.ml 2026-03-01 04:50

I don’t have any general recommendations. IMO most of them disappoint, because most of them don’t understand the languages they support very well. It was Microsoft that invented [Language Server Protocol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_Server_Protocol) and almost every editor adopted. I’m not very impressed by it, and it seems to be stagnant. AFAIK the best example of an IDE having a deep understanding of its language is [DrRacket, which is specific to Racket](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_(programming_language)). The best one that I’ve actually used is JetBrains’s IDEs, enough so that I pay money for it. This YT video is specifically about a Clojure IDE by one of its developers, but it explains some general shortcoming of a lot of code editors, and why IDEs that understand their language(s) well can be so powerful.

Open ##1579191