Today, JavaScript is one of the most used programming languages. Various IDEs and code editors were introduced to improve the JavaScript developer experience with this increased popularity.
However, choosing one isn’t easy since they all have their unique features. So, in this article, we will introduce the 7 best IDEs for JavaScript development and discuss their features to help you choose the best one.
Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is a software application that provides a user interface for code development, testing, and debugging. In addition, it offers various tools and features to simplify the development process based on the programming language.
In simple terms, IDEs act as a whole package for software developers. They increase software development productivity by bringing a variety of features to a single application.
Some of the common features provided by IDEs are:
These features allow developers to code, debug and deploy their applications using a single tool. Apart from that, developers can use various third party integrations and extensions with IDEs to make the development process faster.
Visual Studio is a feature-rich IDE that covers several elements of software development. The Visual Studio IDE is a powerful development environment that lets you edit, debug, build, and publish apps. Although it is known as an IDE for C, C++, and C#, it can be easily used for JavaScript development.
WebStorm is another popular IDE provided by JetBrains for JavaScript and related technologies. It automates most of the routine developer operations and enables developers to handle complex tasks easily.
Sublime Text is a powerful cross-platform IDE with many customization features. Many developers choose Sublime Text as their IDE since it has a simple interface with a significant speed boost.
Komodo is an open-source IDE for dynamic programming languages like JavaScript. It is an excellent choice for end-to-end development because of its extensive programming and markup language support, including refactoring, debugging, and profiling.
Visual Studio Code is one of the most used IDEs among developers. This is one of the greatest IDEs for developing JavaScript. It is feature-rich and completely free to use.
Atom is another popular open-source IDE for JavaScript development. It is also known as the “hackable” text editor since it is highly customizable. Atom is based on the Electron, and developers prefer to use it for its simplicity and customizability.
IntelliJ IDEA is a smart, context-aware IDE for JVM languages like Kotlin, Scala, and Groovy. But, it also supports JavaScript development and can aid in developing full-stack web applications.
In this article, we presented the 7 best IDEs for JavaScript, along with their features, pros, and cons. Each of them has unique features, so their suitability depends on the needs of your Software Development team. Therefore, it is important to consider your own requirements and preferences when choosing the perfect IDE for you.
TabNine is easily integrated with any of these IDEs, so your teams can write code faster and more accurately regardless of which IDE they are using. If you would like to know more about how TabNine can improve the efficiency of your team, contact us today.
Despite the rise of JavaScript, Java is not dead. Instead, it has thrived and grown significantly over the past decade, gaining a foothold in the device application development space while JavaScript has been taking over the web. IntelliJ is an IDE that’s been with Java developers for the ride and rise and has a highly active plugins marketplace..
A plugin, of course, is an extension that can help supercharge your productivity, output capacity, and general code robustness. Here are the top and best IntelliJ plugins you need to know about for 2022.
When it comes to API and backend development, understanding how your database is structured and interconnected can shave days and weeks off your code creation time. Database Navigator is a tool that lets you work in SQL, provides advanced database connection, supports script execution, database object browsing, and data compilation operations. With the help of Database Navigator, you can perform SQL and database-related operations inside IntelliJ and integrate parts of your productive code process directly with it.
Keyboard shortcuts and key cords are a programmer’s way of coding faster and cutting down the number of keyboard strokes required. However, the task of learning them can be cumbersome. Key Promoter X is a “Bootcamp for your hands” – or in a nutshell, a keyboard shortcut trainer that teaches how to maximize your keyboard and cut down on the dead travel time that builds up when you switch between keyboard and your mouse.
Tabnine is an AI Assistant for Developers & Teams that learns your coding patterns and suggests best practices based on the code in your repo. The major difference between Tabnine and other IntelliSense plugins is that it is AI-driven with shared knowledge across everyone that uses it. Your code remains private and safe, and only the generalized language features, patterns, and implementations are shared. This means that you have access to more than a million users’ worth of combined knowledge to help you code faster and better.
Tabnine for Enterprise provides a secure coding environment that allows teams and organizations to host and train their own AI models. This feature facilitates collaborative autocompletion across IDEs and enhances code security by keeping the codebase and AI model on secure corporate servers. With Tabnine for Enterprise, your development team can enjoy the benefits of powerful AI code assistance, which promotes more productive and error-free coding, all while ensuring the confidentiality and protection of your company’s data.
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Bash is a command language used extensively across all software development projects in some form. BashSupport lets us execute bash commands from within IntelliJ’s IDE, which means no more context switching between applications and tracking which window is which. Although support has since been retired, the plugin is still functional and good for your productivity.
The act of taking your fingers off the keyboard can result in lost time. The more you switch between your mouse and keys, the slower and more interrupted your code flow state becomes. AceJump makes navigating to different parts of code on your screen faster and more efficient. Rather than using your mouse, your arrow keys to manually navigate, or the search functionality in IntelliJ IDE, you just need to hit ctrl+; as a keycord and type in whatever you’re looking for. IntelliJ will highlight the relevant matching parts and help you jump to the exact spot based on which code item you want.
Env file support is an environment parameter completion tool. An env file, or “dot” env, is the text configuration file required for your app’s environments’ constants. It’s part of keeping your local, staging, and production environments separated. Env files support ensures that your environment variables are valid and connected to the right places.
Git is synonymous with software development. It is also a cornerstone software versioning tool for processes such as GitOps and DevOps. Featured in the Productivity Bundle and Go bundle, GitToolBox integrates git into your IntelliJ IDE and allows for status displays, auto fetching, inline annotations, commit dialog, and other helpful git processes you might need to complete your work.
Prettier for IntelliJ is a plugin that lets you employ the perks of an opinionated code formatter. Prettier is also one of the most used formatting and linting tools supported across a majority of editors such as Atom, VS Code, Visual Studio, Vim, and Sublime. This means that it can keep your code standardized, no matter what your team uses as their editor.
Let’s be honest – if there’s data involved, there will also be CSV included in some form. CSV is a plugin that lets you view CSV, TSV, and PSC files in a visually easy-to-digest table format. It also comes with syntax validation, highlighting, custom colors, and inspections. This means that you can easily process, view, and deal with CSV-related data on the fly rather than deal with it in its raw format.
SonarLint is an excellent plugin to have in conjunction with Prettier. While Prettier works on formatting and cleaning up your code, SonarLint helps you fix bugs, reveals vulnerabilities and code smells during the coding process. SonarLint doesn’t just support Java but also includes C, C++, JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, C+, Kotlin, Ruby, HTML, and PHP.
Lightrun is a service that lets developers observe their platforms via logs, metrics, and traces in various environments from your IDE or CLI. Lightrun aims to help developers cut down on debugging time by offering real-time debugging data. The plugin for IntelliJ lets you see the full content of stacks and user journeys without stopping the running process. It also enables you to investigate the death of data workers and the context of the thrown exception.
We use brackets to create scopes and restrict parts of code most of the time. Rainbow brackets make identifying bracket pairs much easier through color coordination. It can help developers keep track of where code begins and end and identify scopes and where leaks can potentially occur. When coding, it’s easy to get lost in a sea of brackets, and Rainbow is an excellent and handy tool for debugging syntax.
Maven is a software management tool that keeps your project structured and helps with the build process. However, it’s easy for Maven to grow in size, resulting in potential conflicting dependencies or bugs in test files. Maven Helper is a plugin that helps you navigate Maven files easier and run specific tasks against it to check for conflicts, open the terminal based on the current maven module path, and run debugs against files or root modules.
Orchestrating Kubernetes can be a complex process. The Kubernetes plugin for IntelliJ provides a framework for browsing cluster objects, extracting their configs, viewing and downloading pod logs, and applying YAML configs — all from the comfort of your IntelliJ editor. No more context switching and navigating between your console, jumping between namespaces, and using multiple instances to tap into the API schema. The Kubernetes plugin for IntelliJ has you covered in one space.
If you’re not working with Kubernetes, then there is a high chance that you’ll be working with Docker instead. The Docker plugin for IntelliJ IDE lets you download and build Docker images, create and run containers, along with the ability to create Docker compositions. In short, the Docker plugin lets you integrate directly with Docker in whatever format or requirement for your project.
Kotlin is the newest kid on the block and has replaced Java as the primary supported language by Android. While Kotlin is its stand-alone language, it is also compatible with Java. The Kotlin plugin lets you use your IntelliJ IDEA as a Kotlin editor, providing support for Kotlin specific language features.
While IntelliJ is predominantly known as a Java editor, it also can support Node.js applications through the Node.js plugin. This means that you can develop a Java application in conjunction with Node.js without the need to run multiple instances or consoles. The Node.js plugin also has an attached debugger and lets you debug Mocha test units right in the IDE.
Coderpillr is a perfect five-star rated dark theme for IntelliJ, with almost 30k downloads against its name. It is a dark theme inspired by Visual Studio Code’s Material Palenight and JetBrains’ Dark Purple theme. This means that Coderpillr takes the best of both themes and merges them into one supersonic color scheme that’s balanced and aesthetically productive.
An excellent dark theme can keep you from eye strain and help maintain focus through a series of marginal aesthetic gains. One Dark Theme is a color scheme that works well to achieve this through a color combination that takes muted tones and presents them with just enough contrast to make a visual impact, but not so much that it screams at you.
Dracula theme is another dark theme that comes highly recommended and is popular with developers. It is partly because the theme is supported on almost every software creation tool – including IntelliJ. Using the Dracula theme means that you can visually sync your applications with the same color scheme, reducing the mental load of context switching.
Visual novelty is a thing that can help increase your productivity. Grandianto is a dark theme that comes as a ‘pack,’ meaning that you have access to a selection of available palettes to color your IntelliJ IDE. Perks include added bold error highlight and fixed scrollbar colors. The pack comes with a range of dark themes that include shades of purple and dark green.
IntelliJ on its own is good. IntelliJ with the right plugins installed is better. When you configure your workspace for maximum productivity, your code quality increases. From productivity-enhancing tools like Database Navigator, Tabnine, and AceJump, to versioning, collaboration, and linting tools – IntelliJ has everything that you might need. All you need to do is figure out the tasks that take up multiple seconds and minutes during your code sessions – because those seconds and minutes can easily add themselves into hours over a period. Plugins help to reduce this, making you more productive overall.
It’s so lonely at the top of Olympus.
Zeus, the eternal king of the gods, faced some hard times while trying to maintain his reign. Hades nearly usurped his brother, Zeus, in a battle for control. As the battle raged, most of the the Gods took Zeus’s side, because who wants to mess a guy that shoots lightning, but some of the more disgruntled Gods took Hades’ side and the battle raged.
The back-end programming world is not unlike Mount Olympus. There is always a battle raging for supremacy, and in 2020, the battle still rages between Java and Python. And, like the ancient Greeks, most developers choose to “worship” one or two commonly used programming languages. However, unlike Ancient Greece, modern programmers are (slightly) more flexible.
There are coding polyglots out there who dabble in more than one back-end programming language, and do it using a single IDE. Some might call them blasphemers, we prefer to think of them as peacemakers.
If you happen to be one of those, and now looking to effectively program in Python (or Jython – a kind of mixture of both Java and Python) in Intellij IDEA – this post is for you! We’ve assembled a list of plugins that add Python coding functionality, and also to help you do it more efficiently.
Before we dive into Python support on Intellij IDEA, it’s worth mentioning JetBrains’ standalone IDE for Python and Django – PyCharm. With a free community edition of PyCharm available for download (much like Intellij IDEA Community Edition for Java development) it’s no wonder PyCharm is the most popular standalone Python IDE and is widely favored by the pros. It offers a simpler UI for project management, IDE settings and other features.
The main advantage of the Intellij IDEA Python plugin over PyCharm is its full range of Jython support features (cross-language navigation, completion and refactoring). PyCharm only supports Jython as the runtime for running applications. So if you’re using Java/Python integration in your project, PyCharm alone won’t get the job done.
Another reason why this relationship between JetBrains IDEs is relevant is the fact that the plugins supported in PyCharm are usually compatible with Intellij IDEA. This makes perfect sense as it is based on the same IDE framework by Intellij.
So let’s start with the basics: installing the plugin to enable Python support in Intellij IDEA.
To give your Intellij IDEA all the functionality of the popular PyCharm flavor of the JetBrains IDE all you need to do is install the official Python plugin by JetBrains.
The only thing to check before you download and install the Python plugin is the type of Intellij IDEA license you have. The Python plugin (that comes packaged in PyCharm) is compatible with the paid versions of Intellij IDEA (rather than the free community edition).
The basic plugin will give you smart editing for Python scripts, effectively expanding the functionality of Intellij IDEA to match that of PyCharm for all Python-related concerns and purposes. However, software professionals such as yourself have a few extra plugins up their sleeve to make you Python development on Intellij IDEA even more effective and productive.
As the name suggests, this plugin is a Python linter. It provides both real-time and on-demand scanning of Python files with Pylint from within you Intellij IDEA. Pylint is an open source project so it can be fully customized for your needs. In addition, Pylint has extensive documentation on the plugin website.
This handy little plugin is a smart alternative to the “Execute Line in Console” command. It automatically determines the number of lines to be sent to the Python console and is easy to access with a keyboard shortcut: alt shift A.
It’s worth noting that this plugin may become obsolete in the upcoming version of Intellij IDEA and PyCharm, as a request to implement it in JetBrains IDEs has been submitted in late 2019.
Not a Python plugin in the strict sense, Tabnine is programming productivity tool that helps you write better code faster.
Mypy is an optional static type checker and source code analyzer for Python that aims to combine the benefits of dynamic (or “duck”) typing and static typing. Among others, it looks for programming errors, helps enforce a coding standard and sniffs for some code smells.
This plugin from the JetBrains plugin marketplace integrates MyPy into your Intellij IDEA. If you need some guidance, the MyPy website features extensive documentation to help you install and use MyPy to improve your Python code.
Developed by the JetBrains research division, this plugin promises to seek out potential bugs and quality issues in your Python code by using deep learning models. DeepBugs can detect bugs like incorrect function arguments, incorrect comparison, and others, based on extracted code semantics.
Why wait to run the program to see the magic happen? This plugin lets you run your Python code as you type it. It will display variable values, matplotlib, Pyglet, or turtle graphics in a dedicated panel on the right of your Intellij IDEA workspace.
This last plugin in our list is a handy collection of three inspections you can run on your Python code to attempt to detect potentially dead code and intentions for generating boilerplate code. This plugin will seek out potentially unused classes, functions (including methods) and names (in global and class-level assignments) in your code.
If you’re an experienced Intellij IDEA user, then you probably already have your favorite IDE plugins and theme installed. Just in case you don’t (or if you’re looking to expand your collection with a few time-saving productivity-improving gems), we’ve collected the top 21 plugins for Intellij IDEA. Our extensive list includes all you need to make the most of Intellij IDEA as a development environment – from AI coding assistants (like our own Tabnine plugin) to fun additions like the Nyan Cat progress bar.
Any discussion comparing IntelliJ IDEA and Eclipse for Java development can be tricky because it’s sticky. The IDE I mean. An IDE is what we in marketing call a sticky product. Once someone starts using it they stick to it and rarely switch. IDE users turn into something evolutionary anthropologists refer to as “fanboys”. IntelliJ loyalists scoff at Eclipse fanboys, Eclipse fanboys get mad, and once everyone starts naming eclipse plugins and waving software licenses around? All hell breaks loose.
It’s no wonder beginners find themselves confused when deciding what IDE to install as their default, after moving up from the world of lightweight student development environments. Should they pick the one used in most tutorials or preferred by their teacher and colleagues? The one with more positive reviews online or with the most users?
To settle this once and for all, we need to look at both IntelliJ IDEA and Eclipse from the perspective of a confused (but objective) junior Java developer with a new laptop.
Considering the subscription costs of the Ultimate edition of IntelliJ (sometimes dubbed “the Cadillac of Java development”), we’re going to assume our junior developer is not looking to spend cash on an IDE subscription license at this point. So in this comparison, we’ll be talking (mostly) about the free version of IntelliJ offered: IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition.
Let’s meet our lovely contestants.
IntelliJ IDEA was released in 2001 by JetBrains, an established company known previously for its Resharper plugin for Visual Studio. The Community Edition, available for free and aimed mostly at Java and Android application developers, offers support of a number of languages including Java (obviously), Kotlin (which was developed by JetBrains), Groovy, Clojure, Scala and others. IntelliJ IDEA includes features like advanced forecasting, code analysis, and smart code completion as well as a selection of plug-ins and extensions to customize the IDE to your needs if you’re not satisfied with its out-of-the-box feature-set.
Released by IBM in 2001, the open source IDE Eclipse was initially created to eclipse Microsoft’s Visual Studio. Since then, Eclipse has become a major platform used in both open source and commercial projects. Highly versatile and flexible, Eclipse was designed to serve the needs of complex enterprise projects and embedded system application development. It offers support for a variety of programming languages in addition to Java, as well as popular frameworks. With a plethora of plugins, thorough documentation and a large developer community, Eclipse has rightfully gained a loyal following.
At a glance, IDEs are like apples and oranges, if apples and oranges were the base and home for all your future development work. So let’s set some basic criteria, still assuming we’re a Java junior fresh out of programming course diapers.
Both IntelliJ IDEA and Eclipse IDE are free to download and use, with IntelliJ offering a paid version for additional functionality (the “Ultimate Edition”) that we mentioned above. Being a junior developer, free is the perfect price-tag, though it’s important to remember there are other non-monetary costs to “free”. But we’ll get to that later.
IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition is open core, rather than open source, and is covered by the Apache 2.0 license. While this means that you can use the IDE freely for any type of project, it also reflects on the plugin ecosystem as the license does somewhat limit the development of plugins and extensions. However, as a commercial project, IntelliJ IDEA has the advantages of a corporation with a budget behind it, rather than a community-driven non-profit.
Eclipse IDE is fully open source under the Eclipse Public License (EPL) v2 and the code is maintained by a non-profit – The Eclipse Foundation. While having very little implications on the development experience, the open source license of the IDE allows for a more extensive plugin ecosystem, and makes open source supporters feel warm inside knowing they use software developed by the community for the community.
IntelliJ IDEA can be installed on Windows, MacOS and Linux with the following hardware:
Eclipse IDE can run on anything that supports JVM including Windows, MacOS, Linux and Solaris. The hardware it demands is very basic:
It’s easy to see that the minimum requirements for Eclipse are more modest. Since we’re not planning to run an IDE on our smartwatch, it’s safe to assume that even the cheapest computer from the past few years can run both smoothly without breaking a sweat. However, if performance is what you’re looking for, the same hardware might not give you the same results on both IDEs.
Waiting for a build to finish or for a particularly complex piece of code to compile can be a drag. So unless you like to use this time for other fun activities, you probably want your IDE to be as fast and efficient and possible.
Tests performed show that Eclipse IDE is by far more efficient than IntelliJ IDEA in its memory management. However, if you look at the popular Java forums like r/java/ on Reddit you may find contradicting arguments.
While we are comparing IDEs for Java development, it makes sense to take a look at what other languages are supported by your IDE of choice. You never know when you might be forced to edit JavaScript code or debug COBOL (hopefully never).
IntelliJ Community Edition supports Groovy, Java, Kotlin, and XML/XSL straight out of the box. You can download and install plugins to allow you to program in: Clojure, CloudSlang, Dart, Elm, Erlang, Go, Gosu, Haskell, Haxe, Julia, Lua, Perl, Python, Rust and Scala. The frameworks supported are Android, Ant, Gradle, JUnit, JavaFX, Maven, Python, SBT and TestNG.
If you require support for HTML/XHTML/CSS, JavaScript, PHP, SQL or other languages or app development frameworks, you will be forced to splurge on an Ultimate edition to develop in IntelliJ.
Eclipse is written in Java, so the tools and SDK for Java development are part of the basic installation. However, thanks to it being open source, Eclipse IDE has an immense ecosystem of plugins that will let you program with pretty much every language and framework out-there in one IDE. Currently, with the plugins available on the Eclipse marketplace, it can support over 100 programming languages and almost 200 application development frameworks.
At this time, the Intellij plugins marketplace offers a total of 3,374 plugins, with some of them available exclusively to subscribers to the Ultimate Edition, and the Eclipse marketplace includes 1,668 solutions and extensions for the IDE.
Having gained popularity at an amazing pace, the Community Edition of IntelliJ led to similarly accelerated growth of its plugin ecosystem in the past two years. In addition, with Eclipse plugin interoperability isn’t always promised – your mileage may vary, as it is with many other open source solutions. With IntelliJ IDEA, plugins are better vetted by JetBrains and are less likely to clash with one another.
To an individual developer the selection wouldn’t necessarily depend on the number of downloadable plugins but rather the availability of specific components needed by the developer to be featured in the IDE of their choice.
When it comes to ease of use, it gets super-hard to judge. No two users are the same, and preference can come down to things like UI customization options or tweakable code completion. Most developers we’ve asked confirm the opinions on the Internet – IntelliJ IDEA is friendlier to beginners thanks to its ease of code completion and inspection.
Another advantage IntelliJ has over Eclipse is that many define Eclipse as more of a collection of plugins than an IDE on its own. So on one hand, IntelliJ gives you what you need out of the box. On the other, if you want to spend some time customizing an environment to your specific needs and tinker with the source, Eclipse is the way to go.
It’s worth noting that many developers claim that the ease of use and intelligent coding support offered by IntelliJ is actually a hindrance in learning and understanding the intricacies of Java programming. Then again, some of these developers recommend unassisted coding in a text processor and compilation in the terminal to force newbies to really know what they’re doing before they lean on automation and AI to do some of the work for them. Bottom line, “good” coding isn’t about right or wrong it’s about realizing that coding languages, and Java specifically, is a living and breathing thing that changes over time.
Therefore, remaining a “purist” will most likely end up leaving you behind the curve. Embracing new trends and best practices will keep you on top of your coding game. Sure, as a beginner you need to learn to crawl before you walk but what is necessary to “crawl” changes continuously. That’s why Tabnine’s AI based code completions pulls in code snippets from millions of Java programs and delivers code suggestions right in your IDE, Eclipse or IntelliJ :).
The popularity of one IDE over another should not be your only criteria for choice. However, the size of the community and number of fans among Java developers can have impact on productivity and ease-of-use.
As previously mentioned, Intellij IDEA has had a growing fandom since JetBrains released the Community Edition in 2001 and overtook Eclipse in popularity in 2016. According to stackshare, Intellij IDEA now has more fans, more points on Reddit, but far fewer questions on Stack Overflow.
At the end of the day, what matters is not only personal user preference, but also the needs of the project (or projects) our junior Java developer plans to work on in the near future. Though there’s no doubt that IntelliJ IDEA currently has more vocal supporters online, and is gradually overtaking Eclipse in popularity among both new and experienced Java developers, our suggestion to the beginner Java developers is to give them both a try, and see which feels like home.