Tag: IDE

Moving from IntelliJ to VS Code

Moving from IntelliJ to VS Code

Change is hard, and it’s always harder if you’ve been using ‘X’ for years.

I’ve been using IntelliJ for a number of years now, and it is great! It really is, and there is no reason other than cost not to use it. If cost is not a concern then use IntelliJ.

Keyboard shortcuts

You’ve spent years in one IDE, your fingers just know where to go, what to do. That instinctive physical memory would be very hard to get over. Any change will immediately make you less productive. You’re just not going to do it!

Thankfully the benefit of the community around VS code comes to hand.

Install this and your fingers need not learn anything new!

Unit tests

Next up is testing. I really like right clicking on a test to run/debug it. The below is a partial solution (right click to debug fails)
This requires two extensions to get it to work.

1 – Test Explorer UI

This gives you the side panel where you can see your tests – but you will see ZERO tests in here to start of with. You need to install one more extension.

2 – Jest Test Explorer

Install the below and you will now see your tests in a panel inside VS Code

You can see the list of test now inside the Test explorer.

As yet, I’m unable to get ‘debug’ to work. I can debug the entire suite of tests via a config command, but not a single test via the context menu.
This is really annoying… I’ll come back to this if/when I figure it out.

Coverage

Next up is coverage mappings. You’ve run your tests, added the coverage flag and you want to see where in the code you are missing coverage.

WARNING/TIP

I found that after I had installed the above, ran my coverage that nothing was being highlighted. After messing around with configuration for ages, restarting IDE etc and getting nowhere I disabled (not uninstalled) the previous extensions ( Jest Test Explorer and Test Explorer UI). After another restart of VS code, hey presto it worked!!!
Re-enabled the Test extensions and now all the extensions where working.

Not as pretty as IntelliJ, but it’s better than nothing. The colours can be customised, so this could be made less jarring on the eyes.

Code formatting – Prettier

Looking for auto format to a standard format that is widely accepted? Prettier is the way forward for many reasons. Install the above followed by a couple of config changes and your code will be beautiful.

Go to your settings, filter by ‘save’ then update to settings shown here.
“Format on Save” – True
“Auto Save” – onFocusChange

Intellisense

Lastly, this is a bundle of other extensions that enable things like autocomplete of filenames, autocomplete of imports. This type of hints and flow should be automatic and is there from the outset in IntelliJ. So getting the same here is a must.

Close enough…

So now that I’ve installed all of these extensions I’m really happy with VS Code. Sure it’s not as good as IntelliJ – but VS Code is FREE.
So if you want to mess around at home for some personal projects, this is brilliant.

Sencha touch – IDE??

Sencha touch – IDE??

Being a Flex dev for a number of years and deciding that its about time I try out something new and seeing all the hype surrounding Sencha touch I spent a week too two weeks looking at it. It comes across like it is aiming at a very similar market to Flex so I was quite excited about trying it.
Version 2 was just out and it had some path issues for installing etc but the guys at Sencha appeared to be working very hard to get rid of all the little issues and these are now resolved. So I tried to find an IDE/plugin or similar that would allow me to code in the same way as I do Flex/Actionscript.

I tried Netbeans, Webstorm, Aptana, various Eclipse with javascript plugins and quite a few others that I can’t quite remember but NONE of them gave me a similar experience as Flex/Flashbuilder. As in code completion, catching errors etc. I know that javascript is really slack (in a similar way that AS2 was) but when you try something for the first time a good IDE is worth its weight in gold for helping to learn. The Sencha docs are also really good, but why should I have to keep looking at them to see what features are available for the components I want to use.

As I was a real newbie with javascript & Sencha I decided to go to a boot camp & conference on Sencha to speed up my learning, thinking that I’d see what tools they used as there must have been something out there which would make creating Sencha apps feel like programming and the answer was NO!

I did find out how much Chrome is a great tool for web programmers, but it really doesn’t cut it compared to normal development. Brackets from Adobe also sounds like its getting there for web/Javascript development, but its not aimed at Sencha.

 

SO, after the courses and testing of Sencha I decided that I’d NOT touch it again until it had a decent IDE or plugin for an IDE. Well it looks like the guys at Sencha have listened and they have a beta out for an Eclipse plugin. http://t.co/PYpC1WJf  Its a private enrolement at the moment, but fingers crossed 🙂

 

I said at the time that I didn’t think Sencha wasn’t quite ready, but with an IDE and Sencha Architect (which I really liked, its like a working version of Flashbuilder in design mode) I’m willing to give it another go. Here’s hoping they let me in to give it a test.

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