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Comment by mr_tristan | Hacker News Reader

People act as if the language server protocol has no equivalent in JetBrains ecosystem. There are, things like MPS: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/mps/mps-user-s-guide.html, or the platform: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/docs/intellij/intellij-platfor...

This whole argument that VS code takes over seems to be assuming the Language Server Protocol and Electron is a vastly superior ecosystem. I haven't seen any evidence of this being true. It's probably an improvement over the older Visual Studio ecosystem, though.

Sure seems like this argument is just another version of, "Well, it's Java, so it's enterprise/corporate/boring".

They're both open source ecosystems, and that's great. And I'd rather work with the JetBrains or VS Code ecosystems, then say, Eclipse, even though all of them are open source. (I haven't met many Android devs yearning for the Eclipse-based Android development environment.)

Edit: to clarify that open source commment

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The language server protocol is diametrically opposite to the way that IntelliJ works. For each language, IntelliJ builds its own internal representation (PSI) of the source code. There are a lot of language specific things, but there are also a lot of commonalities between languages.

I have no idea how you would morph (say) IntelliJ's Java support to use a LSP without basically throwing everything away and starting over.

Caveat: I never worked at Jetbrains, but I did work for two years supporting Android Studio and IntelliJ at Google, which involved a lot of work in its internals.

I'm not really arguing that the JetBrains ecosystem is equivalent, or necessarily better, than the LSP approach. It's just that this article seemed to base the existence of the LSP as some evidence that JetBrains' approaches with MPS, etc, are "corporate enterprise bloatware", which will be displaced by VS Code.

I just haven't any evidence that the LSP is creating a disruption, which is what the article is asserting.

Right now, it seems like you still have Microsoft as the main driver of the VS Code ecosystem with a few other contributors, and JetBrains really drives a lot of its ecosystem, with a few contributors. Not really seeing much of a difference, and, it doesn't seem like the products or business of JetBrains is significantly challenged by VS Code.

I mean, I haven't heard anything like Google deciding that VS Code will replace Android Studio, right? If the LSP was a true disruptor, I'd think that after a few years, that would be true. I'm sure eventually there will be more and better support for Android development in VS Code, but that probably won't displace Android Studio much.

Isn't eclipse also an open source ecosystem too? that said, I would rather work with either Jetbrains or VS code than eclipse.

Yeah, I didn't mean to say that Eclipse "wasn't" open source, just that these other ecosystems are also. It's not like you have a choice between "Eclipse and commercial".

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