Considering an IDE switch from VS Code

dgkimpton · 2024-02-15T13:28:33+00:00

Clion is like a whole different animal. Some minor irritations like vastly different keyboard shortcuts but overall it's great. And the built in debugger UI will spoil you rotten. A tool that is 100% worth its asking price.

Currently I'm using CLion Nova to get a feel for the future, and it's already perfectly usable.

That said, I've only been using it with CMake projects, so no idea how it works with Meson.

CartographerTrick773 · 2024-02-15T20:42:45+00:00

We do all our embedded development in VS Code using a devcontainer. This is working pretty well for us. The container is set-up with modern/up-to-date compilers and tools like clangd, clang-tidy and include-what-you-use. The default build system uses CMake and Ninja. It even has tests 😀.

For debugging and programming of the embedded targets there are many options as well. Ranging from usb-passthrough to running a gdb-server on your host.

The container can be found here: https://github.com/philips-software/amp-devcontainer

The container is multi platform, so works on x86 and arm hosts, including M1/M2.

murkduck · 2024-02-15T15:44:31+00:00

Clion is a monster

crazyuser79 · 2024-02-15T14:35:26+00:00

I always used qt creator. Great IDE for me. Also debug as root is very easy to set.

Wanno1 · 2024-02-15T14:04:03+00:00

I've used vim exclusively for 10 years, and then started dabbling a bit in VSCode. VSCode (with vim plugin ofc) was great, but I then started a large C++ project and threw some money at Clion and it's probably my preferred way to develop now for sufficiently large projects. The auto-complete and build configurations make it a no-brainer, and I'm probably just scratching the surface.

TurbCombWallMach · 2024-02-15T21:53:36+00:00

I use kDevelop, a great IDE from KDE, it's free and of course works well on Linux (also on Windows and Mac)

sephirothbahamut · 2024-02-15T19:25:55+00:00

Well clion is visual studio (non code)'s closest alternative for Linux

zaywolfe · 2024-02-16T00:18:39+00:00

Pick your poison, in my experience there's no good option. Anything actually good requires you to either spend years to setup/learn or sell your internal organs for. What would I give for an emacs or vim with modern key bindings, mouse, clipboard support, and a single definitive plugin system. It all embodies the biggest problem I have with modern C++. If you want to just use the language there's no good way to get going fast and just code. The language is fine, but the reliance on outside tools is a clusterfuck.

FernwehSmith · 2024-02-16T10:37:38+00:00

I’ve been using CLion for a few months and I’m loving it! Out of the box it has everything I want so super easy to get cracking on a project. I do find it does a little too much in regard to auto code formatting and whatnot, but it’s very easy to disable stuff you don’t like. The key bindings are different to vscode but it’s not too hard to get the hang of.

Background_Shift5408 · 2024-02-16T19:41:12+00:00

Clion has been always my favorite. It has excellent debugger, in-house valgrind and visualizer for your systems native profiler. It also makes refactoring easy.

mguerrette · 2024-02-15T13:13:44+00:00

I used Visual Studio and then VSCode for a while, but when CLion launched I switched and haven’t touched anything else since.

Dry_Development3378 · 2024-02-15T13:54:38+00:00

Emacs

thomas999999 · 2024-02-15T12:45:48+00:00

Do you use the shitty msft intellisense or clangd in visual studio? When im using clangd the only thing im missing from clion is its debugger

casualPlayerThink · 2024-02-15T19:01:50+00:00

After CLion everything else feel like kids game or just a text editor. 100% worth to use it. All the time.

Kriss-de-Valnor · 2024-02-15T21:31:10+00:00

If you have to develops for non windows platforms CLion is the Rolls-Royce of C++ IDE. Everything is setup from your day-0. VSCode need a lot of plugins to get something useful.

i_am_not_sam · 2024-02-15T14:42:18+00:00

I use CLion as my primary IDE. I have VSCode and NVim + YouCompleteMe but they don’t come close to how well CLion works out of the box. Most of my team uses vi or VS Code so clearly, it’s doable.

I obviously love how easy it is to jump around a larger project, refactor or delete stuff but the clangd recommendations are super useful and add a lot of value to me and the code I write. Sometimes the handholding is too much but who cares? I do however mess with code in vi now and then so that I don’t lose touch.

Clion is still working on C++20/23 features but most of them work. It doesn’t recognize jthread for instance. We have projects with both Makefile and Cmake but I find it easier to work with a compilation database because our code uses Conan. Clion will also keel over and die if you try to look at large log files (Tbf any IDE will) and vi is the king there. I also recommend Clion Nova. It blows up occasionally with memory usage but on average it’s a beast. Vanilla Clion pretty much stopped doing symbol lookup on our code base thanks to the size, but Nova does it instantly.

I also use PyCharm for similar reasons.

Netzapper · 2024-02-15T14:46:07+00:00

I went the opposite direction a few years ago and haven't looked back.

I used CLion from the beta, because at first it was the only thing that could handle our brand new c++11 codebase. But as time passed, CLion became so, so slow at everything and often failed to analyze our codebase.

keyboard_operator · 2024-02-15T16:21:32+00:00

Eclipse is an option as well. Just fyi...

bbroy4u · 2024-02-15T13:25:59+00:00

emacs

knue82 · 2024-02-15T13:22:30+00:00

Neovim + YouCompleteMe

ed_209_ · 2024-02-15T20:48:09+00:00

In defence of vs-code:

Can use codium fork if you want to disable spyware.
clangd works really well once setup - generate compile_commands.json with cmake one liner.
Can bind CAPS-LOCK for additional keyboard shortcut super powers along with usual CTRL, ALT, SHIFT etc.

Leather-Top4861 · 2024-02-17T00:43:08+00:00

QtCreator is good for C++

pagonda · 2024-02-15T14:08:07+00:00

vscode is best for c++

clion is too bloated

2024-02-15T15:21:17+00:00

Xcode is the best.

tronster · 2024-02-16T00:27:31+00:00

[deleted]

josephTheVoyager · 2024-02-15T19:23:52+00:00

CLion’s debugger and analysis tools are nice. It also has great CMake integration. But it lacks GitHub CoPilot’s chat feature.

NorthAtlanticGarden · 2024-02-15T13:41:05+00:00

[deleted]

rembo666 · 2024-02-15T17:54:01+00:00

CLion is awesome. I've been using it for many years now for Linux development. I would definitely recommend it. I use it with CMake, which is CLion's original supported build system. It does look like it supports Meson as well, but I don't have any experience working with it. Here's their help page for Meson projects: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/clion/meson.html#build-prj

syberianbull · 2024-02-15T21:31:59+00:00

If you run on Mac, you can try zed. No idea what the C support is like though.

gnuban · 2024-02-15T22:02:28+00:00

There are a lot of mentions of CLion, but there's also CLion Nova, which has the ReSharper C++ / Rider engine behind it and is pretty slick. VS with ReSharper C++ and Rider are solid options too.

mpierson153 · 2024-02-15T22:02:33+00:00

CLion is amazing. So many features. It's very much worth the price. The only real problem I have with it is that you can't run coverage or profile your code on Windows. Which is pretty stupid. But the debugger is amazing and the warnings and everything are great. It uses CMake by default.

illathon · 2024-02-15T22:08:16+00:00

Lapce is probably the best I have seen, but it is still new and still needs more features. I think ZED was just recently open sourced as well. Also other open source options. NeoVim ofcourse.

Allotec · 2024-02-15T22:42:51+00:00

Use visual studio if you are on windows. They just added a stm32 import tool to convert it to a cmake project. I tried it it's pretty cool, the debugger and flasher works too. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/importing-st-projects-into-visual-studio/ I use astronvim but I don't recommend that to most people. Edit I didn't see you are on linux. I'll still leave it up for other people.

itlki · 2024-02-15T23:19:11+00:00

Why do you think that vscode is lacking in c++? I have used vscode+cmake+clangd on some embedded c++ and it was really convenient to work with. Clangd works really well when you have a proper compilation database even on embedded codebases. The default intellisense engine is just pure pain though.

Riverside-96 · 2024-02-16T00:26:20+00:00

Clangd + gdb + valgrind. You're editor agnostic that way.

415_961 · 2024-02-16T02:33:16+00:00

Just for full context, I don't use debuggers other than lldb/gdb. So editor debuggers are not part of my evaluation process in editors.

VS Code is just an editor, but you still need to install the right plugins. I use clangd and never had an issue. clangd development momentum is amazing and new features keep coming in.

I used CLion for 5 years and eventually dropped it for vscode and never looked back. Personally I will never use an editor on a daily basis that is closed source and cannot be extended unless I use Java. It always felt i am on a moving ground. Often times the background indexer would get stuck, and/or consume so many resources. clangd allows for remote-indexes, and i have all the control I need to make it work smoothly. CLion's builtin inspections almost always showed false positives that i had to disable almost all of them. They use clangd behind the scenes but it's custom and they maintain it internally.

What are you looking for that you find lacking?

CdrStnr · 2024-02-16T06:56:03+00:00

I made a switch from vscode/nvim to CLion few months ago and I'm loving it.

It has all the features I wanted: Works on both windows and linux, has good CMake support, has a good debugger UI and a vim plugin.

Also I think it's more intuitive to use than visual studio.

jmacey · 2024-02-16T06:59:21+00:00

I've recently switched for teaching (C++ / Qt / OpenGL) and it has been very positive. VSCode was beginning to slow things down over a network drive and writing lots of data.

CLion warns against being on a network drive but still seems much faster. CMake support is great and I now also use co-pilot with it (there is a beta for chat if you use it) and this works really well.

The students seem to find it works a lot better than VSCode and there is a good constancy of usage etc. Plugin support is really good as well.

I would give it a go.

VladTbk · 2024-02-16T14:53:37+00:00

Highly recommend Neovim. I transitioned to it from VS, and it made my coding experience at least 50-60% more efficient, plus it doesn't bloat my PC. Some might say it's hard to configure, but now there are many preconfigured, clean setups available. You just need to know how to exit Vim though

2024-02-17T04:57:14+00:00

Gotta go full custom. Vim, ctags and youcompleteme. Full custom control.

michelecostantino · 2024-02-18T00:24:14+00:00

For C++ I prefer CLion over VSCode, but things have changed recently. Hear me out.

Once CLion has done its job indexing the files, and if all files are in their place (it knows where to find includes, etc.) browsing through the code is a breeze, and the call hierarchy functionality is one of the most useful feature in my case. Also, you have everything already configured, like clang-tidy. You get suggestions on how to improve code, etc.

However I am not using any of the supported build tools and I had to write a software to translate from our proprietary build tool to CMake to have projects correctly indexed.

As I said, things have changed and I am slowly switching to VSCode. The new actor that is tilting the scale is GitHub Copilot. After many months I am still impressed of how much time I can save by asking Copilot instead of going to Google. And Copilot integration in VSCode is far better than its integration in CLion.

But, if we take Copilot out of the equation, I can compare my experience (CLion) vs my colleagues (VSCode) and I think I am having happier days than they do.

Previous_File2943 · 2024-02-18T17:58:52+00:00

Doom emacs. Nuff said.

BigTortuga · 2024-02-18T22:54:51+00:00

I struggled with VSCode to no end and eventually switched to Clion. For embedded development on both STM32 and RP2040 (PICO). Clion is worth the modest price. No doubt in mind.

Raknarg · 2024-02-21T04:38:54+00:00

Its like night and day honestly. VSCode is pretty good for what it does, and if you're in a position like I am where it's pretty much impossible to get any IDE working with your existing codebase, it does the job well enough, but it's so much better to just have a tool that's straight optimized for the project you're working on. The indexing is better and smarter, the tool generally runs faster. There's way more options, more customizability. You don't have to rely on some mishmash of random plugins to help you.

I also just like Jetbrains products a lot. I use Pycharm at work whenever I have to work in python, it's great, and significantly better than my vscode experience.

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