[nicoburns]

> Not sure I’d call it “lightweight”

Indeed, I'd argue that apps like IntelliJ are exactly why nobody wants Java on the Desktop. I had to buy a computer with more RAM specifically because IntelliJ uses so much. Even Electron apps aren't so bad with regard to RAM usage.

[perrylaj]

This might be true, but it's also misleading. Intellij is a pretty huge application, with a gigantic set of features and capabilities, likely far more substantial than even the largest/most complex Electron app out there.

Intellij would require notable memory and cpu regardless of whether or not it was Java. See XCode and Visual Studio for comparison, as they are probably closer to the same feature profile than something like VSCode would be. Their memory footprint and performance is not what I'd call substantially better than Intellij (and as with most comparisons of this nature, many caveats exist around which plugins/addons/features are in use).

Would Intellij have a better resource profile if it were native? Ya, possibly, but it's also possible that another language/platform would have been a significant barrier to long-term success. Not many cross-platform UI toolkits from 2000 to choose from, and many fewer have continued to be well-maintained and usable today.

[nicoburns]

> See XCode and Visual Studio for comparison

I haven't used Visual Studio, but I think IntelliJ comes out pretty unfavourably in comparison to XCode. On my machine XCode would only slow it down when it was actively compiling (which I would expect from any compiler - it uses pretty much all of the resources of the system), whereas IntelliJ would slow it down just having it open in the background. I had to close down everything else when I wanted to use IntelliJ, or deal with a laggy system. The only other app that had a similar effect was Figma.

[kaba0]

It sounds like your OS handles memory pressure quite badly.

[isbvhodnvemrwvn]

I've never had the other apps freeze for 10-30s when loading for the first time during the day because it decided to index the whole project. Or completely freeze because I have 2GB of XML files in a directory I didn't even touch.

[cosmotic]

VS is substantially worse than IDEA in this regard; the feature set is consistently years behind, and many actions that are instant in IDEA are long, modal/blocking operations in VS.

[cosmotic]

When was this? I've been using IDEA for years and I've been satisfied with memory usage. There's actually a problem with massively increasing the memory usage such that more and more garbage builds up making garbage collection take much longer and causing freezes, though newer GC does much better here.

Also keep in mind what IDEA is doing with that memory. It's storing indexes to all your code and libraries for near instant bidirectional navigation and search.

Also be weary of supposed high memory usage with Java. The JVM will allocate memory from the operating system for the application but then not actually use it. It's doing this so that in the event the memory is needed, it's already been allocated to the process. I've seen other apps increase the overall memory load and the JVM then relinquish it's pre-allocated-but-unused memory.

[deepsun]

Additional couple GBs of RAM is not expensive. Especially for something you use professionally to make money.

It's like a carpenter using a hatchet because a bench plane costs more money.

[kaba0]

Come on, you are comparing a full-blown IDE that holds the whole indexed project in memory, provides constant analysis to a TODO MVC.