| I’m a PhpStorm user so not familiar with Rider specifically, but in my experience JetBrains IDEs are exactly that: Integrated Development Environments. Whereas VSCode is more of a code editor first and foremost. There’s tons of overlap between the two, and for casual development VSCode will usually be fine. But as a professional I rely on IDEA to make a living, and it rarely lets me down. 95% of everything I could ever need comes out-of-the-box, so I don’t need to go plugin hunting (though there is a broad range of IDEA plugins too). In fact the IDEA plugins are cross-compatible, so plugins for Rider will work in PhpStorm, PyCharm, Rubymine, etc. The refactoring is outstanding, and leaps beyond what VSCode can do it. Basically it just understands my code like a real developer would. Not just simply checking syntax, but understanding project structure, naming conventions, coding styles, and more. PhpStorm gives me access to a full debugger, with inline breakpoints and execution step controls. “Find Usages” is incredibly thorough and even understands dynamic symbol names in many cases. Also I get a full MySQL and Redis client, right there in the UI. I can click on strings which refer to column names in my code, and they’ll appear in the DB panel instantly. At the end of the day these are power-user features, but I’m glad to have them and feel significantly more productive in a JetBrains IDE. Embracing static analysis and a full IDE was probably the single most beneficial upgrade to my skills and career. |
I really hope they move PhpStorm to the same payment model as Rider so I can also use it for my own non-work projects.