Using IntelliJ WebStorm instead of Visual Studio for Vue.js
I’ve been an android developer for a long time now. So, when I had to shift to Vue.js for hybrid app development, it took a hard time to settle in the VSCode format of doing things.
VSCode is a nice hybrid development IDE for multiple programming languages and a wide variety of plugins, but after all that, it looks like developing in a simple text editor than an integrated development environment. It took me a month to set the things up properly for my habitual development like in Android Studio. I set up Auto Save, Git Integrations, all Vue libraries available for good autocomplete, but it never reached the simplicity of IntelliJ.
Then I stumbled upon IntelliJ WebStorm, and I wondered if this javascript IDE can support Vue.js and is as good as Android Studio. The best way to know this was to try it.
Here are my findings which make IntelliJ WebStorm a better IDE for web or Vue CLI development than VSCode:
- Native support for Vue and other libraries
- Auto-detection of HTML and CSS inside the .vue file :
- We don’t have to worry about the syntax of Vue matching to which part of the file we are in
- Best Git/Github Support
- If you have experience with IntelliJ in the past you would know that you can manage almost all Github tasks as a layman
- We don’t have to enter username and password again and again
- Merging and other tasks can be visually done
- We can also see all branches and their history virtually
- With side by side view, we can find changes done by us in a much better way as expected by a version control system
- Mandatory parameters suggestions
- Autocomplete of code, Eg.: If you write <h1>, </h1> comes automatically and your cursor is between the tags.
- Unused code detection:
- Though VSCode may suggest that a variable you just declared is unused but IntelliJ also detects the codes already present and unused.
- Also, it shows the unused code in a way which makes it dependent on developers to correct it, unlike VSCode which shows with a red underline as an error.
- The development feeling: You feel like you are actually developing a web app and not just writing code.
Download WebStorm: And it’s free for students too
