To me, IntelliJ is just another typical editor for code. Well, that is what I originally thought. It was a whole other story once I actually started to run the program. Everything I typed gave me an error. IntelliJ catches errors most other editors would let slide, such as the amount of spacing between loops and the types of quotes for strings. For example:
console.log("Hello, world!");
This would be considered correct by most JavaScript editors, but IntelliJ would oppose that implication, saying that the “” must be single ‘’. As you can tell, IntelliJ isn’t my favorite program to use when editing code, but it is good in relation to code styling. I say this because it catches every little detail, and most future industries want programmers who can come up with clean code. Another important fact was everything has to be redone when loading the IntelliJ environment. The Script must be reset to 6 instead of 5.1, ES Lint must be re-added, etc. I was trying to find a way to have it automatically default to the settings I had, but failed at the attempt.
Naturally, a green checkmark is the one symbol you want to see after you finish typing your code. However, the journey to get to that point is quite tedious versus using another editor. Trying to even make sure the ES Lint gives off an error is a voyage in itself. You have to have a bunch of settings set (like I said in the previous paragraph) to make the ES Lint work properly. Also, another thing to consider includes the platform you use. I use a Windows machine, and my peers agreed that more people have problems on Windows than a Mac. Considering all of that, I am not entirely sure a green checkmark always means “good”. Although it is important you get that green checkmark in the end, the effort you must put in to get there will take some time. Basically your decision on the checkmark depends on the weight to get to catch a glimpse of that mark to the weight versus the weight of the effort needed to reach that mark.
IntelliJ is actually a better editor than I expected. I even used the spellchecker it comes with for my final exam. However, I would prefer not to use IntelliJ until the very end of my code. I say this because it is good to format your code, but while doing a WOD, you can feel the panic when you are trying to get that green checkmark and you cannot figure out the error (and you haven’t even finished making your code work yet). No one can really type “perfect code” on the first try, which is why my strategy works. Type the code out first (make sure the function runs properly), and then edit the little things in IntelliJ to style your code cleanly and fix any other minor errors that occur.