Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot

> But what do you actually get with IntelliJ? A massive, monolithic Java application that frequently hogs 8GB+ of RAM, locks up your system while “indexing pre-built binaries,” and forces you into a closed proprietary ecosystem.

This is just exaggeration. I use IntelliJIDEA everyday (on mac) with multiple projects open and tbh they have optimized the IDE a lot to make it faster. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's getting better. Also it's not closed source. The core of the IDE is open source (https://github.com/jetbrains/intellij-community) and for some specific framework support (e.g. Spring) are available on Ultimate.

I agree that IntelliJ is a monster of a resource hog, but I have yet to find an editor where code navigation is as good. That's basically all I use it for these days, in the days of LLMs, and I still think it's worth it. VSCode, especially for golang, is terrible. I might be holding it wrong, but I've really tried, and it's just not good enough.

Before LLMs, when I still refactored by hand, coworkers who were using vim or vscode used to ask me to do big refactors, because IntelliJ always got it right, whereas with the other editors it was hit-or-miss.

Sometimes I also feel that Idea is too slow, especially for smaller projects or languages where I do not need top tier support. ie. I am backend rust and python programmer. I also have to work with JS/TS and C++ projects but I mostly only read through them.

I started using neovim with plugins if syntax highlighting and good navigation is enough. I have also set up ideavim configuration to be as close to neovim as possible. Now I can easily switch between Idea and neovim with almost the same workflow.

People will go to great lengths to avoid paying for what is, arguably, an outstanding product from a great company, then think nothing of spending the same amount at Starbucks.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a company scrutinized and nitpicked as much as JetBrains.

The fact we still don't have a decent Java language server is one of my canaries for the fact that LLMs still, generally speaking, can't ship. There is undeniably demand for this sort of thing, but nobody is coming to meet it. (jdtls, bless it for trying, is just not good)

I'm trying to avoid IntelliJ because I only need it for editing TeamCity build configuration files, that are written in a Kotlin based DSL [0], and autocomplete and linting are be very helpful.

I've tried Eclipse and VS Code but I don't get them to autocomplete or detect syntax correctly. Would any LSP help me with that? As I have no idea about Java, Kotlin or Gradle, everything is kinda confusing to me...

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  0: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/teamcity/kotlin-dsl.html

Same for the jetbrains PHP based IDE (iirc named something in the likes of webstorm, or phpwind etc) is super slow and hogs ram like crazy. Also most devs using it have really, relly poor skills. Its weird i know, but i see it time and time again.

The Metals documentation includes instructions for setting it up with Emacs. I followed them, and everything works, including worksheets.

https://scalameta.org/metals/docs/editors/emacs

IntelliJ Git integration is so good I wish it would be a standalone client.

> and forces you into a closed proprietary ecosystem

https://github.com/jetbrains/intellij-community ?

Can Java developers run a GUI builder outside the IDE and then use any other editor for the rest and then compile a project with Maven and the like?

oh I thought this was somehow extracting the proprietary LSP engine that IntelliJ has and using it with Emacs.

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