Vscode vs Webstorm - Which One Is Better?
In this post, you will learn about the differences between VSCode and WebStorm for your everyday programming.
Many students ask me which is better to use — VSCode or IntelliJ IDEA, particularly WebStorm. To answer these questions, we must understand all the pros and cons of these two products.
VSCode is an editor, while WebStorm is a full IDE
The most important difference is that VSCode is just an editor that aims to be an IDE, while WebStorm is a fully-fledged IDE. This leads to the first problem I see with VSCode. As it gains more IDE-like features, it becomes slower over time and ceases to be just an editor.
You can't even compare it with something like Sublime, which we had previously. VSCode has far more features built-in.
But the main question is how it differs from WebStorm. VSCode was released 8 years ago, while JetBrains released WebStorm 23 years ago. If we consider the amount of time for development, the number of features, or how polished the product is, WebStorm obviously wins here. They simply had more time to refine their product.
Price comparison
But here is the biggest difference between these two products.
The price is exactly why 99% of beginners choose VSCode. VSCode is completely free and can be used on any platform. On the other hand, WebStorm is a paid, subscription-based product. The current monthly price is $8.21. While this is not an extremely high price, in comparison to a completely free product, VSCode obviously wins.
If you don't want to spend any money on your editor and you want something free, then VSCode is a no-brainer.
Who is it better for?
From my point of view, VSCode is great for beginners. You can simply start writing code without needing a lot of features from your editor, and VSCode covers all these needs.
WebStorm is more suitable for advanced developers. Why is that? It indexes the project.
This makes a huge difference. As a full-blown IDE, WebStorm indexes all files, classes, and methods in your projects, using this information to bring you the best possible autocomplete, replacement, search, and refactoring tools.
In VSCode, you don't have all this functionality. It is still an editor with some IDE features, but it is far behind WebStorm when it comes to refactoring.
If you work on a huge project and need to move lots of files, change names, or refactor something, it is much simpler to do it in WebStorm. Many advanced developers say that by using WebStorm, they really feel safe.
You break much less stuff with WebStorm simply because of how well it refactors the project.
You have functionality like Safe Delete, and when moving a file, you can be totally sure that all your imports are updated.
Git functionality
Another thing that I don't like about VSCode is its Git functionality. It is super limited and really basic. Yes, you can switch branches, make a commit, or push your changes. But that's basically it. Anything more than that looks unpolished or isn't possible to do at all with the default functionality. You need to install some plugins, and even then, they don't cover everything you need. Even something as simple as Git Blame is not there by default.
In comparison, the Git functionality in WebStorm is amazing, especially the tool to resolve conflicts.
It is simply the best merge tool I have ever seen. Its UI is clean, and it is easy to understand what changes will be applied.
Conclusion
As I already mentioned, WebStorm is really good for big production applications. If you're working on a small project, VSCode is much faster. Starting a small project and constantly indexing it just doesn't make sense. You don't need that level of functionality. If you don't have much to refactor, VSCode will work just fine for you.
You might have heard that WebStorm consumes a lot of RAM when used for long periods. This is a valid point—you may need to restart WebStorm occasionally. However, VSCode has another issue: it doesn't handle huge projects well. It can become too laggy, sometimes to the point where you can't work with the project at all.
To sum this up, both solutions are amazing. Obviously, if you don't want to spend money, VSCode is the way to go. But for advanced developers working on big projects, I highly recommend using WebStorm. It is a much better solution for that. And if your company pays for WebStorm instead of you, it's a no-brainer as you'll be much more satisfied using WebStorm.
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