The title, "I'm happiest when I'm in my IDE", isn't entirely accurate, but my IDE means a lot to me.
Thanks to a friend, my love was recently rekindled for IntelliJ IDEA again. I used it briefly while at university and loved it, but then I remembered that I had an edition that allowed me to use it as a student. Since I am no longer a student, I could not acquire that version and stuck with the Eclipse IDE for my Java programming, Visual Studio for C#, Visual Studio Code for Python and Atom/Pulsar for web development.
Atom and Pulsar are lovely editors with many features that I love. Visual Studio is the editor I have been using for the longest since the first language I learned, which I still actively use, was C#. Visual Studio Code has always been one of my favourite IDEs, but it lacks many of what other editors offer. Eclipse, however, is very dated, and whilst it does the job, it lacks a lot.
JetBrains IDEs, on the other hand, offer the best of everything. This is where the title of the post makes sense. I genuinely am happiest with the JetBrains suite of IDEs because the IDE I'm working with affects how I feel when writing code. And I say that because there are so many great things in them.
Take IntelliJ, for example. I put ZPE's code into IntelliJ, which has reshaped it. IntelliJ has shown me areas in which I can improve my code, for example, by replacing length == 0 with isEmpty(), or removing unnecessary assignments or variable initialisation when the variable gets initialised immediately after declaration.
My IDE means a lot to me, and I've heard the same from other programmers who also believe it affects your mental health whilst you are working. I decided just to do what I've been contemplating for a while and bought the JetBrains suite for the first time.
