Having worked professionally as an Android app developer for over 10 years(yikes!), I have sworn by IntelliJ through all these years.
I have used Android Studio day in, day out and that's based on IntelliJ. I also have IntelliJ Community Edition installed to use with any Java/Kotlin server side projects. And for the entirety of this year, since Zalando went in the direction of React Native, I have been using IntelliJ Ultimate.
And I don't know if something has gone terribly wrong with the IDE in general, or if its just that the JS/TS support is bad, or if I am making my computer do "too much"(I have an Apple M1 Pro).
But the IDE has basically become completely unusable for me.
The IDE gets stuck on indexing far too often. Switching branches leads to the app becoming unresponsive. The IDE takes forever to load some config files. And in general, the IDE randomly becomes super slow to respond, for reasons I don't know. Typing gets affected, auto-complete, auto-importing, anything, everything.
Now I must admit, I haven't tried to dig deeper. I don't know if there is something in our project setup that could be changed to improve the experience. I haven't asked other IntelliJ users in the company if they are experiencing the same difficulties. Everyone on my team uses Visual Studio Code and they all seem to to be "satisfied" with their experience. Then again, our definitions of "satisfied" may not be the same.
And I don't want to be just "satisfied", I want to be happy! And based on my past experience with Visual Studio Code, I don't think it will be my path to happiness.
Path to happiness
I never got to choose my tools for me. Android Studio was the official IDE for Android development when I started working and so I have used it without chasing alternatives. It simply was the most convenient(and effectively, only) way to build Android apps.
But convenience can only get one so far. And I am sick of screaming internally and staring at the void while I wait for IntelliJ to index my project for the 77th time.
I see this as an opportunity. An opportunity to have a hard look at my needs that have developed over 10 years and arrive at a developer experience that is tailored to me, fast, simple and future-proof.
It's going to take some time but I am sure it will be worth it.