There's nothing bad that can be said about IntelliJ WebStorm if your web dev project leans on JavaScript
December 18, 2018

There's nothing bad that can be said about IntelliJ WebStorm if your web dev project leans on JavaScript

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with IntelliJ WebStorm

Currently, it is not listed as a corporate application that we use internally across all departments, but I believe some departments, including ours have purchased single or multi licenses for IntelliJ WebStorm. Within our department we do custom development, support and administration of enterprise web applications to support our corporate internal services. For us, WebStorm was the most practical IDE for us to use, as it accommodated all of our needs to do custom web development. We work a lot with JavaScript (NodeJS, Archibus API), so it's extremely useful for this. As well, we use Gitlab and the built-in plugins for WebStorm allow us to do everything within the IDE, instead of using multiple apps.
  • Plugins -- especially the Git integration
  • Debuggings for JavaScript, which is very customization.
  • Ability to use Flow
  • Lots of cool syntax highlighting and code styling.
  • A problem I have with a lot of IDEs is that they seem to go over-kill. Although not entirely a con, a dumbed down version of WebStorm would be useful.
  • Subscription based license
  • As an individual, who works on solo development for certain projects, WebStorm has allowed me to streamline my releases. I've been consistently saving enough time to provide clients with package releases earlier than planned.
The only other applications that I've used comparable to IntelliJ Webstorm have been Aptana Studio and Microsoft Visual Studio Code. Personally, I found Visual Studio Code too complicated. I never had the time to get around the learning curve of that IDE, since I'm so busy at work. Aptana was my go-to choice for web dev IDEs for years, and I still really love it, but for projects more geared towards JavaScript, I strongly feel WebStorm is the absolute best.
If you're doing any kind of Node development, WebStorm is an essential tool. In my experience, it's also been a valuable asset when using Angular and React. A lot of web dev IDEs do not provide much debugging for JavaScript, and this is where WebStorm just destroys other IDEs. They have the best JavaScript debugging features I've ever used.

It's hard to say that WebStorm is less appropriate for anything, as it's one of JetBrains tailored IDEs. It is literally an IDE exclusively designed for JavaScript languages (although not limited), so it plays a specific role and does this extremely well.

Evaluating IntelliJ WebStorm and Competitors

  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Vendor Reputation
  • Third-party Reviews
Working in a small department with lots of projects running simultaneously, I needed a JavaScript IDE that had a good reputation and did not have a huge learning curve. I was able to get up and running with WebStorm pretty fast, and without any real hiccups. It's my go to IDE for 2018.