WebStorm is an integrated development environment (IDE) by JetBrains. Designed for JavaScript and TypeScript development, WebStorm also aims to make it easy to tackle the most challenging tasks. Whether resolving Git merge conflicts or renaming a symbol across multiple files, it takes just a few clicks.
$0
per year
Xcode
Score 7.1 out of 10
N/A
Xcode is an IDE used to develop, test, and distribute apps across all Apple platforms, featuring Swift and SwiftUI with a multiplatform app experience, enhanced editor features to help users code faster.
WebStorm is a great product for programming and development. It has all the capabilities needed for education, as well as for professional deployment. I use it in the classroom with my students, who benefit from the comprehensive drop down menus and the integrated spell check. It also has a clean user interface that allows for customization.
We are huge advocates of native iOS development and there is just real alternative when it comes to developing in Swift or Objective-C for the iPhone and iPad
Didn't find any apparent issue overall, except sometimes the WebStorm is running too many default validation check in the backend and response is slow, typically when we keep WebStorm running for some time, and if we restart the WebStorm it will take long time to be "warm up", perhaps, some JetBean team can consider some performance improvement
Great in debugging, testing, developing and maintaining softwares in a number of languages. Great support for many languages and their syntaxes. Great support of many third party extensions and plugins like GIT and html plugins. The RAM usage of WebStorm however could be really improved, it literally takes almost all of the RAM of my machine with 16GB RAM
Xcode occasionally exhibits some behaviors that are hard to explain, but are generally cleared by restarting the program. In an application this large and complex, I suppose this is somewhat expected. The sheer vastness of the frameworks collection has to be a huge management issue all by itself. However, those breaks in the flow can have impact on developer productivity.
Since we don't use the cloud based features of Xcode, it is basically available 24/7 for us. We don't need the extended compilation features that are offered in the cloud as our projects to this point have not been that large or complex. We have never seen a wholesale breakdown of Xcode availability at any point in our use of the product.
Every developer wants faster compiles, but that can be achieved by either going to the cloud or by provisioning the local station to a higher powered configuration. My only minor complaint is the amount of local mass storage that Xcode as a system consumes. This makes it interesting to set up a development environment on a midrange laptop, however it is easily managed with external storage at a reasonable price.
I gave this rating because I have never needed their customer support, which is the highest level of support I suppose. When a product works just fine out of the box and everything you may need is well documented, it's a paradise for the customer. But I've seen some questions asked on their portal, and I've seen thorough answers given to the questions and the willingness to support the customer with follow-ups and everything else.
VS Code is free and more popular. Popularity helps in that you can do pair programming more easily because you all use the same [tool]. It's also easier when trying to guide someone (especially a junior developer). However, Webstorm comes with more out-of-the-box and is generally faster and more effective. Webstorm has been around for many more years as well.
Xcode is the clear choice in general circumstances in Apple echosphere application development (for instance, not for Java or web programming necessarily) primarily due to the fact that it is Apple's in-house tool. It received a lot of attention and is used by a huge audience of developers. It has the advantage of being free, heavily supported by Apple, tightly tied to OS and hardware changes, and benefits from significant Apple Intelligence enhancements in the latest version.
Xcode only loses points due to the occasional situation where it manages to somehow tie itself into a knot and starts to exhibit odd symptoms. This is almost always solved by simply saving progress and restarting the environment. Fortunately, that doesn't happen too frequently and is easily repaired while taking a short break to walk around and stretch.
Our UX guys love the Emmet support provided by WebStorm and enjoy cranking out prototypes quicker than they could before.
I love the standardization provided by the tslint support. When all the devs code to the same standard, it makes our code more maintainable.
The test support makes it easier to write and execute tests, lowering the barrier to entry of creating test suite around our code. Testing makes maintenance of any codebase far more effective and efficient.
Xcode is free, and is supported at low cost by individual or organizational membership
There are a lot of free resources available, which is particularly important to students and independent developers
Since producing apps is not a core business function of the university, it is difficult to provide direct bottom-line tangible benefits, but frequently programming students come in with a basic understanding of Xcode already in place, which saves class time
Producing standard structured code from a standard IDE makes it easier for sharing code with peer institutions
Students expect to have university branded "helper" apps available, and Xcode makes it fairly easy to transport code from one contractor to another
No negative impacts are immediately evident other than familiarization time with the IDE can be high if you try to know what everything does
