My perspective (as a die-hard JetBrains evangelist) is that the "focused" IDEs tend to have easier mental models to map onto the underlying language, versus trying to find the 8 panel's deep dialog that configures the facets for the plugin you care about. That's not even comparing the "what is happening here?!" difference between the plugin versions and the version bundled in the standalone IDE[1]. I would suspect over sufficient spans of time they may converge, but for the most part the standalone IDE bundle is actually QA-ed and the plugins are "well, it compiled!" (or at least that's how it seems from the outside)
The advantage of using the plugins in IJ (or I guess CLion in this case) is heterogeneous development is a little easier if one already has IJ muscle memory in ways that are similarly awkward to do in in the focused distributions
1: to this very second the virtualenv management difference between PyCharm and the python plugin make me chose PyCharm 100% of the time
Largely what commenter above says. Also, the full-featured IDEs signal, and back up IME, a higher level of polish and investment.
Also, I _love_ JetBrains and have access to two different all products pack licenses (one personal, one from my employer) so there is no additional license concern.
mdaniel|2 years ago
The advantage of using the plugins in IJ (or I guess CLion in this case) is heterogeneous development is a little easier if one already has IJ muscle memory in ways that are similarly awkward to do in in the focused distributions
1: to this very second the virtualenv management difference between PyCharm and the python plugin make me chose PyCharm 100% of the time
sugarpile|2 years ago
Also, I _love_ JetBrains and have access to two different all products pack licenses (one personal, one from my employer) so there is no additional license concern.