---
title: "Which IDEs do software engineers love, and why?"
url: https://daily.dev/posts/which-ides-do-software-engineers-love-and-why--wcwnknq5c
source_url: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/ide-that-software-engineers-love/
type: article
source: "The Pragmatic Engineer"
published: 2024-11-26T17:26:35.679Z
updated: 2024-12-08T20:37:02.213Z
tags: ["ai", "github"]
reading_time: 16
upvotes: 1102
comments: 137
language: en
---

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# Which IDEs do software engineers love, and why?

**[The Pragmatic Engineer](https://daily.dev/sources/pragmaticengineer)** · 16 min read · 1102 upvotes · 137 comments

## Summary

This post examines the current landscape of AI-powered IDEs popular among software engineers. It highlights favorites like Cursor, Visual Studio Code with GitHub Copilot, and new entrants like Windsurf and Zed, detailing their standout features and pricing. Insights include why developers prefer these tools over established options, and how startups are out-innovating giants like Microsoft and JetBrains in this space.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/ide-that-software-engineers-love/>

## Community discussion

Top comments from developers on daily.dev.

**@camerongould** · 62 upvotes

> before you click, here’s the most important data in the article:
>
> > Of 155 responses, 77 were posted on Bluesky, 62 on X and 16 on Threads
> >
> > This data is likely to be biased towards early tech adopters and non-enterprise users, as I posted on social media, and self-selecting software engineers active on those sites who are likely to be up-to-date on new tools, and willing to adopt them. There were more replies from developers at smaller companies like startups or smaller scaleups, and very few respondents from larger companies.

**@thontran** · 46 upvotes

> The JetBrains IDE is BEST, But, In the datagrip, the Postgres same shit!!!!

**@azhy** · 28 upvotes

> All new IDEs after VS Code just getting all the ideas from VS Code, especially UI design ideas. Although not to forget, JetBrains are creating all the best products all the time, they are too powerful.

**@aniket9** · 26 upvotes

> I would always go with VS code with Copilot, it let me develop things a lot faster.

**@mythobyte** · 16 upvotes

> I have been around a long time before AI.  The one thing that I have seen during interviews is that I can tell who is a AI developer and who is not.
>
> Such as a simple question like does c# allow multiple inheritance?
>
> The simple answer is no but you can use interfaces instead to achieve the desired result.
>
> I am not against using AI as a tool, but my question would be, should you hire an AI developer that can't answer simple questions about the language?

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---

Tags: [#ai](https://daily.dev/tags/ai), [#github](https://daily.dev/tags/github)

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