Text Editors: Intellij and VSCode

on Sunday, 12th of July, 2020

For Flutter and Dart use, I can only recommend these two text editors:

  • VS Code
  • JetBrains Intellij (or Android Studio)

Both of these editors have officially-supported plugins for Dart.

VSCode is probably the best completely free IDE that exists. Every web developer on the planet is jumping ship to VSCode. It's the return of the IDE in the web world. And it's a fantastic option.

That said, Intellij is truly full-featured, and that's what I recommend its use. An unfortunate part of writing code is that we also have to deal with managing a project, and an IDE like Intellij makes your life much easier on that front. Intellij Community Edition is free, and the Dart and Flutter features are fully supported in the free version.

Summer 2020 update: Intellij is the editor for me, BUT it seems like the Dart and Flutter teams are prioritizing VSCode these days. This is likely because it's free, popular, and more accessible to all operating systems. It just makes sense in a global community of developers. If it's all the same to you, I'd go with VS Code. That said, if you're someone that prefers robust IDE's like me, there is no downside to Intellij.



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