As much as I love Kotlin and have a great deal of respect for JetBrains, I’ve always preferred the other Java IDEs over IntelliJ. The fact that choosing Kotlin—which I genuinely do prefer—effectively locks you into IntelliJ for the foreseeable future has been one of the main reasons I’ve hesitated to recommend it unreservedly for every project.
Just to be clear: I think IntelliJ and the rest of JetBrains’ tools are excellent and absolutely worth the price. I simply happen to prefer the alternatives—and they happen to be free. That said, I realise this is very much a personal preference, and one that most others don’t seem to share.
I think it’s admirable that there’s a generic language server for Kotlin. Others, such as zed can benefit from this as well.
That said, I would much rather use AndroidStudio for Kotlin. Hands down. I use VSCode only when I can’t find something better. I recently switched my Elixir dev to Zed and am happy with that. Pretty much only thing I choose to use VSCode for these days is my ansible setups. Otherwise:
- Pycharm -> Python
- Xcode -> Swift
- Android Studio -> Kotlin
- Zed for Elixir/Phoenix
- Nova for embedded C code
- vim for scripts and quick edits of any of the above
VSCode for everything is like using a multitool to do woodworking in a garage. When you’re hiking or on a trip, a lightweight do it all tool has advantages. But I think it’s important to remember what IDE stands for.
This is amazing news. The inability to write Kotlin in emacs was the only thing stopping me from using the language.
I really hope that this means that we can some day get a Jetbrains Java LSP. I would pay for an Intellij Ultimate subscription just to get access to such a thing.
With the proliferation of JS, TS, Python, Go, etc, Kotlin is probably not even a thought for many young developers. Any efforts by JetBrains to bring Kotlin to where the people are at (as opposed to expecting people to come to IntelliJ) is welcomed. Call me a stan, whatever, but Kotlin is the best, most productive language I've ever used, by far. Yes, it takes some effort to understand how to effectively utilize some of its features, but once you do, productivity (and enjoyment) elevates tremendously.
Why would anyone want to use VSC for Kotlin? After all the Kotlin creators are also the ones after JetBrains IntelliJ, it's hard to imagine some other IDE could suit Kotlin better?
Apart from legacy projects written in Kotlin, after Java 21/23, what's the argument for using Kotlin anymore, especially that it's a proprietary language?
It's great jetbrains finally taking some babysteps to support an official language server for VSCode after some great resilience from them.
I know it's a difficult spot because such effort will also indirectly compete with their main product which is an IDE, so I'm not very optimistic it'll last.
> Currently, the LSP implementation is partially closed-source
What. the. fuck.
So, it's Apache 2 for the TypeScript, seems to ship an Apache 2 copy of IntelliJ (just like any Java language server), but smuggles some kind of binary. They truly have lost their way
Kotlin-Lsp: Kotlin Language Server and Plugin for Visual Studio Code
(github.com)166 points by todsacerdoti 22 May 2025 | 116 comments
Comments
As much as I love Kotlin and have a great deal of respect for JetBrains, I’ve always preferred the other Java IDEs over IntelliJ. The fact that choosing Kotlin—which I genuinely do prefer—effectively locks you into IntelliJ for the foreseeable future has been one of the main reasons I’ve hesitated to recommend it unreservedly for every project.
Just to be clear: I think IntelliJ and the rest of JetBrains’ tools are excellent and absolutely worth the price. I simply happen to prefer the alternatives—and they happen to be free. That said, I realise this is very much a personal preference, and one that most others don’t seem to share.
That said, I would much rather use AndroidStudio for Kotlin. Hands down. I use VSCode only when I can’t find something better. I recently switched my Elixir dev to Zed and am happy with that. Pretty much only thing I choose to use VSCode for these days is my ansible setups. Otherwise:
- Pycharm -> Python
- Xcode -> Swift
- Android Studio -> Kotlin
- Zed for Elixir/Phoenix
- Nova for embedded C code
- vim for scripts and quick edits of any of the above
VSCode for everything is like using a multitool to do woodworking in a garage. When you’re hiking or on a trip, a lightweight do it all tool has advantages. But I think it’s important to remember what IDE stands for.
I really hope that this means that we can some day get a Jetbrains Java LSP. I would pay for an Intellij Ultimate subscription just to get access to such a thing.
They have been pretty firm on wanting keeping it closed for the purpose of giving an edge to the Jetbrain IDE's
> Error: Unable to install extension 'jetbrains.kotlin' as it is not compatible with VS Code '1.96.2'.
I know it's a difficult spot because such effort will also indirectly compete with their main product which is an IDE, so I'm not very optimistic it'll last.
What. the. fuck.
So, it's Apache 2 for the TypeScript, seems to ship an Apache 2 copy of IntelliJ (just like any Java language server), but smuggles some kind of binary. They truly have lost their way