In my new role as lead of the Android team for Day One at Automattic, I moved from writing ReScript in Visual Studio Code most of the time to writing Kotlin in Android Studio.

I’ve used Jetbrains products in the past, and though I’ve been impressed with the capabilities of their software, I wasn’t in love with the UI design, or the performance on my Macbook Pro.

Well, recently I’ve found myself with a changed tune. I realized today that I’m writing both Android code and a web server in Kotlin (from Jetbrains) using Ktor (from Jetbrains) in IntelliJ Idea Ultimate (from Jetbrains). I’m all Jetbrains-ed up.

Though Ktor isn’t perfect, I’ve been surprised by how good the initial developer experience has been to get this server project up and running. And surprised by how fast and flexible Ktor is for typed server-side development.

Though IntelliJ isn’t lightweight, it’s fast enough on my M1 Macbook, and the new UI design is very pleasant, and it integrates most of the tools I need on a regular basis.