The Elm editor features I love

I switched to an editor I don’t like (WebStorm) for Elm development—and I’m happy about it.

I much prefer VS Code’s UX. But Keith Lazuka’s plugin for IntelliJ editors (https://github.com/klazuka/intellij-elm) can do too many amazing things.

Here are some of the features that made me switch:

Highlight a type or function, and the editor will find all usages of it throughout your codebase.

It uses the AST, so it’s type-aware—much more effective than text-based search.

Similarly, the type-aware find-and-replace applies to all usages and all type annotations.

Changing names is as easy as it can be—rename any of your functions, types, and type variants.

Because of Elm’s language design, it’s easy to tell via static analysis whether code is ever used.

Unused imports, function, types, and variants show up in gray in your editor—no need to even run a command to find them!

If you need a function, just use it—the editor will give you the option to add an import without scrolling to the top of your file.

It can also expose/un-expose code defined in your module.

One of my favorite features allows you to generate the boilerplate for destructuring a type.

Just run the command and it creates all the branches you need.

It can also generate JSON decoders for a given type!

Want to make your Elm experience a breeze? Give it a try: https://github.com/klazuka/intellij-elm

This post was originally a Twitter thread as part of Ship 30 for 30.