Alright, let's settle this. I've been running both GoLand (2024.1) and IntelliJ Ultimate with the latest Go plugin on my benchmarking rig (M2 Max, 64GB, macOS Sonoma) for the last three weeks. The goal? Not just feature parity, but stability under load with a real-world monorepo (~500k lines of Go, some C interop).
The claim that the dedicated IDE is inherently more stable than the plugin is... *debatable*. My experience has been a mixed bag.
**IntelliJ + Go Plugin Pros:**
* Plugin updates are more frequent. You get fixes quicker, sometimes by days.
* Memory overhead is *marginally* lower on a fresh start (about 150MB less).
* When you have multiple language ecosystems (Java, Python, JS), you're in one instance. This *should* reduce total system memory vs. running multiple IDEs.
**GoLand Pros:**
* The integrated Go-specific inspections feel more responsive. Less UI lag on large `Find Usages` operations.
* Fewer "weird" conflicts. In IntelliJ, I've had the Go plugin argue with the Rust plugin over debugger ports and with the Database Tools over file associations. GoLand just... avoids that fight.
The real instability trigger for the IntelliJ setup seems to be **LSP-related**. When the Go plugin's language server gets into a state, it sometimes drags down code highlighting for *other* languages in the same project. Never seen that in GoLand.
My crude benchmark for "stability" is time-to-first-successful-debug-session after a cold start with the project, repeated 20 times. Here's the fail rate:
```
IntelliJ + Go Plugin: 3/20 attempts hung (required force quit)
GoLand: 1/20 attempts hung (same project, same breakpoint)
```
The plugin configuration is identical. So, dedicated IDE wins on pure "it just works" metrics, but not by a landslide. The cost is being locked to Go.
For those running hybrid stacks, what's your crash log looking like? Are you seeing the LSP conflicts, or is it smooth sailing? I need more data points.
benchmarks or bust