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- Visual representation of the code structure

- Ability to select any symbol and find semantic uses of it

- For OO code, being able to visuallize the OO graph usage of certain symbols

- Refactoring across the whole project with semantic knowledge (no, search/replace does does not cut it)

- Navigation in third-party libraries deployed in binary format

- Code completion for static/dynamic languages, while showing tooltip documentation

- Graphical visualization of data structures on the debugger

- Background compilation with static analysis

- unit test debugging infrastructure

- integration with modelling tools

- integration with SCM tooling and being able to interact with them directly from the editor. For example, generating a blame file, with navigation across the file revisions.

- integration with continuous integration servers

- integration of developer workflow with task management servers

As an example of such developer workflows, have the IDE talk to Jira, edit the code, automatically bundle it in a workflow that binds the code changes to the Jira issue being worked on, get a Jenkins notification after the code is checked in and gone through the CI system.

Sure you can get part of it in Emacs, after spending a week configuring plugins, with different levels of maturity, and in the end it is still mostly textual.



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