We discovered it, reported the problem to the compiler team, and they fixed it. Like in this case, where a change in the compiler’s frontend cache affected the speed of code highlighting. A degradation in IDE performance can sometimes be caused by a change in another subsystem.

Such benchmarks help us catch regressions and estimate the performance improvements that result from changes in the algorithms in particular subsystems. We run them in both before- and after- warm-up modes, roughly ~20 times in each (40 times total), and then we take the mean and geometric mean for each mode.

Each suite of benchmark tests includes around 1000 tests. Each test is performed several times, and the geometric mean of these runs is reported. We run benchmark tests for code completion and highlighting for internal components on basic code snippets on every build. Our primary resources for measuring IDE performance are synthetic and real-life benchmarks, anonymous statistics, and your feedback. We use a variety of approaches to finding problems with IDE performance. If you’ve been reluctant to upgrade because of concerns about breaking changes, we think you’ll be excited by the improvements we’ve made. Our recent versions have fixed a lot of performance issues.

How we’ve improved IntelliJ IDEA performance for Kotlin development.

How we measure performance to see where issues are and what to improve.

If you have ever experienced the blight of a slow IDE, or if you get a kick out of software performance, you’ll like what we’ve prepared for you below. We’ve already done a lot of work on that front, but we’re not going to stop here! Our goal is to make sure working with our tools is as smooth as possible. This is why for the past year we’ve been focusing on improving this experience for you. For a long time, performance was a pain point for Kotlin developers, especially those who worked with large codebases or with complex code structures. The performance of your tools, and especially your IDE, has a significant impact on your development experience.

Kotlin online ide