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The (big) ball on the left is rust-analyzer — a language server. The similarly sized ball on the right is VS Code — an editor. And the small ball in the center is the code to glue them together, including LSP implementations.

That code is relatively and absolutely tiny. The codebases behind either the language server or the editor are enormous.


To sum the above succinctly, the problem with decent IDE support was not of N * M, but rather of an inadequate equilibrium of a two-sided market.

Language vendors were reluctant to create language servers, because it was hard, the demand was low (= no competition from other languages), and, even if one creates a language server, one would find a dozen editors absolutely unprepared to serve as a host for a smart server.

On the editor’s side, there was little incentive for adding high-level APIs needed for IDEs, because there were no potential providers for those APIs.


Action Item for Everyone: Please demand better IDE support!

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