Fleet + Kotlin UX thoughts: - *Perception:* Fleet ...

# fleet

[darkmoon_uk]

Fleet + Kotlin UX thoughts:
• Perception: Fleet is touted as being 'lightweight', the expectation is speed and convenience for quick editing and running scripts etc.
• Despite this apparent design goal, Fleet remains behind IntelliJ for ease-of-access to compiling/running Kotlin in these common situations:
◦ 1️⃣ Use case: Creating a small PoC Application
▪︎ IntelliJ: A 'New Project' wizard exists with Templates to bootstrap your workspace with a basic config.
▪︎ Fleet: No project wizard or templates; it's necessary to start with an empty folder and hand-craft each config file: this is laborious.
▪︎ 💡 Remediation idea: Include some project wizard in Fleet, to meet or exceed IntelliJ. Something more extensible than IntelIiJ's: Scriptable with Git repo sources would be welcome.
◦ 2️⃣ Use case: Try out a small fragment of Kotlin code, in the context of my current workspace (project).
▪︎ IntelliJ: Create a scratch file; it can evaluate code immediately.
▪︎ Fleet: I can create an arbitary .kt or .kts file, but then still have to provision a run.json file in order to execute it. The UI is not helpful about the format of run.json and I'm left doing online research just to make the most basic of Kotlin fun main() run.
▪︎ 💡 Remediation idea: Give Fleet some 'default handlers' for common file types. These can either be executed in one-click or transposed into a new or existing run.json first for keeping/editing.
◦ 3️⃣ Use case: Try out a small fragment of Kotlin, when there is no project open.
▪︎ IntelliJ: Not quite a fair comparison as we need to have some project open; but I can still access REPL from any project and start executing Kotlin without further preparation of the workspace.
▪︎ Fleet: I can only create a temporary file but cannot execute anything in it. Not useful until project folder is opened.
▪︎ 💡 Remediation idea: Make the 'default handlers' idea from the previous point, also work in Fleet's 'temporary directory' context.
• While understanding Fleet is about more than just Kotlin; the language is surely a key focus. Hopefully these ease-of-use points are being planned for.

[hhariri]

Thanks for the feedback. Regarding 1, have you tried our new wizards which are at kmp.jetbrains.com?

[darkmoon_uk]

Thanks Hadi, but I don't want to rely on a website every time I need to start a new project. That's not progress to me. Hopefully whatever logic is there is KMP and will be shared into Fleet soon.

[hhariri]

We’ll be doing something in this regard, yes. Similar to how Ktor wizard is incorporated in IntelliJ IDEA.