I’m working on an IDE framework called Tide for Vim and other editors, and thought that it would be useful to survey the ‘lay of the land’ in the space of keyboard shorcuts in existing IDEs. Below are the results of a 20 minute survey on the subject.
The Representative Sample
| Editor | Toggle Breakpoint | Start | Step Into | Step Over | Step Out | Continue | Stop |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eclipse | Ctrl-Shift-B | F11 | F5 | F6 | F7 | F8 | F12 |
| Visual Studio | F9 | F5 | F11 | F10 | Shift-F11 | F5 | Shift-F5 |
| Android Studio | Ctrl-F8 | Shift-F9 | F7 | F8 | Shift-F8 | Alt-F9 | F9 |
| Netbeans 8.0 | Ctrl-F8 | Ctrl-F5 | F7 | F8 | Ctrl-F7 | F5 | Shift-F5 |
| IntelliJ | Ctrl-F8 | Ctrl-F9 | F7 | F8 | Ctrl-F7 | F5 | Shift-F5 |
| Atom node-debugger | F9 | F5 | F11 | Shift-F11 | F5 | Shift-F5 | F9 |
Conclusions:
Looking at the table above, there are only a few things that can be derived by the table above:
- F7 is commonly used to ‘step into’ a code base
- F8 is commonly used to ‘step over’ code
- Anything to ‘step out’ of the current line of code should be a key combination of a Ctrl or Shift and a function key above F6
- F5 or F9 are common for continuing the debugging process once started
- Ctrl-F8 or F9 are common for Toggling Breakpoints
Anyway, this was a fun little survey in the area of popular IDEs and is by no means exhaustive; but more a way of getting an understanding for what is being used out there. Happy keyboarding!
Refs
https://github.com/kiddkai/atom-node-debugger https://www.dofactory.com/reference/visual-studio-shortcuts https://blog.codecentric.de/en/2013/04/again-10-tips-on-java-debugging-with-eclipse/ https://stackoverflow.com/questions/321118/what-is-the-short-cut-in-eclipse-to-terminate-debugging-running https://netbeans.org/project_downloads/www/shortcuts.pdf https://stackoverflow.com/a/34723886/512965 https://developer.android.com/studio/intro/keyboard-shortcuts
