...but I hate that you can practically only use it with IntelliJ. Trying to use it with just Gradle and vscode is such a pain and maybe even impossible to get anything more than basic syntax highlighting. That is all.
That article tells you how to set up syntax highlighting and run the command-line compiler by hand, not really comparable to IntelliJ... The article feels like a generic SEO post
Gradle is fantastic, but there is this mantra you have to chant while tinkering with it:
I hate Gradle, I hate Gradle, I hate Gradle, I hate Gradle, I hate Gradle
But once you get it to do whatever you want it's way more powerful than Maven, since it's actual code. Also you will never get me to voluntarily define my project structure in XML.
Genuinely curious, why do you prefer using VS Code over IntelliJ? What do you get there that you don't get in IntelliJ, or in other words, and what would IntelliJ need to do for you to choose to use it?
Also, have you tried Fleet yet? If you're a VS Code fan, it might appeal to you.
Although, for the life of me, I don't know why anyone would choose it over IntelliJ
Personally, I really love what JetBrains has done with their IDE's. As a .NET developer, I used to live and die by Visual Studio, and it had its frustrations. That was where I first met JetBrains and the magic of ReSharper. Then, when developing for Android I felt the frustrated with Eclipse, and cheered when Android Studio became available.
When I started using both Kotlin and C# for development. I found JetBrains products so useful that I bought a personal subscription and convinced my company to get licenses for all interested developers..
We've even moved our legacy .NET development to Rider (reducing VS licenses and more than covering the cost of all the JetBrains license). Aside from a limitation on T4, templates it is much better than VS ever was (and cross platform too)!