# I used to think that I was indecisive; now I'm not so sure ...

I've been vacillating between programming environments.

• I obviously started out with the Arduino IDE which, while capable enough, isn't as helpful as I've come to expect from other IDEs.
• So I switched to IntelliJ. "Wait, Arduino code is C++ and IntelliJ isn't that" I hear you say, and that's correct, but for a hobby project CLion is sorta expensive and so I chose a JetBrains product with a free Community Edition.
• I couldn't get the Serial Monitor to work right, so I still kept the Arduino IDE open just to make use of its serial monitor.
• With IntelliJ, there's a neat plugin for PlatformIO which I tried out (rewriting what code I had at the time), but I had hang-ups with integration so I went back to a plain Arduino-style project while continuing with IntelliJ.
• Even though the IntelliJ editor is much nicer than the Arduino IDE, given that it's just not designed to be C-aware I didn't get much help. But I've been using this approach for a good while now.

Then it occurred to me that JetBrains offer free licenses for open source projects! So I applied, and demonstrated that this is, in fact, an unpaid open source project -- and they have awarded me a one-year license to ALL their products! They didn't ask me to review or mention this in my project, but here it is all the same.

• Now I'm able to use their dedicated C++ IDE, CLion!
• CLion doesn't know Arduino, so I needed to rework my "ino" file into a C file. No biggie.
• I'm also revisiting the PlatformIO framework, as it seems better integrated with the IDE but requires a different approach to organising files (more rework).
• I still haven't been able to get the Serial Monitor to work, so for now I will stick to my acceptable work-around of using the serial monitor fromthe Arduino IDE. It's a minor annoyance; I may look into it again later.

# So how is the project doing now?

Ahh, it is such a pleasure to be able to refactor ruthlessly and confidently. I have reworked the code for the PlatformIO framework and now the display driver is rock solid and super fast despite using a serial connection. I've yet to rework the keyboard driver, but that will follow soon.

As usual, the code is on GitHub.