[HN Gopher] JetBrains Fleet drops support for Kotlin Multiplatform
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       JetBrains Fleet drops support for Kotlin Multiplatform
        
       Author : konradkissener
       Score  : 140 points
       Date   : 2025-02-11 17:17 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.jetbrains.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.jetbrains.com)
        
       | konradkissener wrote:
       | I'm happy to see JetBrains focussing on IntelliJ / Android Studio
       | instead. I was really scratching my head when they announced a
       | standalone KMP IDE based on Fleet just 4 months ago. [1]
       | 
       | [1] https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2024/10/kotlin-
       | multiplatfo...
        
         | georgemcbay wrote:
         | Yeah I've been using KMP a lot for a hobby project app the last
         | couple of months, already shipped on Android and iOS and will
         | have a Windows Desktop version out soon as well.
         | 
         | As someone who has been incredibly frustrated attempting to use
         | multiplatform frameworks in the past and is used to them
         | causing more problems than they solve, I've been very
         | pleasantly surprised by KMP and Compose Multiplatform.
         | 
         | ... but I never once used Fleet, I just do all the coding in
         | Android Studio.
        
       | techwizrd wrote:
       | This is definitely surprising given they announced a KMP
       | standalone IDE only a few months ago. For now, Flutter still
       | seems to make more sense than KMP while the KMP world is still
       | maturing.
        
         | robertlagrant wrote:
         | I always thought a really good use of KMP would be in writing
         | shared non-visual code, e.g. a library that interacts with your
         | API(s) and any non-visual like that. Then paint a dumbish,
         | platform-specific frontend over the top and link together.
        
           | seanalltogether wrote:
           | As someone who has to manage native ios and android apps I
           | thought this would be the perfect solution as well. I wanted
           | to write all my data models, api calls, sql cache and
           | business logic as a separate library written with kmp, but
           | what i didn't like was that the ios framework that was
           | generated was a black box with just objc headers. If it
           | generated full swift code that i could inspect for
           | correctness and tweak if needed, I would have jumped on using
           | it right away.
        
             | robertlagrant wrote:
             | That's interesting - I can sort of see it both ways. Would
             | applying unit tests to the exposed functions not have
             | sufficed?
        
         | vips7L wrote:
         | Dart is an amazing and underrated language too. It compiles to
         | native assembly, has pattern matching, async/await, and null
         | safety. The only thing it's missing in my opinion is some form
         | of checked errors, currently they only have unchecked
         | exceptions.
        
           | geodel wrote:
           | > The only thing it's missing
           | 
           | I think biggest thing it is missing is any kind of Google
           | commitment on its long term usage.
        
           | tadfisher wrote:
           | The modern language landscape is backing away from checked
           | exceptions. Funnily enough Kotlin eschewed them as well,
           | converting checked to unchecked exceptions on the JVM.
        
             | vips7L wrote:
             | The modern language landscape has not backed away from
             | checked errors. Rust is praised for its checked errors,
             | countless posts on this forum praise Result<T> in multiple
             | languages. Swift has checked errors and Kotlin is
             | implementing them via union types in the near future.
             | 
             | Checked errors, via results or exceptions have never been
             | the problem. It has always been Java the language that
             | hasn't provided the syntax sugar for handling checked
             | errors effectively.
             | 
             | There is no difference between:                   A doIt()
             | throws B         fun doIt(): Result<A, B>
             | 
             | It all comes down to what the language lets you do once you
             | encounter that error.
        
               | billllll wrote:
               | Is Rust praised for its checked errors? I've personally
               | found it extremely verbose since there essentially is no
               | possibility for unchecked errors.
               | 
               | Also, external crates like "anyhow" are required if you
               | don't want to account for literally every single possible
               | error case. Really seems like a pedantic's dream but a
               | burden to everyone else.
               | 
               | Effective Java recommends checked exceptions only in the
               | case where the caller may recover, but in practice you're
               | usually just propagating the error to the caller in some
               | form, so almost everything just becomes unchecked runtime
               | exceptions.
        
               | vips7L wrote:
               | I'm only saying what I've seen here. I typically see
               | praise for Rust's checked errors. Especially since they
               | provide ? to panic and uncheck them. Personally I
               | disagree with Bloch, if you are the thrower you can't
               | possibly know if the caller can or cannot recover from
               | your error so in my opinion its best to check it. If you
               | are not the thrower and you can't recover from it I
               | prefer to uncheck them, because if I can't recover my
               | caller most likely can't either.
               | 
               | The issue really just arises with Java not giving you the
               | capability to uncheck that error easily if you can't
               | recover from it. For example, you need a ton of lines to
               | uncheck:                   A doIt() throws B {
               | throw new B();         }              void usingIt() {
               | A a;            try {                a = doIt();
               | } catch (B b) {                throw new
               | RuntimeException(b);            }
               | a.woohoo();         }
               | 
               | My ideal situation would be for some sort of throws
               | unchecked operator (or whatever syntax we want to
               | bikeshed over) that turns them into unchecked exceptions.
               | void usingIt() throws unchecked B {             var a =
               | doIt();             a.woohoo();         }
        
               | ninetyninenine wrote:
               | Have you heard of the language elm? The language elm is
               | so safe that it is literally impossible to crash the
               | program short of a memory error.
               | 
               | That's essentially the direction of modern programming
               | languages. It's part of that feeling you get when
               | programming haskell. Once you get it running, it just
               | works. It's very different from the old paradigm where
               | once you get it working, it can crash and you have to
               | debug and do more to get it working better.
        
               | ninetyninenine wrote:
               | Looks like a huge difference to me. The first function
               | throws an error. The second function may not even return
               | an error.
        
               | vips7L wrote:
               | The first function may not return an error either.
        
               | tadfisher wrote:
               | There is a huge difference: the first is an _exception_,
               | which:
               | 
               | - Unwinds the stack to a try/catch or exception handler,
               | making exceptions practically difficult to deal with in
               | concurrent programming.
               | 
               | - If unchecked, can be ignored, silently propagating
               | during stack unwinding.
               | 
               | - If checked, infects the call stack with 'throws'
               | annotations.
               | 
               | The second is a normal return value, with no try/catch
               | needed, handling the error case is mandatory in order to
               | handle the success case, and there is not a separate
               | execution regime occurring whenever an error case is
               | encountered.
        
           | NeutralForest wrote:
           | I just don't trust Google with a programming language. I feel
           | like Golang has escaped the orbit of Google and could survive
           | without it (I might be wrong). But for Dart I'm pretty sure
           | it would die fast and I don't want to invest time into it as
           | a result.
        
           | kiawe_fire wrote:
           | Oddly, I'm conflicted on Flutter so far, but I have _loved_
           | working in Dart.
           | 
           | So much so that I ended up writing a queueing app for
           | scheduling batches of sequential tasks on the server in Dart
           | just to see how it could work as a NodeJS replacement, and
           | thought the whole dev experience was great.
        
           | rizzaxc wrote:
           | i find its biggest problem is its json ecosystem; very clunky
           | and boilerplate-y
        
       | wiseowise wrote:
       | Good riddance. It is almost like the decision to build a
       | "standalone KMP IDE" came from some Reddit thread with 5 upvotes.
       | Android ecosystem is built around Android Studio, in what world
       | millions of devs would suddenly switch from free (subsidized)
       | Android Studio to a paid Fleet developed by a third party (third
       | first third party?) is beyond me.
        
       | malkia wrote:
       | I've been long user of JetBrains' products - and love them. I
       | even use ReSharper in Visual Studio (which I still consider
       | better IDE, but for Linux / Mac - JetBrains is my choice, and
       | heck, sometimes even Rider/CLion/RustRover/GoLand on Windows too
       | - especcially GoLand).
       | 
       | But... but... I've always wanted (and willing to pay) a single
       | IDE with any plugin that works in it - not just so many different
       | versions...
       | 
       | I'm a multiple programming language user - mostly C++, but also
       | Python, Go, Rust, C#, etc.
        
         | arwineap wrote:
         | In jetbrains paradigm you should install IDEA and install
         | python plugin, go plugin, etc. You only have to do it once
         | 
         | That should get you within 90%+ use cases
        
           | malkia wrote:
           | I think there was no C++ (ahem native) debugger in IDEA...
           | but I'll check again, could be wrong really...
        
             | teh64 wrote:
             | Sadly not, as Clion is not available as a plugin like
             | almost all other IDEs: https://www.jetbrains.com/products/c
             | ompare/?product=idea&pro...
        
               | malkia wrote:
               | Thanks!!! I also saw your other post about C# - maybe one
               | day JetBrains would change their mind!
               | 
               | I'm trying latest IDEA (2025.1 EAP) and for the first
               | time a bazel project that I have got parsed successfully
               | (had to enable some old legacy flag though), so there is
               | hope!
        
               | LeFrosch wrote:
               | Did you use the google plugin or the new BSP based one by
               | JetBrains?
        
               | malkia wrote:
               | Over the years I've tried both the google plugin, and now
               | the BSP one.
               | 
               | Mixed results. Almost always works on Linux/OSX, but my
               | dominant platform is Windows.
               | 
               | Yesterday tried it again (BSP one) with IDEA 21.5 EAP
               | with nightly on the plugins, and things got synced, but
               | was not able to find any targets (they are C++ targets),
               | funny it found and listed a "filegroup"
               | 
               | But I have my hopes up, the BSP looks like it's doing the
               | right thing discovering much faster the targets, and
               | probably needs more work just to finish all edge cases
               | (like mine - Windows).
        
             | pjmlp wrote:
             | Meanwhile Eclipse and Netbeans have been supporting mixed
             | language development, and JNI debugging, for the last two
             | decades.
        
               | Macha wrote:
               | IntelliJ has supported this for over a decade also, and
               | having used Eclipse for PHP a decade ago, I think it's
               | very generous to say that that was actually supporting
               | non-Java languages as an IDE, rather than just a very
               | slow and heavyweight text editor. I'd say Eclipse's
               | weakness for Python, PHP, etc. at that time led to how
               | long IDE-skepticism has been a thing.
        
               | pjmlp wrote:
               | No it wasn't, you have to have IntelliJ and Clion to
               | debug JNI, and there are no plans on the roadmap to ever
               | do otherwise.
               | 
               | In fact, the JNI tooling support on Android Studio is a
               | custom implementation done by Android team themselves.
        
           | invalidname wrote:
           | That doesn't work and is a major problem for me. I have a
           | Java project with C++ native code. Using a devcontainer so
           | the C++ dependencies are installed seems like the right thing
           | to do... Unfortunately, I need to use Idea for the
           | devcontainer and can't use both it and clion. Separating it
           | to two projects defeats the purpose as the Java code depends
           | on the C++ code which will be in a different container.
           | 
           | VSCode supports multiple languages in one container just
           | fine. My hacky solution is to use a hybrid container with
           | IntelliJ for the Java code and then connect VSCode to it for
           | doing C++. That means I will be forfeiting my CLion license.
           | I contacted their support (which is reasonably responsive),
           | they say they're working on a solution but I don't know when
           | it will be practical for me.
        
         | NomDePlum wrote:
         | It is possible to install the Python and Go plugins into
         | IntelliJ. That's the setup used wildly in my current place of
         | work.
         | 
         | It wouldn't surprise me if that was the case with Rust, C++,
         | and possibly even C# too.
         | 
         | I'm sure there is some loss of UX and related features in this
         | setup but there are always trade-offs.
        
           | teh64 wrote:
           | No both C++ and C# need to be bought as separate IDEs:
           | 
           | Only Clion includes C++: https://www.jetbrains.com/products/c
           | ompare/?product=idea&pro...
           | 
           | Only Rider includes C#: https://www.jetbrains.com/products/co
           | mpare/?product=idea&pro...
        
             | NomDePlum wrote:
             | Thanks. I don't use either but good to correct my guess.
        
             | jayd16 wrote:
             | Rider handles C++ but it looks like that's only for MSBuild
             | projects.
        
         | deergomoo wrote:
         | I would happily pay through the nose for their language and
         | refactoring features as some sort of LSP or plugin for other
         | editors.
         | 
         | I use their products because that aspect is best-in-class for
         | many languages, but the actual applications themselves leave a
         | lot of be desired. Core text editing is pretty good, but so
         | many Byzantine nested menus and odd Java fully-modal locks-out-
         | the-background dialogs.
        
           | ok123456 wrote:
           | > Byzantine nested menus
           | 
           | crtl-shift-a
        
             | vunderba wrote:
             | Was just going to post that yeah, _ALL_ the JetBrains IDEs
             | have a  "Command Palette" with fuzzy search for all
             | actions. I can't remember the last time I even went through
             | the menu bar.
        
           | wiseowise wrote:
           | Have you tried Zen mode?
        
         | bastardoperator wrote:
         | They can't build the mothership, that means they only have one
         | product. The problem I have is that they build these editors to
         | their benefit, not mine. I had the same problem despite liking
         | the tools initially. Between nvchad and vscode, I have all my
         | bases covered for any situation/language.
        
       | hadrien01 wrote:
       | I still don't understand where Jetbrains is going with Fleet. Is
       | it a platform to prototype ideas for their IDEs? Is their long-
       | term goal to replace their IDEs with Fleet? Is it just a
       | standalone product?
       | 
       | So far, it seems like they're very slowly recreating their IDEs
       | from scratch in Fleet while continuing development on the
       | IntelliJ Platform and related IDEs, doing twice as much work for
       | nothing.
        
         | gf000 wrote:
         | I believe they are heavily reusing the non-UI part of Intellij
         | and the like, so it's not really 2x the development.
        
           | vips7L wrote:
           | Yeah I think they're just trying to get out of Swing by
           | developing a new ui, Swing isn't that fun to develop.
        
             | tadfisher wrote:
             | Unfortunately they started building Fleet before Compose
             | Multiplatform was ready, so now they support three UI
             | technologies. Granted, Fleet uses the same rendering base
             | as Compose (Skiko), but that's got to be a dead end
             | ultimately.
        
           | ashu1461 wrote:
           | Usually Intellij products are slow and fleet does not seem to
           | be slow, so it is feels likely a lot of code was rewritten to
           | make it fast.
        
             | sfn42 wrote:
             | I don't think they're slow at all. Takes a while to index
             | when opening a new project, then everything is snappy.
             | 
             | My main reason for using JB is I loathe the shitty build
             | your own ide experience of VSC. Everything is more
             | difficult, whereas in JB everything just works.
        
         | solardev wrote:
         | I think Fleet's their hopeful answer to VSCode. IntelliJ is
         | powerful, but so, so messy, with a convoluted UI from the
         | 90s/2000s. Even the simplified one is much klunklier than
         | VSCode, especially for everyday/every-hour tasks like NPM
         | scripts, debugging, etc. Every essential function is hidden in
         | tiny competing side panels triggered by some obscure icon in a
         | different part of the screen.
         | 
         | I love and use Jetbrains IDEs every day, but after a decade I
         | still only find their UIs merely tolerable. Many of my
         | colleagues try them out for an hour or two and then jump ship
         | back to VSCode just because the initial "wtf is going on"
         | factor is so high =/
         | 
         | I'm guessing Fleet was their answer, an opportunity to develop
         | a greenfield UI for a new generation of devs raised with UX (vs
         | the old guard of IntelliJ users from past decades). It made
         | sense, until AI suddenly took over everything and nobody cared
         | what your IDE UI is like anymore.
        
           | nprateem wrote:
           | Please don't post flamebait. Jetbrains seem intent on dumbing
           | down their UI as much as possible so we have to hunt through
           | useless hamburger menus instead of just looking in pinned
           | panels, etc.
        
             | MattPalmer1086 wrote:
             | I see no flamebait. Your own post is much more flamebaity.
        
           | homebrewer wrote:
           | You forgot to add "IMHO". IDEA has fantastic UI, it's fully
           | configurable and 100% usable through pre-assigned hotkeys.
           | For example, fuzzy search is available _everywhere_ , in
           | every tool window, in the database window, in search results,
           | etc. The same key combination (ctrl+alt+arrow up/down on my
           | instance) can be used to jump between search results, symbol
           | usages, TODOs, linter results, and so on. They thought
           | through and implemented countless convenient features, most
           | of which I will not be able to remember, but do use every day
           | purely through muscle memory.
           | 
           | They're also now intent on destroying them in favor of the
           | "new" primitive UI by trying to cater to new users (who are
           | seemingly fine with never becoming power users). The good UI
           | is still available through a plugin, but it's obvious it will
           | be dropped in the next few years. I'm pretty sure they will
           | lose the old guard like me right after that.
        
             | tommica wrote:
             | Yep, I'm glad for their "Classic UI" plugin - I really
             | dislike working with the new one, it's too VSCody for my
             | liking.
        
             | solardev wrote:
             | I mean, I did start the post with an "I think"... it's
             | pretty clearly an opinion, no?
             | 
             | I also don't think that's some obscure hypothesis on my
             | part. It was just the zeitgeist at the time Fleet first
             | came out (https://developers.slashdot.org/story/21/12/04/16
             | 55249/jetbr...)... seemed obvious that it was to counter
             | VSCode. Fleet's own homepage says "We envisioned Fleet as a
             | coding tool with a clear minimalist design that doesn't
             | overwhelm and helps keep you focused."
             | 
             | I'm not trying to convince anyone that one look & feel is
             | better than another, just point out that there IS a
             | generational divide (my guess) or at least a divide (of
             | SOME sort) between those who prefer dense UIs and those who
             | prefer simpler ones. My younger coworkers especially seem
             | to struggle with the full-blown IntelliJ - it's just a
             | trend I noticed, not some deep scholarly analysis. It's
             | part of a generational fashion trend towards more
             | whitespace and less information density.
             | 
             | Jetbrains already risked quite a flame war when they
             | launched the "simplified UI" for IntelliJ, to a very mixed
             | love-it-or-hate-it reception. They realized they couldn't
             | change the existing UI too much without alienating some %
             | of their existing users. So Fleet was a way to instead make
             | an alternative, sharing some of the same backend but with a
             | different enough UI for those who want it.
             | 
             | I doubt it's ever going to replace the traditional IntelliJ
             | UI, especially now that they're refocusing efforts on AI
             | stuff instead of minimalist UIs.
        
             | johnisgood wrote:
             | > They're also now intent on destroying them in favor of
             | the "new" primitive UI by trying to cater to new users (who
             | are seemingly fine with never becoming power users).
             | 
             | I am a power user of my tools. It is sad when a tool gets
             | simplified and have configurations deleted, it is like
             | getting rid of "Advanced" option, essentially.
        
             | graypegg wrote:
             | Genuine question, what are you missing from the old UI? I
             | am still maybe not a "fan" of the new UI, but I've since
             | gotten pretty proficient with it and I genuinely can't
             | think of anything that's impeding me. I think the general
             | information density dropped somewhat, but a lot of the old
             | UI was noise. I don't need a big file path taking up 60% of
             | the top toolbar. Nor a default Jetbrains space logo just
             | sitting there. Why do I need a disabled stop button when no
             | task/debug job is running? The old VCS tools were quick to
             | access but it was also just 3 arrows next to the word
             | "GIT:". That's a bit clunky and hard to click isn't it? And
             | it's not like I need to optimize milliseconds on "updating
             | this branch". It happens a lot but opening a menu is the
             | same amount of effort while not requiring close hit
             | targets. No matter your muscle memory, you'll nudge 16px
             | over every once in a while. (<shiftshift> pull <return>
             | also being my preferred way to pull/any VCS action anyway,
             | so the point is moot)
             | 
             | Maybe my one main complaint is the side panes. I still
             | loathe the hieroglyphic buttons. I would love a return to
             | the sensible vertical text labels... but even then I
             | realize I never change the order of those panes, so it's
             | not like I'm ever unsure of which pane is which at this
             | point.
             | 
             | It feels... perfectly cromulent. I don't really care at
             | this point, if it helps new folks use IDEA IDEs, cool.
             | Doesn't affect my life at all now. And that's coming from
             | someone that does actually use the useful features of an
             | IDE, and has been for a long time.
        
               | phreack wrote:
               | Honestly the hieroglyphic buttons are a deal breaker for
               | me. It's just a cognitive load I can't overcome without
               | frustration. The vertical labels were just perfect and
               | Jetbrains actively ignores feedback on that. On a second
               | place, not having bottom toolbars anymore is such a
               | downgrade! I would use it to have a convenient console at
               | hand constantly. I did use the Git buttons constantly,
               | and now it's either hard or impossible to customize some
               | buttons, plus they'll be hieroglyphical. And at the end,
               | I just don't like how there's less information like where
               | my file is located (as in, "which index.js was I looking
               | at?"), visual separators marking button borders and tab
               | borders are now gone, and so on.
               | 
               | Now, there's the classic plugin but it's got an
               | expiration date. I also could get used to all of this,
               | and I did, I migrated to VSCode. It has a surprising (yet
               | hilariously complex) amount of theming options and I got
               | the contrast to previous JB defaults. Because Jetbrains'
               | communication has been just awful throughout this change
               | these past couple of years, I just don't trust them
               | anymore to not destroy my workflow on a whim, it's a
               | portent of enshittification.
        
               | graypegg wrote:
               | The bottom toolbar... is something I didn't consider
               | actually. Also agree with you on that. That removed a
               | whole layout option. (Split bottom left/right, OR open a
               | wide bottom pane. Now all panes need to be splits.)
        
               | DecentShoes wrote:
               | I despise the trend of removing text labels for icons.
               | It's bad design, everyone knows it's bad design, Windows
               | 11 is full of this mistake, but one company did it and I
               | guess now everyone has to do it.
        
               | speleding wrote:
               | I too missed the old VCS tools in the new UI. But it was
               | 10 minutes work to get them back in the toolbar, along
               | with a few other things I missed (and that setting syncs
               | to my JetBrains account, so new installs get that same
               | modification).
               | 
               | I get trying to be minimalist but the VCS icons are
               | really useful because they also convey if something has
               | not been pushed / pulled yet.
        
             | vr46 wrote:
             | I literally did not renew last month after twelve years of
             | paying, and longer overall, and the UI was the last straw.
             | I installed the "classic" UI plugin, but it's like you say,
             | I know they're going to drop it. I figured that if I have
             | to use a UI like their new one then I can use VSCode as
             | well, there's no real reason to stay. The real cutting edge
             | stuff is happening over at VSCode anyway. Plus Jetbrains
             | never made a decent VCS interface and I can always use an
             | older version with a permanent fallback licence.
        
             | coldtea wrote:
             | > _You forgot to add "IMHO"_
             | 
             | But also objectively.
        
             | joseda-hg wrote:
             | I don't know, being uber configurable isn't necessarily
             | what you want when you're not familiar with a tool and you
             | don't know yet what you need to configure or faff with
             | 
             | I've only recently started using JetBrains, so I'm only
             | familiar with the new UI but I distinctly feel like I don't
             | know what I'm missing on extra functions because I'm just
             | not aware of it existing
        
             | nsonha wrote:
             | VSCode can do all of that, and for most languages,
             | VSCode's/OSS LSPs are often more performant/feature rich
             | than whatever running inside IDea that takes tens of
             | minutes to index a project in my computer.
             | 
             | Who should I take seriously now? The "power users" who
             | claim that vim with lsp and terminal is the way, or the
             | "power users" who claim that bloated UIs is the way?
             | 
             | As far as I am concerned, "power users" only really need
             | the functionality to be there and accessible with a command
             | palette, do away with "power users" panels and buttons
             | please.
        
               | indexedcosmoks wrote:
               | >VSCode's/OSS LSPs are often more performant/feature rich
               | than whatever running inside IDea that takes tens of
               | minutes to index a project in my computer.
               | 
               | Typically if this happens I notice IDEA is indexing the
               | entire dependency tree for something like node or python.
               | It'll have an understanding of everything but is much
               | slower to index and typically not needed. If you exclude
               | node_modules you'll have very fast time once again
        
             | DecentShoes wrote:
             | You also didn't add "IMHO".
        
           | brandonmenc wrote:
           | > with a convoluted UI from the 90s/2000s
           | 
           | Some of us love this UI.
        
             | sureIy wrote:
             | But those of you will be retiring soon, hence "Fleet for
             | the new generation"
        
               | sunaookami wrote:
               | Not OP, but I'm not even 30 and heavily dislike the new
               | UI.
        
               | MortyWaves wrote:
               | What would HN be without the agism and nasty remarks that
               | somehow are always initiated by colour and theme
               | preferences.
               | 
               | Grow up.
        
           | doctorpangloss wrote:
           | > Many of my colleagues try them out for an hour or two and
           | then jump ship back to VSCode just because the initial "wtf
           | is going on" factor is so high
           | 
           | People who get hung up on the aesthetics of their IDEs are
           | going to have other problems with programming generally.
        
           | grogenaut wrote:
           | I'm the opposite, vs code feels so clunky to me and full of
           | crappy bolted on low and mid quality plugins. Yes it's lower
           | barrier to entry on making things and for editing configs but
           | the configs are opaque, hard to find. Odd for microsoft that
           | it's more of a linux mindset than windows. It feels so janky
           | setting up run configurations or test runs.
        
             | MortyWaves wrote:
             | Not to mention it hardly seems to support simply running
             | things from package.json script section when doing JS
             | stuff. Every time I try it seems to never quite work, or is
             | very clunky and obtuse, sometimes requiring the creation of
             | new files (???) to do it.
             | 
             | Compare that with the other main IDE I use, Visual Studio.
             | It works great.
        
             | coldtea wrote:
             | > _full of crappy bolted on low and mid quality plugins_
             | 
             | That's on you. What it comes with is great. And there's a
             | huge selection of good third party plugins if one takes
             | attention to what they install.
        
             | phreack wrote:
             | I think how awful making run configurations is, is the one
             | worst aspect of VSCode. tasks.json? launch.json? I just
             | want the "run" button to run a custom build command and I
             | could just not figure it out.
        
           | cosmic_cheese wrote:
           | I feel similarly about IntelliJ IDEs as someone primarily
           | coming from Xcode.
           | 
           | Xcode has its own share of weaknesses, don't get me wrong.
           | It's just that I'm irritated more frequently by quirks of
           | IntelliJ IDEs like how the sidebar palettes work in a way
           | that they're constantly at battle with each other and how
           | super simple considerations like per-editor-pane
           | back/forward/history are missing. They sometimes feel like
           | they trip over the basics in pursuit of fancy gizmos.
        
           | b_e_n_t_o_n wrote:
           | My only problem with jetbrains UI is that it's slow. Night
           | and day difference using even vscode, let alone vim, sublime,
           | helix, zed, etc. I tolerate it because the functionality it
           | brings, but I find myself actually _writing_ code in
           | something faster. And I don 't see fleet improving on this in
           | a meaningful way - it's basically a competitor to vscode,
           | which I don't use for the same reasons I won't use fleet.
           | 
           | There is a whole nother discussion about "progressive
           | discovery" of functionality which I think is actually wrong
           | although that would be a fringe view among "UX" specialists.
        
             | nmfisher wrote:
             | Exactly this. Every time I revisit a Jetbrains product, I
             | uninstall it within 5 minutes. It doesn't matter how great
             | the features are, it's just sluggish.
             | 
             | People can rag on Electron apps all they like, but VSCode
             | on modern hardware is very snappy. Jetbrains is a
             | noticeable downgrade.
        
               | winrid wrote:
               | Weird. None of my PCs have cpus made after 2018. After
               | the initial indexing, things are fast. I guess that's
               | what you're running into on startup.
        
               | indexedcosmoks wrote:
               | There are still things like opening a menu somewhere that
               | has a random worst case latency of ~2 seconds for me. It
               | feels random and is frustrating, but not quite enough
               | where I'd consider learning to use something else
        
               | winrid wrote:
               | interesting, what menu? Just curious if I have gotten
               | used to it. My desktop is a 2700x and my laptop is an 8th
               | gen i7, hardly competitive nowadays. I usually have 3-6
               | IDE windows open. I think sometimes resolving TS types in
               | Webstorm can take a few seconds after some changes.
               | 
               | It's not Sublime Text fast, for sure.
        
               | pjmlp wrote:
               | Just use Eclipse or Netbeans instead, I never liked
               | InteliJ for Java development due to its continuous
               | indexing, errors have to be explicilty asked for, and the
               | ten finger combos for shortcuts.
               | 
               | VSCode is anyway running either Netbeans or Eclipse
               | headless for its Java support, better use the real deal.
        
             | anonzzzies wrote:
             | Yep, same here. I just uninstall because it's unusable
             | compared to vscode/vim/emacs/zed for the same jobs. And I
             | have a new-ish macbook pro. I always hear people say they
             | have a different experience, but, like with so many things
             | in life, that always seems not true when I sit next to
             | them; then it is just them being used to sluggish misery as
             | the normal.
        
             | rhubarbtree wrote:
             | No complaints on my MacBook Air M2. What machine are you
             | on?
             | 
             | It's definitely not as fast to load etc as say sublime, but
             | it's an IDE not an editor.
        
               | mavamaarten wrote:
               | Well.. I'm running it on an M3 and it can be truly slow.
               | Not always! But opening up a package inside a multi-
               | module Kotlin project can literally take 10 seconds.
               | Which isn't much seeing how great of an IDE it is and how
               | much time it saves because it is so powerful. But it's
               | heavy alright. Every time I see new features I don't
               | really use, I wish they would invest in trimming fat
               | instead.
        
               | mike_hearn wrote:
               | There's something really not right there. Right click the
               | bottom right status bar area, enable memory monitor and
               | ensure you aren't running out of RAM or something. I use
               | IntelliJ on an old Intel MacBook with a large Kotlin
               | project and its performance is good. I never have to wait
               | ten seconds for something like that. It sounds like you
               | may have some old flag that's limiting its heap size or
               | pushing it into GC thrashing or something. Definitely
               | look at the IDE logs and see if you can track it down.
        
             | cardanome wrote:
             | I actually use Jetbrains products because of the
             | performance.
             | 
             | Sure indexing a new project takes a while and things will
             | be sluggish at first but once it done, it works great. And
             | you can easily edit huge files, like seriously huge files
             | without problems, even the search will work smoothly.
             | Basically the Java school of performance, absolute
             | resources hog but scales very well.
             | 
             | For me vscode is intolerably slow. Sure it starts up
             | quickly but the editing experience is absolutely
             | infuriating. I had projects that I could not work with in
             | vscode because a few thousand lines of code in a file were
             | already too much for it.
        
             | juped wrote:
             | Slow? Jetbrains IDEs, slow? Compared to, of all things, the
             | LSP-reliant VS Code?
             | 
             | I pay for them primarily to save me from LSP, which they do
             | for many languages, though the Elixir plugin is not _by_
             | Jetbrains (but it actually predates LSP itself).
        
           | brundolf wrote:
           | My main barrier to IDEA is actually performance. Despite
           | people's complaints about electron apps, VSCode is viscerally
           | snappier in all the little interactions. I tried to switch to
           | IDEA for the powerful features, but it always felt like mud
           | 
           | I haven't tried Fleet but that could be part of it
        
             | Aeolun wrote:
             | I thought fleet would be that snappy alternative, but then,
             | in a fit of insanity, they decided to outsource all the
             | actual non-render logic to the IDEA engine, and the whole
             | thing was dead on arrival for me.
             | 
             | Now I use Zed, which seems to be what Fleet should have
             | been.
        
           | noodletheworld wrote:
           | > Many of my colleagues try them out for an hour or two and
           | then jump ship back to VSCode just because the initial "wtf
           | is going on" factor is so high =/
           | 
           | Really?
           | 
           | I mean, the UIs are basically the same now. I have them open
           | side by side on my desktop _right now_ and they 're both:
           | 
           | - black boxes with a panel on the left of icons, then a tree
           | of files, then a tabbed pane of open files.
           | 
           | - clicking on the icons on the left opens some obscure
           | subwindow depending on you magically knowing what the icon
           | means.
           | 
           | The only meaningful difference is that in vscode there's a
           | command palette at the top where you can type in random stuff
           | and get a list of actions, and in intellij you have to 'know'
           | that the shortcut for that is 'press shift 3 times' instead
           | of 'shift control p'
           | 
           | ...but I mean, _thats it_ ; they're otherwise pretty much
           | identical, practically.
           | 
           | Honestly, anyone who opens intellij and then goes back to
           | vscode because its _too different_ is a numpty.
           | 
           | Things work differently, and people don't like different
           | things, and if they go back because it was _different_ or the
           | _shortcuts_ are different, that 's fair. It is disruptive.
           | 
           | ...but, because the 'wtf is going on' factor is too high?
           | Realllllllly? What does that even mean?
           | 
           | Come on. They're not that different. If clicking on 'run' on
           | the top right instead of on the left bar is too 'wtf', you
           | really haven't made a real effort to try using the other IDE.
           | 
           | (The same goes for old school intellij users who try vscode
           | and then run away. Give it a decent shot before you walk away
           | because it's too hard if the only hard thing is your keyboard
           | shortcut muscle memory... vscode is pretty great)
           | 
           | You only really see the deep differences when you use them
           | extensively for things like refactoring and debugging.
        
             | charrondev wrote:
             | On the topic of keyboard shortcuts I use both IntelliJ IDEs
             | and VSCode every day.
             | 
             | IntelliJ ships a "VSCode" keymap in the product that you
             | can switch to with one option in the settings.
        
               | DangitBobby wrote:
               | VSCode also has a plugin for IntelliJ keybindings FWIW.
        
           | MortyWaves wrote:
           | I've been trying DataGrip for SQL stuff after Azure Data
           | Studio (a closed source fork of VS Code) was recently
           | deprecated.
           | 
           | It has all the same UI problems I remember of their other
           | IDEs like WebStorm. Clunky and weird looking, and that's
           | coming from someone that appreciates generally Windows 9x
           | style controls and palette, JetBrains just can't get it
           | right.
           | 
           | As a side note one of the advertised features of DataGrip is
           | its AI/LLM features which I thought was kind of cool after
           | dealing with a terribly designed and legacy database; LLMs
           | have really helped with refactoring.
           | 
           | So once I got a license for DataGrip and then opened it the
           | AI tool was no where to be seen. I had to go read the docs
           | page online to find out I have to install the extension
           | myself. Weird.
           | 
           | The advertised AI feature is... behind another paywall with a
           | seven day trial. Hang on, I just got DataGrip for its
           | "included" AI support and you want to charge me for it
           | anyway?
           | 
           | I'm glad I got the license for free via their OSS support,
           | but would I have bothered if I knew one of the main features
           | is actually a separate paid feature? Probably not.
        
             | conradfr wrote:
             | I mean adding AI without changing the IDE price would not
             | make to much sense, financially.
             | 
             | I would have love it though ;)
        
             | joseda-hg wrote:
             | Ostensibly it's not one of the main features, Datagrip as a
             | product has been a thing long before AI integration was
             | even a thought
        
               | MortyWaves wrote:
               | It's absolutely front and center of its marketing page.
        
         | konradkissener wrote:
         | I don't understand it either. I don't think it appeals to many
         | VS Code users, and to IntelliJ users probably even less so.
         | 
         | KMP support was the only reason I was still curious about
         | Fleet. I presume this announcement is the beginning of the end
         | for Fleet.
        
           | sureIy wrote:
           | It definitely appeals VSC users like VSC appealed to Sublime
           | Text.
           | 
           | There was really no reason for ST users to switch to VSC
           | other than better tool integration.
           | 
           | Winning people over from VSC means having a free and fast
           | editor with great features and lots of useful plugins. Still
           | a long way to go.
        
         | vunderba wrote:
         | Personally I had always hoped that Fleet was intended to be
         | sort of a lightweight editor in the same arena as notepad++ or
         | sublime.
        
         | whoisthemachine wrote:
         | In my opinion it seems like an experimental competitor to VS
         | Code while also giving them a way to dog food new Java-based UI
         | frameworks (KMP, Compose).
        
           | NoahKAndrews wrote:
           | Except it doesn't use Compose, it uses its own new thing that
           | sounds kind of similar, but predates Compose Desktop.
        
             | whoisthemachine wrote:
             | Interesting! Would be curious to know what that is like.
        
         | vinayan3 wrote:
         | I've been hoping that Fleet would emerge as a true multi
         | language IDE. I code in GoLang and Python regularly. I
         | currently have the Python plugin in Goland which is not the
         | professional plugin. If I want them I have to use a different
         | IDE and switching back and forth is a pain.
         | 
         | Also, with a rewrite I've hoped that remote development will be
         | less buggy than it currently is with Goland. It's laggy too and
         | you see weird screen flashes. Sometimes certain features don't
         | even work over remote.
        
           | solardev wrote:
           | Can you not use IntelliJ IDEA (the Java one) with the Python
           | and Go plugins?
        
             | danw1979 wrote:
             | yes you can, but only the paid for Ultimate edition if you
             | want the Golang plugin.
        
             | vinayan3 wrote:
             | Yes I tried this for awhile but I hit some very odd issue
             | with the bazel plugin and the codebase I work on. It went
             | away when I switched to Goland.
             | 
             | I haven't tried again to see if newer versions have fixed
             | the issue.
        
         | pantulis wrote:
         | > I still don't understand where Jetbrains is going with Fleet.
         | Is it a platform to prototype ideas for their IDEs? Is their
         | long-term goal to replace their IDEs with Fleet? Is it just a
         | standalone product?
         | 
         | They don't necessarily need to exactly _know_ what it is,
         | perhaps is just Jetbrains hedging their bets.
        
         | root3 wrote:
         | "doing twice as much work for nothing" - it's precisely right
        
         | alde wrote:
         | I talked to a Jetbrains representative at a conference about
         | this. They said Fleet was/is an experiment in the realtime
         | collaboration tech, which really bloomed during Covid. They
         | said it is no longer seen as a good direction internally, so
         | not to expect much.
         | 
         | Maybe things have changed since then, no idea.
        
           | giancarlostoro wrote:
           | That's a shame to hear, I really would love something like
           | Fleet from them where I dont have to install the umpteenth
           | IDE flavor, or use one of their plugins with an IDE built
           | around something else entirely.
        
       | codingwagie wrote:
       | Personal opinion is that JetBrains products have gone down hill
       | the last few years. Tons of memory leaks and performance issues.
       | They are also way behind on the AI front, borderline obsolete in
       | some areas. This is coming from someone who has used jetbrains
       | daily for over a decade
        
         | realityfactchex wrote:
         | What would you suggested instead of JetBrains tools for AI-
         | assisted development?
         | 
         | (I don't just want to hear what everyone says; I specifically I
         | want to hear what JetBrains lovers think about this.)
         | 
         | I was about to go all in on JetBrains becaue I can't stand
         | VSCode, and about to transition from ChatGPT only to trying out
         | in-IDE integrations... but if there's a better thing to try
         | first... all ears.
        
           | surrTurr wrote:
           | JetBrains is WAY behind VS-Code and its forks (e.g. Cursor)
           | in terms of AI features.
           | 
           | Their own offering, "Jetbrains AI" absolutely SUCKS (just
           | read the reviews, you'll see why).
           | 
           | Third-party AI plugins are pretty basic. Most just offer
           | inline completions and a chat sidebar. For example, GitHub
           | Copilot for Intellij is a shell of itself: No agent
           | capabilities, or even model switching (although that seems to
           | be coming in a future update).
           | 
           | Generally speaking, Jetbrains seems to have missed the AI
           | code editor revolution, and are now trying to play catch-up.
           | The problem is that their plugin API seems to offer less
           | capabilities than VS-Code when it comes to implementing
           | advanced AI features (think of cursor like features). This,
           | combined with the fact that Intellij products are closed
           | source and can't simply be forked by someone who requires
           | additional capabilities, makes it hard for third parties to
           | build advanced AI features.
           | 
           | PS: I also tested their new "Agent" plugin called Junie
           | (invite only beta). It's really basic (like 30% as good as
           | cursors agent mode), but since it's still in invite only beta
           | this should be taken with a grain of salt.
        
             | kuschku wrote:
             | > This, combined with the fact that Intellij products are
             | closed source and can't simply be forked by someone who
             | requires additional capabilities
             | 
             | https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community is Apache
             | 2.0
             | 
             | Only some of the language plugins are proprietary.
        
             | jeroenhd wrote:
             | > Most just offer inline completions and a chat sidebar
             | 
             | As someone who doesn't use AI all that much: what else does
             | an IDE need besides an inline prompt and a ChatGPT window
             | to the side? I've played around with the continue.dev
             | plugin and I can't think of anything else I'd want out of
             | AI assistants with the quality they're at at the moment.
             | 
             | > GitHub Copilot for Intellij is a shell of itself
             | 
             | That's on Github, to be honest. And to be expected. It
             | doesn't make much sense for Microsoft to fund a plugin for
             | a competitor's IDE when they already have their own IDEs to
             | sell.
             | 
             | > Intellij products are closed source
             | 
             | They follow the same protocol Microsoft uses: the core is
             | open, but some language plugin features are proprietary.
             | For Microsoft, the proprietary part is just the C# debugger
             | at this point, whereas IntellJ has a whole bunch of paid-
             | for plugins that are closed-source. Still, you can fork the
             | community edition of IntelliJ should you wish.
        
           | nprateem wrote:
           | Aider. Just add the files you need in the terminal, disable
           | git autocommit and you're done. Tell it to do something then
           | check the diff.
        
           | vunderba wrote:
           | I would highly suggest using the jetbrains plug-in
           | "continue". It's BYOK or you can connect it to Ollama.
           | Supports refactoring, inline, RAG, chat, etc.
           | 
           | https://github.com/continuedev/continue
        
             | KronisLV wrote:
             | I rather like the idea behind Continue.dev, especially when
             | I have Ollama with some larger models running on a server
             | somewhere.
             | 
             | However, I have to say that it's a bit buggy, some things
             | like running together with the SonarQube plugin breaks it,
             | other times UI elements for keyboard shortcuts just hang
             | around on the screen when they shouldn't be
             | visible/present. There's a good deal of stuff in their
             | issue tracker: https://github.com/continuedev/continue/issu
             | es?q=is%3Aissue%...
             | 
             | That said, I had a pretty good experience with the GitHub
             | Copilot plugin, as long as you're willing to pay for it.
        
           | timrichard wrote:
           | I've been using Jetbrains IDEs for quite some time. I
           | currently use IntelliJ and Cursor together. Cursor is
           | everything I hoped Jetbains AI would be. The TypeScript
           | support in VSCode and derivatives (like Cursor) is great,
           | unlike Jetbrains. As I already have a license, I switch to
           | IntelliJ for the fantastic Git and DB plugins, as well as the
           | great refactoring and find/replace features. Local History
           | and diffing in Jetbrains is also far superior, so sometimes I
           | use history labels as snapshots in between significant
           | changes from Cursor.
           | 
           | If you're transitioning from ChatGPT pastes to an IDE
           | integration, I would recommend a trial of Cursor. They have
           | acquired SuperMaven, and the autocomplete feature is mostly
           | appropriate and useful. I think the chat-diff-review-apply
           | workflow really tightens and accelerates the feedback loop,
           | as well as the ability to submit an error from the terminal
           | to the chat session with a single click. People say good
           | things about the Compose and Agent features, but I haven't so
           | far been drawn to them to explore.
        
           | insane_dreamer wrote:
           | I use the PyCharm CoPilot plugin. Works great. Can't comment
           | on how good the CoPilot model is vs say Claude or ChatGPT,
           | but it seems decent for what I use it for (autocomplete,
           | small snippets, stuff that I'd look up in the docs or SO,
           | etc.)
        
         | endofreach wrote:
         | Interesting. I have had the opposite experience. And i am happy
         | that they're behind on the AI front.
         | 
         | Way too many tools force their shitty AI (API wrapper) upon me
         | already. And i have yet to see any benefit.
        
           | laerus wrote:
           | Agreed, RustRover is by far the best IDE for Rust atm. I also
           | use the AI Assistant which is so toned down that it's
           | actually useful and not full of spam.
        
             | lallysingh wrote:
             | RustRover and PyCharm keep my jetbrains subscription going.
             | The AI assistant on pandas APIs is a godsend.
        
         | ta988 wrote:
         | I have the exact opposite experience same thing almost a
         | decade. They were great then there was a phase of really bad
         | performance around 5-6y ago and in the last 3 years it has been
         | much better improving with each version. It is especially much
         | more reactive when indexing large projects or just navigating
         | them.
        
         | vunderba wrote:
         | Hard disagree. Pycharm, Datagrip, and Rider are absolutely top
         | notch applications.
         | 
         | And I would vastly prefer that they focus on robust IDE
         | features than yet another bunch of "Now with AI" crap duct
         | taped to their products.
        
           | ashu1461 wrote:
           | Most of the young crowd is very biased towards vs code
           | irrespective of the top notch features which intellij is
           | providing, so to win the game against vs code fleet becomes
           | critical.
        
             | dboreham wrote:
             | Very old here (used VC++ v1.0). VSCode user, exclusively
             | for the last 4 years.
        
         | the__alchemist wrote:
         | Agree on the performance, unfortunately. Even C+P operations in
         | RustRover are "too complex".
        
         | vr46 wrote:
         | Yeah, agreed, long time user, just let my sub lapse. I don't
         | like VSCode like I did IDEA but all the features are there, and
         | more, much more. The AI integration and choices (Cursor, Trae,
         | RooCode, Aide, Windsurf, PearAI, etc etc etc) are way better
         | and honestly take the place of a lot of stuff Jetbrains had an
         | advantage on. Also Jetbrains stuff is often not working or
         | unreliable - developing within Docker containers, for one, and
         | it keeps popping up with their shit AI assistant that you can't
         | disable. Honestly, what is this, Clippy and MS Office?
        
         | switch007 wrote:
         | Agreed. Used to be excited about new versions now it's "great,
         | what's going to be slow / broken" now
        
         | insane_dreamer wrote:
         | PyCharm with CoPilot plugin works well for me
        
         | martinsnow wrote:
         | I have the opposite experience. Intellij works well, fewer
         | crashes and no ai crap that gets in my way. Too many developers
         | rely on shitty ai crutches and you can easily snuff them out
         | because their code is shit.
        
         | oweiler wrote:
         | Performance is one problem, but much worse are the countless
         | bugs which plague the last releases.
        
       | toprerules wrote:
       | I'm a Vim user, but I occasionally try JetBrains/VSCode to see
       | what I'm missing out on and RustRover, CLion, Goland etc. are by
       | far the most sluggish pieces of software I've used. I am
       | demonstrably slower on them than using Vim with my fuzzy finder,
       | LSP, and AI integrations.
       | 
       | I thought Fleet might add the "magic" to something more VSCode
       | like, but I also don't understand the long term vision.
        
         | the__alchemist wrote:
         | Concur. I find that RustRover and PyCharm are outstanding in
         | terms of refactoring, introspection, and treating projects as
         | unified. But they are so slow. Lately, even copy+pasting may
         | take seconds or longer. This and other actions sometimes
         | terminate with an error about being too complex.
         | 
         | Can't I have both power, and responsiveness?
        
         | smittywerben wrote:
         | IntelliJ IDEA is their real product. Once you've added a
         | debugger, test runner, and decompiler then you're ready to
         | program Java.
        
           | sfn42 wrote:
           | Pretty sure IntelliJ comes with all those things?
           | 
           | That's why I use JB products. I download them, start them up
           | and that's it. I don't need any separate plugins, they just
           | work perfectly out of the box.
        
             | k4rli wrote:
             | Also probably part of the reason why they're so bloated.
             | IDEA with just a single mid-sized project can and will take
             | 10GB+ memory (simple java+gradle for spring or android).
             | Out of the box it has ~100 plugins installed, most of which
             | are useless for most people.
             | 
             | It does work well but it's often too much and uses even
             | more memory than vscodium.
        
               | sfn42 wrote:
               | Are you using the ram for something else? Would you
               | prefer to have 30 out of 32gb sitting unused?
               | 
               | Ram is cheap, I don't see why people complain that it's
               | being utilized. Doesn't bother me at all.
               | 
               | I haven't looked into it but I would assume you can
               | disable these unnecessary plugins if you don't want them?
        
               | toprerules wrote:
               | It sounds like your perception of how a computer works is
               | incredibly flawed. ram doesn't sit _unused_ , the kernel
               | uses it for caching and locality. The more RAM you give
               | the kernel, the more you can have resident in the slab
               | cache, the page cache, the filesystem cache, the network
               | backlog, etc. Even on very large machines with more RAM
               | than an average desktop, the kernel can still make use of
               | almost all of it.
               | 
               | I work on efficiency so when people say things like "it's
               | ok for my IDE to be an inefficient pile of garbage that
               | locks up resources" it makes me wonder what kind of
               | program they are producing.
        
               | sfn42 wrote:
               | I didn't say it's an inefficient pile of garbage. It's
               | obviously making use of the memory in order to provide
               | information and quick navigation etc.
               | 
               | My computer works completely fine while I have multiple
               | jetbrains ides and browser windows, Docker etc running.
               | 
               | So maybe your perception is the one that's flawed. I know
               | for a fact that my computer can handle it, but it seems
               | like you mistakenly believe that it can't?
        
               | mike_hearn wrote:
               | You're both right. The issue here is that both the JVM
               | and the kernel use algorithms that can use all your RAM
               | to speed things up, and there's no good way to know which
               | side should 'win' (to get the best performance).
               | 
               | Historically the JVM will happily use all your RAM even
               | if it doesn't need to, because that reduces the amount of
               | GC work required which increases CPU time available to
               | the IDE for analysis and other tasks. It can be told
               | there's a limits, in which case it'll spend more time
               | GCing to stay under it.
               | 
               | Modern JVMs changed this old default and will wait until
               | the app is idle then start reclaiming memory and
               | releasing it back to the OS. I guess it depends what you
               | mean by "mid sized" but 10GB is quite a bit. It'd be
               | worth checking that everything is running on a recent
               | JVM. Gradle in particular can be a hog if you run it on
               | old JVMs.
        
               | sfn42 wrote:
               | I use Rider for .Net and WebStorm for JS. Before I left
               | work I checked, with our small/medium sized project each
               | of them were using a little under 2gb according to
               | windows Task Manager. Adding in some other related
               | processes I'd estimate the two combined might be using
               | 5-6gb in total. So I have at least 26gb left over.
               | 
               | To quote Lord Farquaad: That is a sacrifice I am willing
               | to make
        
         | nobleach wrote:
         | Same. Although I haven't tried VSCode in a lot of years. I did
         | at one time have it set up to emulate vim quite well. I used it
         | as a daily driver for over 6 months. It would puke the bed at
         | least once a day, reseting the theme, losing all keyboard
         | shortcuts. I'd restart it and go on my merry way.
         | 
         | I keep my Kotlin LSP for NeoVim up to date but it's just not a
         | great experience. I often have to open IntelliJ to sort out
         | import issues. The entire Java community is built on "don't
         | worry about knowing where your imports are coming from, your
         | IDE will do that magic for you". So much is this the case, that
         | the first Manning Kotlin book even said it. Because of this, I
         | was eager to give Fleet a shot. My impression was, "you won't
         | build an LSP because you're afraid of losing revenue... but
         | you'll build this?" Ok. I guess that makes sense - keep people
         | on your playground.
         | 
         | I sure do LOVE Kotlin as a language. But telling me I have to
         | use your product to write it? I'd rather write Go... or even
         | Typescript at that point. Both of those have really nice
         | experiences in a simple text editor + LSP.
        
       | jakebasile wrote:
       | > In the past year, we've also observed significant advances in
       | terms of approaches to application development, an area that we
       | at JetBrains are also heavily investing in. Just recently, we
       | announced a new coding agent named Junie.
       | 
       | That agent must not be very helpful if it causes even the company
       | creating it to be able to support less products.
        
       | Apocryphon wrote:
       | I am reminded of this comment made only two days ago about the
       | deficiencies of the similar Kotlin Native project:
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42989406
        
       | ashu1461 wrote:
       | I wish Jet brains would give AI features for free for some time,
       | Github co pilot will be incompatible with fleet for some time and
       | even with other legacy jetbrain IDEs like webstorm / pycharm it
       | does not work very well. They always release features for vs code
       | first and then webstorm follows.
        
         | ternaryoperator wrote:
         | CoPilot has been working fairly well for me in GoLand. I don't
         | know if Copilot has the same or more support in Goland than in
         | Webstorm/Pycharm, so, if the latter, my observation might well
         | be disjoint from yours.
         | 
         | But so far, it's a moderately capable assistant. My biggest
         | complaints with it have more to do with its responses than its
         | fit with the IDE.
        
           | ashu1461 wrote:
           | Have you tried co pilot with vs code ?
        
           | FrozenSynapse wrote:
           | Copilot in VS Code has model options, the new agent is
           | available in VSC Insiders that will implement full features
           | and show it's changes in a diff viewer. Jetbrain IDEs don't
           | have the option to change models
        
             | gkedzierski wrote:
             | And their default model is pretty bad in JS/TS world. (but
             | great in C#) Copilot works great for every language but the
             | plugin integration into JetBrains IDEs is not as deep.
        
         | TiredOfLife wrote:
         | Jetbrains ides have free local only full line completion
        
         | jeroenhd wrote:
         | The CPU-based one-line AI generated code is available without a
         | subscription. I'd love for Jetbrains to make a slightly-
         | upgraded version that runs on the GPU instead, but the single-
         | line suggestions work fine for me.
         | 
         | I don't think it makes sense for something as compute intense
         | as cloud LLM code generation to be made available for free. I
         | do wish I'd have the ability to connect IntelliJ to a local LLM
         | instance without having to bother with custom plugins or
         | Ollama, though. They're supposedly working on a locally-hosted
         | LLM integration, but that'll be locked behind a subscription as
         | well.
        
       | jockm wrote:
       | I just wish they would finaly fix KMP on Linux aarch64. It's been
       | years now
        
         | jockm wrote:
         | Correction I meant Kotlin Native, my bad
        
       | koakuma-chan wrote:
       | I forgot Fleet existed.
        
       | krick wrote:
       | Most comments here either praise IDEA-variants as "outstanding",
       | or blame it for being "slow and complicated", both of which feel
       | odd to me (especially the first one). I strongly prefer JetBrains
       | products over anything else, so if it's possible to use PyCharm,
       | I will use PyCharm instead of Vim/VSCode. Yet I cannot imagine
       | calling it outstanding. Maybe, that's just my bad character
       | overall, but I just am surprised why is it that all IDEs/code
       | editors suck so much. About 5 years ago, when LSP appeared
       | (introduced by VSCode IIRC), many people predicted that soon they
       | will far surpass IDEA's (and the likes) autocompletion, etc. And
       | honestly, I believed them. Why wouldn't it? It seems like a
       | simple task, once you have generic LSP functionality, the rest
       | should be "just details", like finding/making good data source
       | for particular language/lib/etc.
       | 
       | And all that JetBrains IDEs do, _feels_ to me like a pretty
       | simple stuff. Like all these refactoring options (pretty much the
       | main reason why I prefer their IDEs over simpler editors, it
       | feels like a natural extension of Vim keybindings: why should I
       | do anything as simple as extracting a method manually?), it seems
       | like a thing that should be easily scriptable once you have
       | powerful code-editing API, so I feel annoyed by the fact they are
       | pretty much  "hard-coded" into IDE and I cannot easily add a
       | couple of my own simple refactorings. BTW, they didn't really
       | change over the last 5 years or so. Some bugs get fixed, static
       | code analysis gets smarter and more specialized for a current
       | version of some language, but nothing that would feel like real
       | progress. It's hundreds of tiny distinct things, and it seems
       | like that would progress much faster, if all these things were
       | open-source plugins. As people predicted, when LSP came about.
       | Yet apparently it doesn't, because as imperfect PyCharm is,
       | VSCode cannot do even as much.
       | 
       | So, basically, what distinguishes IDEA from anything else seem
       | like super simple things, and it seems weird that for it it must
       | compromise to use that clunky, configurable via UI (instead of
       | neat JSON/TOML/whatever), memory-hungry IDE. And it still puzzles
       | me. Of course, if it seems so simple, it's fair to ask why I
       | didn't make my own yet. Well, yes, I didn't even look into it.
       | But I just cannot understand, what's the hard problem that
       | community struggles to solve, why all opensource or semi-
       | opensource editors didn't leave clunky "traditioinal IDEs" far
       | behind yet with regard to these core function, even though it
       | seems those traditional IDEs haven't evolved for years?
        
         | jeroenhd wrote:
         | > I cannot easily add a couple of my own simple refactorings
         | 
         | While this isn't as powerful as the full plugin API, there is
         | Edit > Find > Replace Structurally which can be used to write
         | some pretty complex code alterations, and you can save/load
         | templates to reuse them later.
         | 
         | IMO Jetbrains IDEs are the best IDEs. That doesn't make them
         | amazing or great or outstanding. They have their bugs, their
         | resource leaks, and sometimes just plain weird design
         | decisions, but they're ahead of the competition by a long shot
         | for many programming languages. Other IDEs can match what
         | Jetbrains has to offer, but you have to install and configure
         | every feature yourself, while the Jetbrains stuff mostly comes
         | with batteries included.
        
         | mike_hearn wrote:
         | A lot of what you're talking about _is_ open source. Here 's
         | the extract method refactoring (Version 2):
         | 
         | https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community/tree/44a42be...
         | 
         | As you can see it's not that easy. At the core of an IDE is a
         | database that has to incrementally update itself based on real
         | time edits that can arbitrarily break the datasource (code)
         | that the database is modeling, often in highly confusing ways.
         | Refactorings often require sophisticated data analysis in order
         | to not break code themselves, they aren't simple at all.
         | 
         | The LSP architecture complicates things further by introducing
         | an asynchronous data structure synchronization problem between
         | frontend and backend. Jetbrain's architecture is conventional,
         | with analysis and UI running in-process. They can share data
         | directly and use locks for mutual exclusion. The downside of
         | this is that if locking isn't fine grained enough, or if the GC
         | causes stalls, you can get UI hitches and sluggishness. The
         | upside is that it's a pretty dramatic productivity upgrade
         | because you aren't solving all these hard distributed computing
         | problems that the LSP design introduces.
         | 
         | So the question becomes who solves their problems first?
         | Jetbrains and Oracle have done a ton of work in recent years on
         | solving these problems. Java GC pause times have been driven
         | down aggressively, now there are fully pauseless GCs available
         | although I don't know if IDEA uses them yet. GC pauses haven't
         | been visible for me in years at any rate. And Jetbrains have
         | done lots of work over time to reduce the amount of lock
         | contention that can cause UI stalls, to introduce limited
         | amounts of asynchronous replication within the process and so
         | on.
         | 
         | The thing is, when you're in-process you can use the same ideas
         | as in the LSP to reduce UI latency but to whatever extent makes
         | sense or is necessary in a specific context. Nothing stops you
         | tossing in an actor with a queue if you want that, or
         | introducing a lock if a UI stall is in fact preferable to the
         | alternatives (and sometimes it is). But you aren't bound to it
         | all the time. Whereas the LSP design with separate processes
         | and a hard address space separation doesn't allow that. To add
         | anything you need to extend the protocol and handle the
         | possibility of data skew between frontend and backend, which
         | introduces a lot of surface area for bugs, which then drains
         | time that could be spent on fixing refactoring bugs or adding
         | new static analyses. So it's a hard tradeoff and one isn't
         | clearly a winner to the other.
        
         | sesm wrote:
         | JB products have in-memory PSI (as opposed to LSP queried over
         | network), and this PSI by it's nature is multi-language, so
         | they support language injections naturally. This comes in very
         | handy when you are writing an HTML file with embedded CSS and
         | JS, or when you have inline HTML strings or regexps in your
         | code.
        
       | jillesvangurp wrote:
       | Fleet was a strategy to counter vs code. As such it did not work
       | that well. It's not feature complete enough to consider as an
       | intellij alternative and a bit too different for vs code users to
       | take serious. So, easy to see why they are pulling the plug on
       | that.
       | 
       | Vs Code of course is the wider ecosystem of plugin compatible
       | editors based on the vs codium platform. This includes a lot of
       | the recent AI editors, and several non vs codium based editors
       | that can integrate the plugins (e.g. vi).
       | 
       | The core issue is that Fleet is outside of that ecosystem and
       | doesn't have the community or user adoption to get that fixed.
       | It's a chicken egg problem that's hard to fix. It's being pulled
       | two directions. On one hand you have existing intellij users who
       | use that to do most of their development. And on the other hand
       | you have people that are using vs code and depend on a lot of its
       | plugins. Fleet is a bit of an empty room for both groups of
       | users. None of my more serious projects load correctly in fleet.
       | I've tried it a few times and it's just missing too much stuff
       | for me to take it seriously. And I bet VS Code users would be
       | equally unhappy.
       | 
       | Fixing that would involve bringing over the majority of features
       | from intellij and vs code, and recreating those in fleet. Which
       | of course wasn't really happening given that it's being
       | positioned as a closed source platform.
       | 
       | IMHO keeping Fleet closed source was the mistake that doomed the
       | whole effort from day 1. In short, they were on their own and not
       | really able to pull that off. Google is understandably focusing
       | on supporting intellij, which at least has an open source core.
       | Providing an open source core for intellij in 2009 was the key
       | enabler that allowed them to move from eclipse to intellij.
       | Google embraded it in 2013. Some of the older people here might
       | remember that Android Studio started out on the Eclipse platform.
       | Eclipse support ended in 2015. Open source is what made that
       | transition possible.
       | 
       | Which of course raises the question what the whole point of a
       | closed source Fleet was given that users, plugin developers, and
       | major partners like Google are all focus on the open source
       | ecosystem around intellij. And the rest of the ecosystem is vs
       | code based.
       | 
       | Answer: there is none. Hence this foregone conclusion.
        
       | brap wrote:
       | >With Fleet you can collaborate on code in real time
       | 
       | Genuine question - Does anyone actually do this? What for?
       | 
       | I have been writing code for about 25 years and not once did I
       | wish for someone else to start editing the same files I'm editing
       | in real time. Yet, this seems like a huge selling point for some
       | of these editors.
        
         | solardev wrote:
         | It's helpful for mentoring or pair programming with another
         | person. They can more clearly see the code as you change it,
         | like Google Docs, rather than just watching a screenshare.
        
           | okr wrote:
           | "Code with me", is still a feature i use in IntelliJ. Never
           | used fleet.
        
         | SkyPuncher wrote:
         | It's a nice bonus, but it's certainly not a critical feature.
         | 
         | In every instance, I've needed this I've already been on a Zoom
         | call and can simply ask the other person to push their code.
        
         | nobleach wrote:
         | I've used it a total of 2 times since I first saw the ability
         | in Atom back in 2017. Once was more for the "this seems neat,
         | let's try it" factor. The other was a legitimate, let's
         | troubleshoot an issue while staring at the same massive screen
         | together. It's not a bad feature, it just never stuck with my
         | workflow - I typically hop on a Zoom call now days, someone
         | shares their screen and pair program the old fashioned way (by
         | yelling out stuff like one does when someone else is playing
         | solitaire)
        
         | VPenkov wrote:
         | I've been working for the same company for over 7 years and a
         | lot of the shared code that other developers use is mine.
         | 
         | Frequently I would guide other developers to implementing
         | something and in doing so I'd guide them down to what files to
         | open and how to integrate it. I find this process a lot more
         | convenient over Zoom where I can annotate with a pencil. I use
         | that to underline blocks of code. It's a bit like you have a
         | mouse and I have a mouse on the same screen but in a nice way.
         | 
         | In a workflow like that I sometimes want to write pseudo code
         | and I would very much welcome a feature like that. Currently
         | JetBrains has a "Code with me" plugin or something similar, but
         | it's a bit laggy and struggles when fast typers meet. And a
         | feature like that is good both when I take my laptop and sit
         | next to you, and when we're on Zoom while talking.
        
         | muixoozie wrote:
         | Same. I've only used collaborative tools like Google Docs with
         | other people exactly once in college for a group report.
         | Naturally we procrastinated so long that we were knocking it
         | out the day it was due. I must say it did a good job adding
         | momentum.
         | 
         | Other than that never in my professional experience as a
         | programmer. Except for open source work I was helping with. 3
         | of us would meet on Jitsi main contributor would sometimes
         | share an SSH session with us in addition to streaming live
         | coding sessions. Don't recall it actually being useful though.
         | Dunno. It's probably one of those features that if it works
         | well and is easy, then I might use it more.
        
         | giancarlostoro wrote:
         | You've never been on one computer with another developer and
         | eventually just hand them the keyboard? (or Vice-Versa) Or on a
         | work call sharing your screen, where you give them remote
         | control of your screen? (or vice-versa) This is a way to let
         | someone else collaborate with you, within their configured IDE,
         | with their preferred plugins and tooling configuration.
         | 
         | If you don't do any peer programming, then you wouldn't
         | understand it.
        
         | smrtinsert wrote:
         | It was an experiment at one company I had for maybe 6 mo and
         | failed miserably. Also a coder here for ~20 years. Code was
         | slightly less error prone and slightly more predictable in LOE
         | but productivity dropped massively. Most importantly all the
         | developers hated it.
        
       | rhubarbtree wrote:
       | Anyone wondering whether JetBrains IDEs are still worth it -
       | absolute yes from me. VS code is a UX mess by comparison.
       | Webstorm can be tricky to configure with Typescript but once it's
       | setup my goodness it's good.
        
         | bayindirh wrote:
         | Unfortunately many new developers don't believe in powerful
         | "power" tools anymore. They like to connect many small tools
         | for an inferior experience and they just scoff at bigger tools
         | for being "too complicated".
         | 
         | I use another big tool which is around 20 years old, and that
         | can do everything and a ton more from a single screen at the
         | same speed or faster, with greater integration.
         | 
         | Yet people don't touch it because it's old, complex, looks ugly
         | and its UI is too dense.
         | 
         | Oh, I forgot, it also includes a learning curve, but the same
         | people devote their lives to "rice" their Vim installations for
         | months.
        
           | lpapez wrote:
           | In my case it is because I am wary of these tools breaking in
           | a way which cannot be fixed, or services being suddenly
           | revoked for external reasons.
           | 
           | Example: now that I'm a solopreneur I use JetBrains DataGrip,
           | and overall I am very pleased with it. But I couldn't have it
           | on my previous two jobs. One of the jobs restricted my work
           | computer to only allow MySQL Workbench (arbitrary Powershell
           | scripts also were allowed, of course), and the other one
           | didn't want to pay for a licence, no matter how much I
           | pleaded.
           | 
           | So before I had to make due with (admittedly) inferior tools
           | because they were free and available as the lowest common
           | denominator in the general workplace.
           | 
           | Being comfortable with the tools affects a large part of my
           | productivity, and I'm more productive with a crappy-but-
           | familiar toolbox than I am with the unknown spaceship.
        
             | bayindirh wrote:
             | All of the tools I use are free software and actively
             | maintained and updated, plus they have very nice logging,
             | so I can diagnose what's happening. I only needed to read
             | the logs because I was young and experimenting with the
             | parts I shouldn't and broke the thing on purpose. However,
             | you can just create a copy of the installation directory to
             | back it up completely.
             | 
             | Again, the tool I gave as an example has integrated
             | configuration snapshots, and if something breaks I can
             | revert to a config 2 seconds or 2 years before, including
             | component versions installed at that time.
             | 
             | To be honest, I probably used that feature at most two
             | times in the last 20 years.
             | 
             | Workplace restrictions something off-limits and I can't
             | tell anything about. The people I gave examples are persons
             | I know and they have no such restrictions in place.
        
           | anoother wrote:
           | What's the tool?
        
             | bayindirh wrote:
             | Eclipse. Coincidentally used as the Java LSP for VSCode, in
             | headless configuration.
        
               | ipaddr wrote:
               | Your not using rational rose to rad up your Java app?
        
               | bayindirh wrote:
               | I'm not writing Java for the last ten years or so.
               | Instead Eclipse handles all the other things I use.
        
             | doublepg23 wrote:
             | OP
        
             | mring33621 wrote:
             | Visual Age for Java
        
           | ptero wrote:
           | That, to me, is a feature, not a bug.
           | 
           | Switching from a large, complex tool that includes a learning
           | curve is expensive. You set a high bar for switching from
           | Eclipse because you are used to it, paid a learning price and
           | are productive in it. And you are right. But that also means
           | that picking such a tool from a multitude of options should
           | be done after careful consideration, which is exactly what
           | using smaller tools provides.
           | 
           | On a somewhat related note, I want my professional software
           | to _only_ provide a (great) speedup of development. I want
           | them to only do what I could do without them (even if it
           | takes a week instead of a minute). This means I can often
           | look at things that fail to work and understand what is
           | failing. This is also helped by new engineers starting with
           | smaller tools and building up to integrated, distributed
           | tools only after knowing how individual elements work and can
           | be connected. Integrating with a (good) big tool is then not
           | a fight as it brings a  "wow" moment -- "instead of doing all
           | this by hand I can do it with a few mouseclicks!". My 2c.
        
             | bayindirh wrote:
             | [Talking from the perspective of Eclipse, because it's the
             | only IDE I invested my time in]
             | 
             | In this case, it's not. Eclipse put Integrated into IDE,
             | but doesn't subtract transparency in the process. You can
             | see what it does, tweak every step meticulously if you
             | want, and return to defaults with one click, if you prefer.
             | 
             | What this transparency brings is mental flexibility and
             | understanding. Do I want or need to switch? I'm doing the
             | same thing in Vim or KATE of BBEdit in 15 minutes. Maybe I
             | stumble with a couple of shortcuts, but that's not a
             | problem.
             | 
             | The funny thing is I see the compiler command every time I
             | press build, so it's burned in my memory after a day. While
             | I can read valgrind outputs and understand what it says,
             | Eclipse highlights the lines automatically, so I'm faster.
             | While I can gnuplot performance graphs, Eclipse auto-builds
             | them so they are on my desktop after a 10 hour torture run.
             | 
             | In my case, Eclipse enables me to carry a whole toolbox and
             | more in a single folder, yet all the tools it uses and what
             | it does is so transparent that I can switch away on an
             | instant if I don't get my installation with me, or I'm
             | connecting to a server in a datacenter far, far away.
             | 
             | I don't like to be blindsided by my tools. I like
             | blinkenligths in a way, and Eclipse gives me these
             | blinkenlights while being highly automatic.
             | 
             | So while I understand your case, it doesn't apply to
             | Eclipse, at least, because it's not a strangler, but a
             | great enabler and HUD in my experience.
             | 
             | For the time investing part, I don't grind. I get a tool,
             | and start using it, and when it becomes limiting, I start
             | poking it and learn what feature solves that problem at
             | hand. By that way, I learn the tool as I go, and if the
             | tool can't expand to my needs at some point, it fades away
             | from use gracefully. I don't do "stop, drop, roll" thing
             | while changing tools, so I can't paint a timeline about
             | when I picked a tool and dropped another.
        
               | cogman10 wrote:
               | I think the big drawback to eclipse is it's a beast to
               | get setup correctly before it performs well. It's built
               | to support everything, but really does a pretty poor job
               | out of the box.
               | 
               | I primarily do Java development. I started with eclipse,
               | fell away because at the time it had pretty awful maven
               | support. Moved over to Netbeans which has pretty good
               | maven and java support, but went through a somewhat
               | "unsupported" period of time and ultimately I moved over
               | to intellij.
               | 
               | Intellij has been a joy to work with in Java code bases
               | because everything just works and the smart features are
               | actually worth it. Intellij can do pretty major refactors
               | that both netbeans and eclipse can't think of. Further,
               | it has really good code improvement suggestions that
               | neither eclipse nor netbeans had. I can also simply check
               | out any code base and tell intellij to open it and be up
               | and running immediately.
               | 
               | A yellow line in intellij is almost certainly something
               | you can right click on and hit "make better" and you'll
               | have better and easier to understand code as a result.
               | 
               | All that said, you sound like you are working with a
               | C/C++ environment. I've not done a lot with Intellijs
               | clion so I couldn't tell you how comparable it is. It
               | wouldn't shock me to learn eclipse is better as intellij
               | is really well built for dynamic languages, maybe not so
               | much for statically compiled languages.
        
           | ernst_klim wrote:
           | > Unfortunately many new developers don't believe in powerful
           | "power" tools anymore.
           | 
           | I have to use IntelliJ due to Kotlin codebase, but I'm still
           | more of a fun of Emacs and I don't like Idea that much. I
           | think IDEs somewhat lack the power that simpler tools have,
           | which is automation.
           | 
           | One thing I miss from IntelliJ is programmability. That's why
           | I still use Emacs on workplace for anything outside of Kotlin
           | (git, grepping, note-taking etc). I even edit code in Emacs
           | from time to time when it's easier to write a Lisp function
           | which will batch edit code than doing keyboard macro.
           | 
           | Another thing I'm missing from IntelliJ is determinism.
           | Everything is asynchronous, so the same combinations of
           | actions can lead to different results, making automatisation
           | painful.
        
             | billfruit wrote:
             | There are things missing from Emacs too. Intelligent
             | project and context aware auto-complete. Project wide
             | search that works out of the box.
        
             | mike_hearn wrote:
             | You might find this interesting:
             | 
             | https://dmitrykandalov.com/liveplugin
             | 
             | IntelliJ is very programmable, but it can be a bit
             | intimidating because out of the box it assumes that you
             | want to program it by creating plugins. That's very
             | different to the elisp REPL driven approach. LivePlugin
             | bridges the gap by letting you control the IDE from a repl-
             | like console, building up scriptlets that use the same
             | plugin APIs. There are examples for how to do things like
             | add menu items, explore the semantic PSI trees, trigger
             | refactorings or do whatever else you want to do.
        
             | Nullabillity wrote:
             | Also, IdeaVim is just awful compared to Evil.
             | 
             | - Tracks the mode globally (rather than per editor), and
             | treats mode-switching as an edit operation (so if you
             | accidentally enter a read-only tab in insert mode then you
             | need to _switch to another tab, escape, and then go back_
             | to get your keybinds back.
             | 
             | - Doesn't bind escape in sidebar dialogs, so trying to exit
             | insert mode in a terminal or commit dialog just defocuses
             | the sidebar instead
             | 
             | - Still applies its other binds, so even falling back to
             | CUA/IntelliJ keybinds doesn't work either!
             | 
             | - Makes no effort to integrate IntelliJ keybinds, all you
             | get for conflicts is "would you like to lose the Vim or
             | IntelliJ functionality that binds this key?"
             | 
             | The difference is stark when you compare it to something
             | like Evil that actually values the user experience. (How's
             | that for an irony?)
        
           | flir wrote:
           | That's not a young/old axis, it's a loose/tight coupling
           | axis.
           | 
           | (Thirty years in, still using IDEs as glorified text editors,
           | still dropping to vim on a regular basis.)
        
           | golly_ned wrote:
           | Such vim/emacs configuration aficionados are engaging in a
           | hobby, some under the pretense that it'll make them more
           | effective, but many simply for the fun of it.
        
           | RockRobotRock wrote:
           | I feel like I "earned" the right to use big ugly IDE after
           | learning the underlying complexity the hard way, but that's
           | only for one language.
           | 
           | Jumping into a new language with JetBrains is the difference
           | between me spending 2 hours figuring out a codebase and
           | submitting a PR, and me spending 2 hours fucking around
           | trying to fix things.
        
             | bayindirh wrote:
             | An IDE generally adds another complexity layer, esp. if
             | you're not experienced in the language, that's true. Maybe
             | the reason I didn't feel that was the gradual ramp up in
             | using the IDE, and starting to play with a language in the
             | terminal first.
             | 
             | I still don't use an IDE for projects up to a certain size,
             | but after a certain point, being able to also store all the
             | nitty gritty bits about a project (building, profiles,
             | environment, flags, etc.) in a project saves more time than
             | it requires to set them up.
        
         | Kuinox wrote:
         | The UX of Jetbrains IDE is objectively worse, I will take Rider
         | as example (since I use it everyday).
         | 
         | We can start with basic things: the contrast, in default
         | settings in dark mode for both. In theses conditions, Rider
         | contrast is too low for a screen you have to stare all the day,
         | compared to VS Code.
         | 
         | Commonly used item are in sub menus (in vscode they are sorted
         | by most commonly items on top), common shortcuts requires
         | finger gymnastics.
        
           | buggy6257 wrote:
           | So your arguments that it's "objectively bad" are
           | 
           | - it has bad defaults for theme (which I bet most devs change
           | immediately anyways on every IDE)
           | 
           | - "common items" (which when unspecified could be assumed to
           | be subjective to each persons workflow) are hidden in
           | submenus?
           | 
           | - "common shortcuts" (again unspecified) require stretching
           | (again, something trivially changed)
           | 
           | Unless you have more these feel not only extremely weak but
           | extremely subjective. Please avoid trying to phrase your
           | opinions as some fact it's a tiring trope these days.
        
             | Kuinox wrote:
             | The fact that's the contrast is bad isn't something
             | subjective, the font rendering is also shit and reduce the
             | contrast further. This is an accessibility issue, not some
             | subjective problem.
        
               | buggy6257 wrote:
               | Allow me to be more clear then:
               | 
               | - "default theme sucks and is bad accessibility". On its
               | own this is objectively provable of course except when
               | you're talking about probably the single most commonly
               | changed setting in a coders primary IDE other than maybe
               | font. Calling the app objectively bad because it chose a
               | bad default theme that gets immediately changed is a weak
               | take
               | 
               | - "hidden menu options" this is the subjective one as I
               | called out unless you can provide examples that are
               | universal.
               | 
               | - "bad keyboard shortcuts" is subjective for the most
               | part but even still is a widely changed option and very
               | easy to fix. So calling the app objectively bad for this
               | is also a weak take.
        
               | Kuinox wrote:
               | You can select a simple metric, practicality, that will
               | be objective.
               | 
               | The items in VS Code are sorted the chance you have to
               | use it depending of the context. In rider, commonly used
               | items are in submenu (rename hiding in refactoring), less
               | commonly used items are not in the submenus.
               | 
               | For the keyboard shorcuts, again you can argue
               | practicality as an objective metric. The number of keys
               | for a combo and distance between the keys have a big
               | practicality factor, and Jetbrains IDEs loves F-keys
               | (that you can't reach if you hold a keyboard like
               | ergonomists recommends)
        
           | bayindirh wrote:
           | I believe all of them are configurable in Rider, no?
        
             | Kuinox wrote:
             | You can also configure the VS Code UX.
        
               | bayindirh wrote:
               | That's not the question. The question was "you can change
               | the toolbars and shortcuts in JetBrains Rider, no?"
               | 
               | I presume the answer is yes, from what you said. Then it
               | becomes less of an issue, if not an non-issue.
               | 
               | IDEs and code editors are tools which we live with for a
               | long time. Nobody expects their defaults to be unchanged.
               | Otherwise we'd be all using notepad.exe for coding.
               | 
               | Not having the defaults organized by your tastes is not a
               | valid reason for disqualifying a tool out of the gate.
               | 
               | As a counter example, Electron's font rendering is
               | nothing to drool over, from my perspective, and doesn't
               | give an extra point for using it in my case.
        
               | Kuinox wrote:
               | > Nobody expects their defaults to be unchanged.
               | 
               | The OC point was that VS Code UX "is a mess by
               | comparison", and VS Code UX is fully configurable,
               | therefor if you have a problem with VS Code UX, you are
               | complaining about it's defaults settings.
               | 
               | Also Jetbrains IDEs font rendering is simply awful, it
               | doesn't hold the comparison to electron:
               | https://i.imgur.com/u4ZV2Kd.png
        
               | Nullabillity wrote:
               | An IDE's literal whole selling point _is_ supposedly
               | being a packaged product that you can just pick up and
               | run with, at the price of not being particularly good at
               | any of the things it does (and usually being pretty
               | expensive).
               | 
               | If you still need to customize everything then, well,
               | what did you actually gain over assembling your
               | environment by yourself from actually competent pieces?
        
               | bayindirh wrote:
               | I don't think so, because the IDE doesn't carry the
               | language tooling with it, but interfaces with the tooling
               | you already have in place.
               | 
               | That said, every IDE is opinionated about workflows, and
               | if you're open to adapt to that, the defaults makes
               | sense. Otherwise you slowly hammer it to the shape you
               | want.
               | 
               | For me an IDEs greatest selling point or the infinite
               | flexibility it provides.
        
           | MissTake wrote:
           | "objectively bad"
           | 
           | No, it's subjectively bad for you.
           | 
           | It really grinds my gears when people use "objectively" when
           | being objective is to deal purely in unbiased observable,
           | repeatable facts.
           | 
           | Your justification starts first with screen contrast -
           | something that is truly in the eye of the beholder.
           | 
           | Then you go on about "finger gymnastics" for shortcuts -
           | again something that you (and yes I don't disagree others as
           | well) suffer from.
           | 
           | Neither are issues that have bothered me one iota - so much
           | so that your mention is really the first time I've thought
           | about either.
           | 
           | However you then compare this to another app that also has
           | many detractors thus creating an instant bias.
        
             | Kuinox wrote:
             | The amount of contrast can be measured.
             | https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
             | US/docs/Web/Accessibility/U...
             | 
             | Due to the poor font rendering and colors picked in Rider,
             | by default there is a contrast of 4.77 which is just meet
             | the minimum ratio, and for an app you stare all the day at,
             | it's not enough.
             | 
             | From the firefox docs:
             | 
             | > Having good color contrast on your site benefits all your
             | users
             | 
             | It's written _all your users_ , it's not subjective.
        
               | MissTake wrote:
               | "minimum ratio"
               | 
               | Which is what? Is it a well defined fact?
        
               | Kuinox wrote:
               | It's defined in the document I linked. And yes, it's a
               | well defined fact.
        
               | MissTake wrote:
               | > When designing readable interfaces for different vision
               | capabilities, the WCAG guidelines recommend the following
               | contrast ratios
               | 
               | So, they're recommendations, not facts.
               | 
               | A fact is not a recommendation.
               | 
               | You can cling to this until the cows come home, but
               | anything visual is dependent on the viewer. It's not a
               | fact. It's subjective.
        
               | Kuinox wrote:
               | What you say are words not facts too. It's your opinion,
               | wrong but still your opinion.
        
               | MissTake wrote:
               | I'm simply stating that for something to be objective it
               | has to be an absolute irrefutable fact.
               | 
               | Anything else is subjective.
               | 
               | A UI can never be objectively bad because it is based
               | upon how someone sees it.
               | 
               | For me, Gimp has a subjectivity bad UI because I've never
               | been able to get my head around it.
               | 
               | Other people find it's perfect and that it's really easy
               | to use.
               | 
               | Both statements are subjective.
               | 
               | "Objective" and "subjective" are both words that have
               | well defined accepted dictionary definitions.
        
               | Kuinox wrote:
               | I suggest you to read some research on UX so you can
               | understand that a big part of UX is in fact, not
               | subjective. Like poor contrast cause reading fatigue on
               | all humans, but at varying level. And that researchers
               | determined a contrast ratio at which a certain percentage
               | of the population can read without problems. And yes
               | that's a recommendation because they can't force you to
               | do it, so they recommand you to do it.
        
         | alde wrote:
         | I have moved to VScode after being a paying Jetbrains customer
         | for 6 years. The Jetbrains IDEs are clunky and slow, they also
         | have plenty of bugs which remain open for years. They do offer
         | some really powerful refactoring capabilities but I don't miss
         | them.
         | 
         | Most of my work is in Go, Rust and Typescript.
         | 
         | I was told by Jetbrains representatives that Fleet is now
         | deprioritized internally, which is a pity.
        
           | joshstrange wrote:
           | I could not be happier that they are deprioritizing fleet. I
           | am not a fan of the VS code style editor and that's all I saw
           | fleet as.
        
           | nicce wrote:
           | > they also have plenty of bugs which remain open for years.
           | 
           | I switch to Jetbrains from time to time because there are
           | many impassable serious bugs in VSCode, on the other hand...
        
           | jbreckmckye wrote:
           | This seems strange to me because honestly I find the Goland
           | experience much better than Go in VSCode. But - clearly it
           | works for you
        
         | damidekronik wrote:
         | Love Webstorm, but I am having constant problems with type
         | hints. Typescript with a solid setup that over time stopped
         | working well.
        
         | nedsma wrote:
         | Contrary to that, I used Jetbrains IDEs for a decade, or even
         | longer, and recently I have switched to VS Code for my Go and
         | TypeScript work. Sometimes less is more.
        
         | insane_dreamer wrote:
         | PyCharm is excellent; have not found anything as good for heavy
         | python development
         | 
         | update: emphasis on "heavy". It's good for python projects. For
         | some one-off script I'm more likely to use Zed. pyCharm
         | indexing drives me nuts sometimes. But Zed lacks the features
         | that I use in pyCharm for larger projects.
        
           | niemandhier wrote:
           | Telling the indexed to only index env packages and ignore
           | system packages
        
         | dboreham wrote:
         | I switched to VSCode a couple of years ago.
        
         | tehbeard wrote:
         | Intellij is alright. Can't speak for Webstorm l.
         | 
         | Phpstorm ran out of chances I'll give it. Last three tries all
         | went the same way, permanently stuck indexing a project and
         | being an overdeveloped notepad.exe during that; when vscode and
         | phpintelphense could go from cold boot to code assist in
         | seconds on the same project.
        
         | smrtinsert wrote:
         | Agreed. VScode is fine for me as a markdown editor/log
         | viewer/advanced text editor, but when its time to develop, I
         | can't imagine doing without the IDEA Ultimate productivity
         | boost.
        
           | mixmastamyk wrote:
           | Why not use something fast and doesn't spy, like np++ or
           | geany as a simple editor?
        
         | cmrdporcupine wrote:
         | Their tools are fantastic and worth the $$ and having worked in
         | the profession for 25 years I have little patience for the
         | variety of elitism I often encounter on jobs that goes along
         | the line of: "I just use vim and (by implication) so should
         | you."
         | 
         | JetBrains has always had issues with performance and slightly
         | clunky UI. But in return there's just a pile of amazing
         | refactoring and analysis tools that nobody else offers.
         | 
         | I pay for tools that make my job easier so I can concentrate on
         | delivering. Working without RustRover or CLion is just
         | unpleasant.
         | 
         | I have an emacs + LSP + Rustic etc configuration which does
         | about 80% of what I can do with RustRover. But it's brittle,
         | slow, and takes work to maintain. VSCode suffers from similar
         | problems (not slow, but brittle and ergonomics are worse).
        
           | dehrmann wrote:
           | > elitism I often encounter on jobs that goes along the line
           | of: "I just use vim and (by implication) so should you."
           | 
           | This always felt to me like an old-school woodworker saying
           | you can do a large project with hand tools.
        
         | packetlost wrote:
         | I use RustRover for the excellent debugging and git experience,
         | but quickly go back to neovim + rust-analyzer when I'm writing
         | code, not debugging it.
        
         | thesurlydev wrote:
         | Yes. Absolutely. But with one caveat: JetBrains is clearly
         | lagging behind in AI features and none of the 30+ LLM plugins
         | come close to the killer feature of Codeium's Windsurf
         | (Cascade). For this reason, I've been using both Windsurf and
         | JetBrains in concert which is a pain but works for now.
         | 
         | I have high hopes for "Junie" but fear it's going to be a while
         | before it's ready for prime time.
        
           | RockRobotRock wrote:
           | I'm dipping my toes into AI features with JetBrains'
           | assistant subscription. What am I missing out on?
        
         | FpUser wrote:
         | I work with many tools from JetBrains with the main one being
         | CLion. I think in average their tools are superior to anything
         | else on the market.
        
         | Timon3 wrote:
         | I'll quote an earlier comment of mine written a couple of
         | months ago (with links to the issue tracker)[0], because -
         | after many years of being a happy JetBrains user - I sadly can
         | no longer recommend the IDEs (some worse than others, Rider has
         | been okay, though new features often just don't work at all),
         | since the quality of QA has gotten very bad over the last
         | couple of years:
         | 
         | - The autocomplete popup sometimes froze the IDE completely
         | (and killing the process caused minutes of data loss), open for
         | close to a year
         | 
         | - Since two months ago, the Typescript language server fails to
         | start in Vue projects (due to a broken update by the Vue team).
         | A fixed version of WebStorm was released yesterday, in the
         | meantime you were apparently expected to search for the error
         | message, stumble upon the YouTrack page, and apply a workaround
         | 
         | - Performance is abysmal in a larger React MUI project, think
         | 10-15 seconds for feedback on code changes, sometimes errors
         | just stick around for a good minute or more, or even stay until
         | you manually remove all code and put it back
         | 
         | - In some situations WebStorm makes autocomplete suggestions
         | that aren't allowed - think effectively a type T with keys K |
         | L, where Omit<T, K> leads to only suggesting K properties,
         | while removing the Omit makes it suggest both K and L
         | properties
         | 
         | - After updating from 2024.1.X to 2024.2.Y, the window had no
         | buttons for minimizing/maximizing anymore. Now, this was
         | partially caused by my environment, but after I found a
         | workaround it was closed as "Third Party Problem". Still feels
         | like a regression to me, since my environment did not change.
         | 
         | I've mostly stopped updating the IDE, as almost every version
         | brings new regressions in basic editor features. This morning I
         | updated and tried to copy some text. WebStorm showed me a
         | "Copying..." dialogue for more than 30 seconds.
         | 
         | [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41939833
        
         | dehrmann wrote:
         | In my first job, I used C, vi, and cscope. In my second, Java
         | and Eclipse. I was an order of magnitude more productive with
         | an IDE. Some of it was the language (though I was actually
         | pretty good at C and rusty at Java), but most of it came from
         | the rapid feedback loop and improved code discoverability.
        
         | barrenko wrote:
         | Does this apply to Fleet as well?
        
         | mystified5016 wrote:
         | Jetbrains has been my go-to recommendation for years.
         | 
         | Unfortunately they are forcing a VSCode UI on everyone and
         | outright lying about their adoption figures (claiming it's off
         | by default and everyone actively chose to use it). The new UI
         | is just as much a broken mess as VSCode. The only way I can get
         | work done is by using my fallback license for the 2023
         | versions.
         | 
         | It is apparently _inconceivable_ to JetBrains that power users
         | exist and pay good money for power user tools. JetBrains only
         | cares about VSCode script kiddies anymore.
        
         | zenlot wrote:
         | I just tried Cursor, which is based on vscode. And I couldn't
         | stand it, back to JetBrains in a week. Everything, just
         | everything is inferior. Starting with Git plugins, search etc.
         | So yes, learn the ide, just use JetBrains.
        
       | andyjohnson0 wrote:
       | Actual title is "Kotlin Multiplatform Tooling - Shifting Gears".
        
       | Decabytes wrote:
       | I personally find value in having two editors. A light editor
       | like Emacs for writing Markdown, git, quick scripts, and a
       | JetBrains IDE for longer running projects, and debugging. I don't
       | feel the need to wholly replace one with the other
        
         | insane_dreamer wrote:
         | Same here. I use SublimeText, or more recently, Zed, for quick-
         | and-dirty stuff.
        
         | John23832 wrote:
         | Same. I basically run a Cursor/RustRover combo. I think the RR
         | tooling is second to none.
        
       | nvarsj wrote:
       | After decades using Emacs and Idea, I have post traumatic
       | configuration syndrome.
       | 
       | So now I use VSCode and lazyvim/neovim. Which I can install
       | anywhere in about 5 minutes and have a fully working environment
       | with 0 effort and 1 breakage a year. It's great.
        
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