[HN Gopher] JetBrains defends removal of negative reviews for un...
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JetBrains defends removal of negative reviews for unpopular AI
Assistant
Author : przemub
Score : 120 points
Date : 2025-04-30 20:36 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (devclass.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (devclass.com)
| terminalbraid wrote:
| > The spokesperson added that the company could have done better
|
| They seem to have to say that a lot about this product, yet they
| don't really seem to learn any lessons. When the original flood
| of bad reviews came it it was because they made that plugin
| bundled with the IDE and then had a "bug" where it couldn't be
| effectively removed. There was no precedent for bundled a paid
| plugin nor need for it to be bundled with the IDE. Just their
| desperation to cash in. They then walked that back with the same
| "we could have done better".
|
| This is more of the same. The "AI Assistant" still lives on the
| default side bar regardless if you have that plugin installed or
| not.
|
| At this point, they know they could do better yet are choosing
| not to.
| cadamsdotcom wrote:
| Not a good look. A better way would've been to add a response to
| the reviews (and notify the reviewers via eg email):
|
| "Hi, we've updated and these issues should be addressed now.
| Please take a look and let us know what you think!"
| serial_dev wrote:
| But that would be a lot of work and the damned user could reply
| or update their review that "it still doesn't work and my
| review still stands".
|
| If you control both the product and the platform, deleting
| negative reviews is much more convenient than actually
| resolving the issues.
| pandemic_region wrote:
| The whole Jetbrains product suite is sliding downhill quality
| wise. Can we go back to the days of yore where it was just a
| lightning fast Java code editor and it did that extremely well?
| toyg wrote:
| _> it was just a lightning fast Java code editor _
|
| Uh, I don't think it's ever been "lightning fast"... Great at
| refactoring, navigation, and boilerplate generation, yeah;
| fast, no.
| delusional wrote:
| It was actually known as the fast option. You have to
| remember that this was from a time where the alternatives
| were Eclipse and NetBeans. Lightweight vim/emacs style "text
| editor" IDE's (maybe except for hardcore configuration heavy
| plugin collections) hadn't come around yet.
| Timon3 wrote:
| This has also been my experience. Every update brings new weird
| bugs that disrupt my workflow - it's gotten bad enough that
| I've stopped updating their tools when the bugs aren't in main
| parts of my workflow, because while updates may fix those, they
| are sure to introduce even worse ones. And it's not like I'm
| doing crazy stuff, for a while even copying text made a
| "Copying..." dialog pop up and freeze the editor for a while.
|
| Unless something drastically changes, I won't be renewing my
| license anymore. I don't like VS Code, but it's been much more
| reliable than the Jetbrains tools I use.
| throwuxiytayq wrote:
| Any specific reason you'd say that? I've been using Rider for
| years it has been strictly getting better with each version.
|
| (Please don't disappoint me by saying "they added an optional
| feature and I don't like it")
| misswaterfairy wrote:
| I'd say it would depend on the product. I understand there
| are different teams developing each IDE.
|
| They have had quite a few issues open for nearly a decade (I
| wish I was kidding) for features that had been quite sought
| after, that free tools have had for years.
| clintonb wrote:
| I'm not OP, but agree that the tooling--DataGrip and WebStorm
| for me--is getting worse. Here are issues observed for the
| latest updates:
|
| - DataGrip sporadically stops working when returning from
| sleep. I have to force-kill it to continue.
|
| - Take a relatively empty file with 10 lines. WebStorm is
| supposed to reformat on save. It hangs for 10+ seconds or
| until I cancel reformatting.
|
| - I saw a low memory alert for the first time in months this
| week. My workflow hasn't changed drastically and I wasn't
| running anything, just editing a few files.
|
| - Overall everything feels a little slower than it did a
| couple weeks ago with the older version.
|
| I don't think it's worth filing issues in YouTrack because
| I've seen those go nowhere in the past.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Rider stands out because the competition for C# development
| is VS2022 and VSCode. VS2022 is bloated and slow, while
| VSCode is missing tons of important features. Can't really
| speak to how other JB offerings compare to their competitors,
| but Rider is best-in-class for C#/.NET.
| rtsil wrote:
| I just spent half a day troubleshooting why PHPStorm suddenly
| took 15 minutes to become responsive. The cultprit was the
| built-in markdown plugin, probably after an update. I don't
| have time for that.
|
| Another annoying thing is they also removed the modal commit
| window in favor of a VS code style commit. It was removed
| without notification, and I had to install a plug-in to
| restore it.
|
| IDE UI is the most important thing for me, I've built muscle
| memory to use it without think. When they tinker with it, it
| forces me to think about the IDE instead of about what I'm
| working on, and that's really annoying. Not enough to lead me
| to change, for now.
| Thaxll wrote:
| Being fast is not enough in 2025.
| switch007 wrote:
| It really has. I had to disable the GitHub plugin to get rid of
| a PR comment box that wouldn't disappear.
|
| Junit test runs say No tests available about 50% of the time
|
| It feels slower and slower
|
| Today I started getting "unable to save settings" or something,
| no idea what that is about
|
| It really shows that they're distracted from quality. My guess
| is with the breadth of features and quite amazing attention to
| detail, they needed 100% dedication to those efforts, and now a
| chunk of the company is doing something else, and now the
| product is falling apart
|
| But hey we have a totally new console engine or something so
| that's really nice (I've personally never used the console ...)
| jghn wrote:
| I really keep trying to replace Jetbrains with VSCode, and I
| keep going back. VSCode is just so deficient in comparison in
| ways on which I depend. But yes, Jetbrains keeps making that
| statement harder and harder to make for me
| jansan wrote:
| I agree, they should focus more on quality, because there are
| still a ton of tiny, yet annoying issues.
|
| In Webstorm it sometimes does not recognize comments (colorizes
| them as code), does not reliably recognize multi line ToDos,
| and frequently warns me in a _if (myVar == null)_ that _myVar_
| may not have been initialized.
|
| At least the last issue is as old as the hills, has been
| reported several times, and yet they seem to be unable to
| properly fix it.
| pacman1337 wrote:
| Agree ever since Roman Elizarov left that company has gone
| downhill big time. Crashing all the time, stuff that should be
| rock solid because it so common. Like the other day syntax
| errors stopped being highlighted. I never update because every
| time something will be broken guaranteed.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Yeah Jetbrains is going down a very similar path to Borland.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _a JetBrains employee said that reviews were removed because
| they mentioned issues that had since been solved_
|
| That shouldn't be considered a valid reason to remove a review. I
| could maybe understand down-weighting reviews as they age and as
| issues are resolved, but as a potential buyer of some
| product/service/whatever, knowing that something was released
| with a bunch of issues (even if now solved) is a valuable signal.
| Preferably, they would reply to reviews and say "XYZ was
| addressed in update ABC" or something.
|
| Nuking reviews is a valuable signal as well, I guess. Just not in
| the way that they hope. Knowing that they've done that has
| (further) lowered my impression of them.
| lolinder wrote:
| Yes, it's a terrible excuse, and it's concerning that they
| think it's a good one. I highly doubt that they make a habit of
| fielding requests from plugin authors to nuke outdated reviews:
| you simply can't scale the verification that would require to
| do honestly. If they don't offer this as an option to others
| then this move is wrong both for the reasons you give _and_
| because they 're claiming a privilege in their app store that
| they won't afford to their competition.
| serial_dev wrote:
| I wonder if they remove reviews that complain about bugs that
| were resolved (at least according to the plugin author) for all
| other plugins that aren't theirs... Do they? ... yeah I thought
| so.
| TZubiri wrote:
| If they are both marketplace and seller, and if this is a
| policy they apply to all vendors, seems fine to me.
| thfuran wrote:
| It's a bad policy even if it's not anti-competitive.
| DaedPsyker wrote:
| I agree, it shouldn't be. Particularly as I can't imagine them
| removing reviews if it praised a feature that was subsequently
| removed or changed.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Deleted comment cited by the author:
|
| " I previously submitted a review critiquing this plugin, but it
| was removed by JetBrains moderation -- an unfortunate decision
| that, in my view, undermines trust in open feedback. I have now
| tested the latest AI plugin (v243.23654.270.16). The plugin does
| offer limited support for third-party providers like Ollama and
| LM Studio (the latter being a better fit for most local LLM
| users). However, this support is restricted to chat interactions
| only -- not to autocomplete, inline suggestions, or in-editor
| refactoring tools. In practice, this limitation significantly
| reduces the plugin's value for users who already maintain ChatGPT
| Pro accounts or local LLM workflows. Rather than fully enabling
| local model integration, the design seems oriented toward
| promoting JetBrains' proprietary cloud models and subscription
| services. Specific ratings: * Integration with IDE: 5 stars --
| Excellent UI integration into JetBrains products, smooth setup. *
| Performance: 1 star -- Noticeable latency compared to local
| models; frequent delays. * Available Features: 1 star -- Limited
| flexibility for serious LLM users; core features locked to cloud
| services. * User Interface: 1 star -- Chat feels bolted-on rather
| than deeply native; inconsistent UX across project types. *
| Documentation Quality: 1 star -- The documentation exists but
| feels sparse, with limited guidance on third-party setup and
| unclear disclosures about feature limitations. While some users
| may find the plugin sufficient for lightweight AI chat, in my
| assessment, it falls short both in technical flexibility and in
| respecting user choice. Thank you to JetBrains for providing the
| opportunity to share my neutral and unbiased observations with
| fellow developers" [1].
|
| [1] https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/22282-jetbrains-ai-
| assi...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| ...why can't I edit this 9-minute old comment for formatting?
| @dang
| endofreach wrote:
| Not great. Any other company would have been put on my greedy-
| morons list. But i believe JetBrains is special and is allowed
| more mistakes than others.
|
| I also believe they should really stay calm and not get sucked
| into the AI hype. Worst case they will be the heroes to the
| people who like to program for the joy of it, in case these AI
| IDEs should really take over (which i highly doubt).
| homebrewer wrote:
| Their main target market are enterprise Java developers, whose
| intersection with "people who like to program for the joy of
| it" is close to zero.
|
| Lately they've also been coddling with the VSCode crowd by
| aggressively pushing the new UI over loud objections of old
| loyal users.
|
| Either one seems like direct opposite of the hacker user you're
| mentioning.
| misswaterfairy wrote:
| Python developers as well. PyCharm is pretty much unrivalled
| in my view.
| chuckadams wrote:
| Junie is a much better agent than the AI Assistant and uses the
| same AI subscription plan, but Augment blows the doors off both
| of them.
| nicolaslem wrote:
| I never managed to get anything out of Junie. Each of my
| queries end up with an internal process stuck on a loop eating
| 100% CPU until I kill it. Back to Windsurf for now which is
| disappointing because I much prefer PyCharm for everything
| else.
| ianlevesque wrote:
| Results quality is probably language-dependent. I was able to
| use Junie to do a bunch of Java/Kotlin tasks and it worked
| very well.
| dygd wrote:
| I didn't know what Augment is, so I checked it out. There's
| absolute no way I'm going to agree to this [0]:
|
| > When you open a workspace with Augment enabled, your codebase
| will be automatically uploaded to Augment's secure cloud.
|
| [0] https://docs.augmentcode.com/jetbrains/setup-
| augment/workspa...
| zer0-c00l wrote:
| I love JetBrains and hate vscode, but Cursor was such a huge
| productivity boost that I ended up switching. Unfortunately none
| of the JetBrains plugins (Junie, the older AI Assistant,
| Windsurf/codeium, etc) come close yet :(
| roegerle wrote:
| The subscription costs are worth it?
| fred123 wrote:
| It's just $20, that's almost free compared to cost of human
| labor
| bb88 wrote:
| Depends mostly upon what you're doing.
|
| Having done go and python in jetbrains and vscode, I
| definitely enjoy the experience in jetbrains more. A lot of
| java people like IntelliJ for their Java and Kotlin support.
|
| OTOH, copilot has been not as good on Jetbrains as it has
| been on vscode. Updates are delayed to give VSCode a first
| mover advantage to VSCode.
|
| Google Gemini Code assist plugin last week still sucked,
| didn't try it today.
|
| Copilot can also use Gemini Pro 2.5, but they delayed the
| release of the plugin for Jetbrains, and only have a context
| of 10 files I believe for the edit mode.
|
| And I thought I read somewhere that Jetbrains AI Assistant
| can use gemini AI pro, it's limited to a context window of
| 200,000. I might be wrong on that.
|
| Junie is reasonably good, but still has issues with
| understanding large code blocks of more than a couple of
| kilobytes. But it applies the changes first, without letting
| you do a review of the code. The only real way to do it, is
| to check in the code in git, then let it run, and then look
| at the results.
|
| I've asked Junie to fix unit tests using brave mode, and it
| seems more than capable with that.
|
| I think the trick with Junie is small defined tasks, rather
| than large bullet points. Or at least have a detailed plan
| which you can paste in, and reasonably detailed so it won't
| have to guess or infer what it is you want.
|
| But generally speaking, I've had far better luck with Google
| Gemini Pro 2.5 on code generation than with some of the
| others lately.
|
| Edited to add: Github Copilot added agent mode. I'm going to
| try it now.
| smnscu wrote:
| I use it mostly as smarter autocomplete and it's still
| absolutely worth it. I really tried having it write unit
| tests in Go, write simple Astro websites, etc, but I'm never
| satisfied with how dumb it is when "vibe coding", so I use it
| as Intellisense on steroids for now, but I don't doubt it
| will become even better soon. The chat feature is fantastic
| and between it and the contextual help I barely ever have to
| reach for actual (code) documentation.
| thegrim33 wrote:
| After hearing so much about Cursor, and then reading your
| comment, I decided to give it a try. Here's my honest, first
| ever time trying to use it:
|
| - I go to its website and neither on the homepage nor the
| features tab does it bother listing what languages the IDE is
| even for. Is it Python? C? HTML? It's an IDE .. for what? What
| languages? What project types? How can they not list this basic
| fact?
|
| - Oh well, click the big Download link, and it downloads an app
| image file. No idea what to do with this, never seen one
| before, have to google it.
|
| - Mark the file as executable and run it and get a cryptic
| error: "The setuid sandbox is not running as root" and it
| errors out.
|
| - Back to google, google for that error message. Find various
| Cusor bug reports and people complaining about it but they
| haven't bothered fixing it.
|
| - Find a workaround, to pass in a -no-sandbox arg when running
| Cursor, and now I get it to launch.
|
| - It opens up but the text is incredibly small on my (4K)
| monitor and the text coloring is a dark grey that's almost
| indistinguishable from the background color, immediately go
| look for settings to fix it. There's ~50 settings results for
| "font" or "size", I change a few of them and it seems to make
| no impact to the UI font and I quickly give up and just want to
| try the editor.
|
| - I read online that I need a "CMake Tools" extension to open a
| CMake project. In cursor I open the extensions marketplace and
| search for "CMake" and there's zero results. I try to open a
| CMakeLists file anyways and it opens it as a text file and then
| prompts me to install a "CMake Tools" extension. Ok? Why didn't
| it show up in the marketplace before?
|
| - I click the popup about the CMake Tools extension it opens
| the marketplace page for it, showing me the details about it.
| Whilst I'm reading the details for example to see who the
| author of the extension is, whether it's even a legit extension
| or not, the reviews of it, it just automatically installs it by
| default without me clicking the Install button that was on the
| page.
|
| - After installing the extension the CMake file I opened is
| just in a tab but hasn't imported the CMake project, so I close
| it and re-open it from the File->Open menu.
|
| - It again just opens the file as a plain text file and doesn't
| actually try to import the CMake project in any way, I don't
| see any popup or button or call to action to actually import
| the CMake project in any way.
|
| - I give up and just switch back to my normal IDE
| warmedcookie wrote:
| Ditto, I love JetBrains, but cannot ignore Cursor. I use the
| IntelliJ shortcuts / Darcula extensions to help with
| familiarity.
|
| Among the ones you mentioned, I also tried Gemini Code Assist
| JetBrains extension, but it doesn't integrate anywhere close to
| what Cursor does. (Direct code inserts, rollbacks, checkpoints,
| context integration) Zzzzz come on JetBrains
| xyst wrote:
| I used to be a fan of jb products since they used to give it out
| for free in college, and continued using it into my professional
| career (I loved the refactoring tools!). However, lately they
| have been adding too much junk to their IDEs.
|
| Have switched to my very old workflow of using nvim and
| customizing it with NvChad.
| reactordev wrote:
| The correct approach, IMO, is to try to incentivize re-review
| after the issues have been fixed. Not delete the negative
| reviews. If you want to prove you're customer centric with your
| product and that you actually care, you can find a way to
| encourage them to change their vote.
| buybackoff wrote:
| I'm really concerned over the last couple of years that my two
| paid subscriptions (work/personal) go into AI BS development I do
| not need, instead of fixing pain points I have daily. It may
| continue for so long. I hope to see they defend the removal of AI
| assistant completely, by moving it completely off the main
| channel. They are not MSFT that can waste a billion here and
| there. Every AI feature they make is paid by existing users.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I even tried, when my old work-paid CoPilot subscription
| expired, to use a paid membership for their AI tool. It was so-
| so, but I was happy to give them money. And then my modest use
| for my personal open source project hit their monthly limit.
|
| So I just went back to CoPilot.
|
| I know they don't have deep pockets, but, like you, I'd rather
| they just spend it on making a good tool.
| Latty wrote:
| Yeah, I cancelled my subscription when it became clear they
| just did not care about my custom any more. The core products
| had pain points just sat with open issues forever, and they
| just started doing nothing but trying to upsell me on stuff I
| didn't care about or want.
|
| I used to be a huge evangelist for JetBrains products, I loved
| having a product where I felt like I could just pay and get
| something of quality, it's really sad seeing that devolve into
| the same mess of "you are the product" as virtually everything
| else, despite the fact they were still demanding my money.
| buybackoff wrote:
| Just to be clear: JB have been and still are so ahead in
| ergonomics that I still cannot imagine going back to VS and I
| will renew my personal one without any doubt. For now. I just
| question their priorities.
| buremba wrote:
| They have much superior product compared to VSCode in terms of
| pretty much everything, except AI.
|
| Not sure why it's so hard for them to catch up with Cursor. They
| have everything they need but somehow they focus on just
| something that they don't have much expertise, building models
| instead of better integration. It's a shame seeing such good
| product going downhill considering AI is becoming fundamental for
| dev productivity.
| nojs wrote:
| They're in a difficult position because half their users want
| more AI but the other half complain loudly when it's forced on
| them. Cursor is beating them because they can deeply embed AI
| everywhere without worrying about this.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| The classic disruption of a startup. This is actually a good
| thing. This allows new startups to come into the market.
| lolinder wrote:
| I actually have hopes that this will work out for them in the
| long run. Their bet seems to be at this point including the AI
| stuff in with the subscription: staving off the existential
| threat to their business without charging more, while still not
| having to spend insane amounts paying for someone else's model.
|
| At least with code completion it's pretty obvious at this point
| that no one needs the overpowered top-line models, and the
| trajectory on local LLMs is such that I don't think it's
| unreasonable for them to hope to avoid the big players
| entirely.
|
| They don't need to beat Claude for it to work, they just need
| to keep their customers satisfied.
| zabil wrote:
| Yeah, I've spent some time building IntelliJ plugins, and
| honestly, the authoring experience has some real limitations.
| It's not the easiest platform to work with, especially when it
| comes to writing automated tests. That might be part of the
| reason why their or any third-party AI plugins don't feel as
| smooth as the ones on VS Code.
| esafak wrote:
| They don't need to do it themselves; there lots of AI plugins
| for IntelliJ and I use one by Sourcegraph.
| cle wrote:
| > They have much superior product compared to VSCode in terms
| of pretty much everything, except AI
|
| Disagree, I keep trying Jetbrains once in a while and keep
| walking away disappointed (used to be a hardcore user). I use
| VS Code bc it is seamlessly polyglot. Jetbrains wants me to
| launch a whole separate IDE for different use cases, which is
| just horrible UX for me. Why would I pay hundreds for a worse
| UX?
| gitroom wrote:
| ugh that whole review thing is super sketchy, i really don't get
| how they think that builds any trust
| mrlonglong wrote:
| First thing I do with any jetbrain ide is kill that ai assistant.
| I'm paid to think.
| unfunco wrote:
| I cancelled my JetBrains license a few days ago after I was
| required to agree to new terms and conditions, they expended no
| effort and took zero time to explain the changes, what has
| changed and why, I was shown a ridiculously long legal document
| and asked to agree or get fucked. There was no feedback option
| when cancelling the subscription, they clearly don't care.
| persavon wrote:
| Didn't you read the ridiculously long legal document and agreed
| to it when you got the license in the beginning as well?
| terminalbraid wrote:
| The second a better product comes along I'm moving away from
| Jetbrains. Unfortunately I think we're about to get into an IDE
| winter since everything thinks all problems should just be solved
| by AI rather than doing the hard work like "good refactoring
| tools" and "acceptable user experience".
| tacker2000 wrote:
| There is already a huge discussion going on about their big re-
| design last year, so I guess they are now feeling the burn with
| all the users leaving...
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Yeah, unfortunately, they have to jump on the AI bandwagon
| because they are forced to by other editors, providing free AI,
| but they simply do not have the skills to integrate the AI
| properly. It's a shame, and unfortunately removing negative
| reviews will not help as people will simply migrate to a
| different product. You can have three 5 star reviews, but that
| doesn't help if nobody else is using it.
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