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Ask HN: Is there a future for Jetbrains IDEs?

12 points by Benjamin_Dobell ↗ HN
I've been a Jetbrains licensee since 2012. I even develop a plugin for statically typed Lua development.

Sadly, recently, the experience of being a Jetbrain's customer has gotten substantially worse.

The IDEs were never light, but they're getting slower each year. The occasional several second lock-up, is not so occasional anymore. There's focus bugs, rendering issues, crashes and a never-ending stream of bugs and missing features in integrations.

Compounding this, I'm yet to have an interaction with Jetbrains staff that didn't leave me tearing my hair out. A quick perusal of YouTrack makes it clear that abrupt, dismissive interactions are standard policy.

That said, Jetbrains refactoring tools are unparalleled and I still recommend Jetbrains IDEs to others. It's just a much harder sell than it used to be, in no small part due to VSCode.

It's not the first time JB have come up against free competition i.e. Eclipse. On-going commercial development seemed to give Jetbrains the edge. I'm not sure that's the case this time around.

Microsoft standardisation efforts go a long way to facilitating VSCode adoptions e.g. Debug Adapter Protocol. Jetbrains staff, of course giving a very Jetbrains staff response when asked about DAP:

> Nope, not supported and hardly will ever be.[1]

Community maintained projects consistently outperform Jetbrains support. That's a large part of what makes VSCode a much more compelling threat than Eclipse ever was. Open source is much better organised now.

I want Jetbrains to (continue to) succeed. I'm just not sure for how much longer they can sustain 500+ devs being pulled in every which way. The cracks are starting to show.

Do others share my concerns? Are you planning on, or have you already, jumped ship to VSCode?

[1] https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360004975119-PHPStorm-and-Visual-Studio-Code-Debug-Adapter-Protocol

17 comments

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coldtea
I don't see any issue with JetBrains IDEs (and I use them, vim, VS Code and ST3/4 for different purposes).

They surely are not "getting slower each year", and I hardly see any major bugs (I use the IDE for Java, PyCharm, and used to use GoLand but don't do Go these days).

>Compounding this, I'm yet to have an interaction with Jetbrains staff that didn't leave me tearing my hair out.

Why do you need "interactions with Jetbrains staff"? I've used their IDEs for a decade or so and never had any, nor do I find any reason to have one.

In any case, if you're happier with VSCode, just use VSCode.

It's not like you have to use JetBrains.

But I don't see them going anywhere...

Benjamin_Dobell
I'm glad to hear there's still solid support for Jetbrains.

I prefer to use the IDEA plugins over the separate IDEs, but for reference I use:

- Android Studio (Used to be daily, now rarely)

- AppCode (Used to be daily, now rarely)

- CLion (Rarely)

- GoLand (Rarely)

- IntelliJ IDEA (Daily)

  - Docker (Rarely - daily outside IntelliJ)

  - Git (Daily)

  - Go (Rarely)

  - JS/TypeScript/Node (Daily)

  - Kotlin (Often)

  - Python (Daily at the moment - typically rarely)

  - Ruby (Often at the moment - typically daily)
- Markdown (Daily)

- Rider (Daily)

  - Perforce (Often)

  - Unity Plugin (Often)
There's lots of other non-language plugins, but I've singled out Markdown as it seems to be responsible for a lot of rendering issues. Pane goes blank, dismiss it and you're left with a white rectangle obscuring everything until you restart IntelliJ.

Also use the occasional third-party plugin (e.g. my own), but Jetbrains obviously can't be held responsible for those!

If it's at all relevant, I'm on macOS. I use most of these IDEs on Windows occasionally as well, but not enough to comment on their stability.

Probably worth clarifying, I like Jetbrains IDEs. Just less so of late.

coldtea
I'm on macOS as well.

But for the apps, I only use the individual language apps (Idea + Goland + PyCharm) as opposed to IDEA + plugins.

emh68
Yeah, I opened a feature request to add a "save as..." option to the file menu, only to have it merged into a much older duplicate request. The feature still hasn't been implemented, 7ish years later.

That, plus some feature "upgrades" which wantonly degraded performance (such as changes to the "find in files" dialog) made me give up on JetBrains for serious work. I love Kotlin and use it for personal projects, and CLion is great too, but for professional work I'll stick with VSCode and make do without the refactoring capabilities and intellisense of JetBrains tools.

gjvc
> Compounding this, I'm yet to have an interaction with Jetbrains staff that didn't leave me tearing my hair out. A quick perusal of YouTrack makes it clear that abrupt, dismissive interactions are standard policy.

Agree. I originally put this down to the St Petersburgian charm, (which is why I can forgive the odd grammatical error such as definite/indefinite article mixup/missing) but I also suspected that this was a pattern. On the other hand, if the numbers of users has increased, perhaps they (the users of youtrack.jetbrains.com) hit their own "Eternal September". [1]

Keeping a culture true to its origins is challenging.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

guguadrini
I use PyCharm by ten year. Vscode by four years. But one not esclude other. PyCharm is better for python development. Anyway, vscode is better for script develop on the fly.
twobitshifter
I don’t think vscode will soon be able to match the feature set of JetBrains, when used for large complex projects, so they have a lot of runway left.

I do wish that all of the community engagement with vscode could be redirected to something like emacs or neovim instead.

domano
I actually switched back to the Jetbrains products due to the bad Go support in VSCode (if anyone tells me the support is great and there is a plugin: please give Goland a try, it is miles ahead)
app17
Yeah, it isn’t still as good as Goland, especially on the refactoring side, but it has gotten much better in the last few months. Google seems to have taken over the extension maintenance and has been improving gopls a lot recently.

I was a big Jetbrains user before, but VSCode remote support really got me hooked. I use my faster PC to do the heavy lifting and it really improved my workflow.

I did try Jetbrains solution for remote development with their new Projector, but it isn’t there yet compared to VSCode.

kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj
Pycharm is fucking slow and it is really annoying to use different IDEs for different languages. vscode is better in every way, and free. I just don't understand why people use jetbrains anymore.
bestinterest
Sadly, my plan is to pick up the new MacBook with new M1X chips this year whenever it releases in Q3/4 to combat the slowness.

Wirth's law is making me sad

markus_zhang
On my side I have been using Datagrip for years. Fantastic and I can't really use any other tool after that. I also use PyCharm from time to time but it's a bit heavy for my usage (small projects involving maybe 2-10 files).

I do hope they have a future. But I don't know their financials so can't be sure.

blacktriangle
+1 for Datagrip. I recently discovered this tool in my attempt to use databases more directly and ORMs less, and Datagrip has completely changed how I work with my databases. It makes working with raw SQL feel like working with any other programming language and less like jamming strings together and hoping for the best.
d--b
They have a huge customer base. A lot of them wouldnt use anything else. They’ll be around for the foreseeable future...
the__alchemist
For the languages I've used it with (Python, Rust, Javascript), its introspection is without compare. Ie the ability to understand what's going on with the language, and use this to catch errors, refactor, and autocomplete. Its project-based-design (vice file-based) is a better fit for most of my code as well.

From my perspective, JetBrains can get away with being slow due to how much better it is at core features than any competitor.

gtsteve
If Microsoft pivot VSCode to be a Visual Studio replacement then they will have a very serious problem. However as you say the refactorings are really good and the officially supported languages are supported really well.

VSCode continues to feel like a cheap alternative as opposed to the software I want to use to solve a problem. It takes the place in my life of the editor I use when I need something more complicated than Vim but isn't really project work.

The company seems to be doing very well and I read recently that the owners are now billionaires so I expect they'll be OK for this decade and probably the next as well. I expect the decline would be very slow if it happens at all.

happyrock
I've been a long-time user of various JetBrains IDEs and a big fan, but I agree with the OP... the performance issues on OS X have become a major problem. WebStorm in particular has become virtually unusable in the last year or so. VSCode isn't as feature-rich, but it just works. I've mostly switched over but wish I didn't have to.