
JetBrains to reimagine IntelliJ as text editor, add machine learning - MilnerRoute
https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2020/01/intellij-based-ide-features-roadmap-for-2020/
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rntksi
I remember reading about JetBrains in terms of profitability and capital. If I
remember correctly, JetBrains has never raised any money from outside sources
and has become profitable very quickly.

In terms of IDE, whenever I get into unfamiliar territory, JetBrains products
have always been better at onboarding me into it without having to configure
much. For getting into Clojure for example, IntelliJ+Cursive was my preferred
choice.

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Ididntdothis
It's definitely the type of company I like. They make useful products, charge
reasonable money for them and make a profit.

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Scarbutt
Who knows for how long, they are in tough spot (hence the 'reimagine' in the
title I guess), vscode is eating their market share fast, they probably
already lost the web dev market they had and, for Java/C# is just a matter of
time, a few years but today is decent.

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lucidone
I used vscode as my daily driver for a long time, I find webstorm is a much
better experience, particularly because vscode is so centred around javascript
and non-js plugins are lacking. I work in consulting, so my tech stack changes
every few months. Being able to swap from pycharm to phpstorm for example and
have familiar keybindings is nice.

~~~
ygra
I found VS Code to be quite pleasant for C# and Python as well.

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epicgiga
JetBrains IDEs are great. Each update seems to be a windfall of "wow that's
really useful" and "yeah I've always wanted that".

But man I wish they'd improve the indexing. Pretty much the only thing that
can thrash my CPU hard enough to cause noticable hanging. Perhaps their
machine learning can do something about that... Lazy indexing based on recent
areas of focus or something.

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namibj
Use a different GC, like e.g. the ZGC. I don't see any hangs anymore.

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staticassertion
I'm reluctant to use non-standard settings that the intellij team may not be
optimizing for.

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monadic2
The default vm settings aren’t great. I would also give the vm plenty of heap
space.

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avalys
Sounds great. I’ve been a delighted Jetbrains user since I started using
IntelliJ in 2002, when it was clearly head and shoulders above every other
Java IDE, and I’ve been pleased to see the company’s continued growth and
success over the past 18 years.

They have to be the only company shipping a significant desktop Java/Swing app
today? I wonder how they feel about the future of that platform.

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gibolt
I'm pretty sure they are mainly developing in (and converted) a significant
portion of the codebase to Kotlin (developed in-house to make it less
painful).

It is still Java underneath, though

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hiram112
He was probably referring to the Swing GUI toolkit, which allows you to
develop a GUI once and run on Windows, Mac, and Linux and keep mostly the same
look and feel.

Swing was popular briefly back in the Applet days on the internet and also for
a lot of internal corporate apps, but never saw much use in commercial and
open source apps.

I think the main GUI libs were removed in version 11 of Java released a year
or so ago, and now they're packaged separately.

According to Oracle, support will be provided for a few more years
'commercially' which means you'd have to pay them if you want security
updates. They're apparently trying to push off the stewardship of the library
to the community, like they've already done with a lot of Java technology that
they've ignored since buying Sun (e.g. Netbeans platform).

I'm not sure what that means for the OpenJDK versions which is what most of
the world now uses instead of Oracle.

* [https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/javaclientroa...](https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/javaclientroadmapupdate2018mar-4414431.pdf)

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vanattab
I am a big fan of JetBrains Resharper for .Net development. It saved me a ton
of time refactoring and documenting a large project recently.

~~~
thrower123
It is without a doubt the best $100 you can spend as a .NET developer. The
only complaint I have is that it thrashes the disk because VS can't be arsed
to make a 64-bit version, and so there's a stupid memory ceiling.

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shade
I actually prefer JetBrains Rider these days. Works great for general C#
development, cross-platform, and doesn't thrash my disk like crazy.

Granted, I just spent about two years doing Java dev in IntelliJ and recently
moved back over to working with C#. I'd gotten pretty used to working with
IntelliJ so that probably colors my viewpoint a little, but the JetBrains IDEs
do have some features I really like - the class structure pane, for example,
is really useful.

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nickcox
Yeah, it’s just objectively better imo and it addresses GPs wish for a 64bit
process.

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thrower123
I am still using some archaic shit like Linq-to-SQL, so VS tooling is still
helpful. Otherwise, I would gladly swap over.

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_pmf_
How about making Android Studio not sound like a VTOL vehicle when compiling
projects that compile in 5 seconds in Gradle outside of AS?

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alfg
Great line of products. I love GoLand, CLion and Datagrip. I mostly use VSCode
now, but I've always preferred the debugging experience and tooling with
JetBrains products for my more focused projects.

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dantodor
For auto-complete, they should learn from TabNine

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dang
Url changed from [https://devclass.com/2020/01/21/jetbrains-reimagines-
intelli...](https://devclass.com/2020/01/21/jetbrains-reimagines-intellij-as-
text-editor-machine-learning/), which points to this.

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ilovecaching
There are several reasons I’ll never touch a JB product:

1\. I hate the idea of paying for the thing I write code in. I may not be a FS
nut, but I’m a big believer in supporting open source by using open source.

2\. IDEs tend to be optimized for the write path, when it’s the read path that
really matters. Giving people too many tools to rush through writing code is a
bad idea. That’s basically how Java became unusable. Writing code is bad. The
less code you can write to solve your problem the better.

3\. Most of the people I admire at work and in open source don’t use an IDE.
Clearly, an IDE is not a necessity to being a great programmer, so why shell
out money for one.

4\. Not being able to use my text editor I’m a terminal is just a nonstarter
for me. It’s immensely convenience, and some workplaces can’t even handle
local development because of monorepos.

5\. IDEs rob you of the knowledge of the underlying tools, locking you into an
ecosystem that you can’t take with you all the time.

6\. I’ve worked in plenty of places that didn’t have JB stuff available. Never
worked at a place you couldn’t use vim or emacs.

My philosophy on text editors is that you can get 90% of the benefit of an IDE
with way less tooling. I use vim, ALE, and fzf/rg and I’ve never felt the
least bit slowed down by my tooling.

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Garbage
Regarding point 1, you know that IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition is open
source[1], right?

[1] [https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-
community](https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community)

~~~
wolco
Try using your favourite language will lead you to search for a plug-in. Then
you discover you need the ultimate edition. Parts of it are open source but
all of the parts you need aren't.

