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As many on this discussion have noted, JetBrains tools not only don't collect dust, they are widely used, and the company is profitable. The company is privatel

As many on this discussion have noted, JetBrains tools not only don't collect dust, they are widely used, and the company is profitable. The company is privately held. I hear that they are constantly turning down investments. This proves 1) there is money in tools; 2) The VCs who routinely say "there is no money in tools" are insufficiently imaginitive, which is not surprising if you've spent any time with VCs. Why is JetBrains so successful where others have failed? A few thoughts: - Intellij was released in 2001. Eclipse was a close competitor for a while, which made no sense to me. Intellij just worked, and it was intuitive. I found Eclipse to be uglier, slower, flakier, crashier, and far less intuitive. Haven't heard of it in years. - It was always the case that at least some version of Jetbrains tools are zero cost. I got hooked on it early on. I have been using emacs far longer, and yes, while a sufficiently dedicated developer can make emacs behave like an IDE, it really isn't one. Intellij just worked out of the box. In the preceding two decades, there were high-end development tools available (Lisp machines and their all-encompassing environments, Lucid for C++, Purify for C/C++ memory problems, Atria, Rational. Trivia: Did you know that Purify was founded by Reed Hastings, the guy who went on to found Netflix?) The tools were expensive, and I don't think there were free versions. These companies all went out of business, or were acquired. - Jetbrains is incredibly focused. Having been through several VC-funded technology companies, I can easily see how VC brain farts can destroy a company's focus. (This dynamic isn't entirely the VCs fault. Founders stretch the truth to get funded, and then VCs insist on the fairy tales they've been told.) - Jetbrains has expanded to other languages, and other kinds of tools (besides just refactoring Java code). The number of languages, technologies, and frameworks that they support is just mind-boggling. - Consistent focus on improving developer's lives, through steady improvements in functionality, performance, and quality, over 20 years at this point. They started far ahead and have widened the gap. OPs tools look useful. I suspect they would attract a much wider audience if made available through Jetbrains products.

cortesoft 6y ago
I always have this weird sensation when people talk about Jetbrains.... I feel like some in some circles, usage of Jetbrains tools is ubiquitous, while in others it is unheard of. I have been a professional software developer for 15 years, and have never seen the tools in use anywhere I work. But I read things on the internet where people will say things like “well, every ruby developer uses Jetbrain” and seem to not even question this.... weird how circles like this form.
- alde 6y ago
  Yes, odd. Data point: me and most of my SE friends/coworkers pay for JetBrains IDEs (I was pretty deep into emacs and vim for many years prior to switching).
  - geophile 6y ago
    I definitely haven't "switched". In fact, I have a key binding for escaping to emacs to work on the current source. I find that useful because emacs kbd macros are so much less clunky than the Jetbrains equivalent. But yes, Jetbrains products have taken over much of what I used to do in emacs.
    - bo0tzz 6y ago
      > I have a key binding for escaping to emacs to work on the current source. Are you aware that you can set the Jetbrains editor to use emacs key bindings?
      - gimboland 6y ago
        Not OP but they're not saying they want to use emacs keybindings, they're saying they want to use emacs keyboard macros [1], which I agree really are a very handy feature having no equivalent in JetBrains. [1] https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Keyboard-Macros.html https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Ke...
        geophile 6y ago
        Emacs keyboard macros have an inferior equivalent in Intellij (and, I'm assuming, their other products). But also, emacs just somehow feels faster. Maybe keystrokes are marginally faster, maybe it's my expectations, but there it is. I know that Intellij has emacs key bindings, that's not the issue, I'm happy with the Intellij default bindings.
        geophile 6y ago
johannes1234321 6y ago
A thing which made Jetbrains successful probably was their deal.with Google. By making AndroidStudio free they got a large userbase. This also was my first direct encounter with them.
- geophile 6y ago
  I see that AndroidStudio was released in 2013. Intellij was pretty well established by that point. No doubt this deal helped them grow far faster than they would have otherwise.
- mhaberl 6y ago
  No. They were popular and making money before AS.
  - johannes1234321 6y ago
    Yes, they were known and used especially in Java-Sprache before and had a good quality product. Having a company like Google pushing it into the AppDev community and offering it for free certainly have attention and certainly a nice financial contribution from Google.
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
I think a very important point you are missing is that JetBrains was founded in Eastern Europe. Their developer costs when they were founded were probably ~20-25% (if that) of what developers cost in Silicon Valley, yet still at an amazing skill level. I honestly don't think JetBrains would have been able to succeed if they were founded in the US.
eitland 6y ago
> Intellij was released in 2001. Eclipse was a close competitor for a while, which made no sense to me. Intellij just worked, and it was intuitive. I found Eclipse to be uglier, slower, flakier, crashier, and far less intuitive. Haven't heard of it in years. Eclipse is still in use. And don't let the above scare you: it is not as beginner friendly as VS Code or Netbeans but it is a walk in the park compared to learning emacs or vim from scratch. It is just different, and if you come frome a file-centric and line centric workflow you should probably just as well get used to thinking about classes, functions interfaces etc: i.e. don't think "I'll open this file, look for that line", instead you jump to a class or a function or even better just go to the implementation of the function you are looking at. It just works. And you mostly don't cut, paste and update manually, you just ask eclipse to move it and then verify it in the scm commit view before you commit: "Moved x to y to make z possible"

cortesoft 6y ago

I always have this weird sensation when people talk about Jetbrains.... I feel like some in some circles, usage of Jetbrains tools is ubiquitous, while in others it is unheard of. I have been a professional software developer for 15 years, and have never seen the tools in use anywhere I work. But I read things on the internet where people will say things like “well, every ruby developer uses Jetbrain” and seem to not even question this.... weird how circles like this form.

alde 6y ago
Yes, odd. Data point: me and most of my SE friends/coworkers pay for JetBrains IDEs (I was pretty deep into emacs and vim for many years prior to switching).
- geophile 6y ago
  I definitely haven't "switched". In fact, I have a key binding for escaping to emacs to work on the current source. I find that useful because emacs kbd macros are so much less clunky than the Jetbrains equivalent. But yes, Jetbrains products have taken over much of what I used to do in emacs.
  - bo0tzz 6y ago
    > I have a key binding for escaping to emacs to work on the current source. Are you aware that you can set the Jetbrains editor to use emacs key bindings?
    - gimboland 6y ago
      Not OP but they're not saying they want to use emacs keybindings, they're saying they want to use emacs keyboard macros [1], which I agree really are a very handy feature having no equivalent in JetBrains. [1] https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Keyboard-Macros.html https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Ke...
      - geophile 6y ago
        Emacs keyboard macros have an inferior equivalent in Intellij (and, I'm assuming, their other products). But also, emacs just somehow feels faster. Maybe keystrokes are marginally faster, maybe it's my expectations, but there it is. I know that Intellij has emacs key bindings, that's not the issue, I'm happy with the Intellij default bindings.
      - geophile 6y ago

johannes1234321 6y ago

A thing which made Jetbrains successful probably was their deal.with Google. By making AndroidStudio free they got a large userbase. This also was my first direct encounter with them.

geophile 6y ago
I see that AndroidStudio was released in 2013. Intellij was pretty well established by that point. No doubt this deal helped them grow far faster than they would have otherwise.
mhaberl 6y ago
No. They were popular and making money before AS.
- johannes1234321 6y ago
  Yes, they were known and used especially in Java-Sprache before and had a good quality product. Having a company like Google pushing it into the AppDev community and offering it for free certainly have attention and certainly a nice financial contribution from Google.

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago

I think a very important point you are missing is that JetBrains was founded in Eastern Europe. Their developer costs when they were founded were probably ~20-25% (if that) of what developers cost in Silicon Valley, yet still at an amazing skill level. I honestly don't think JetBrains would have been able to succeed if they were founded in the US.

eitland 6y ago

> Intellij was released in 2001. Eclipse was a close competitor for a while, which made no sense to me. Intellij just worked, and it was intuitive. I found Eclipse to be uglier, slower, flakier, crashier, and far less intuitive. Haven't heard of it in years. Eclipse is still in use. And don't let the above scare you: it is not as beginner friendly as VS Code or Netbeans but it is a walk in the park compared to learning emacs or vim from scratch. It is just different, and if you come frome a file-centric and line centric workflow you should probably just as well get used to thinking about classes, functions interfaces etc: i.e. don't think "I'll open this file, look for that line", instead you jump to a class or a function or even better just go to the implementation of the function you are looking at. It just works. And you mostly don't cut, paste and update manually, you just ask eclipse to move it and then verify it in the scm commit view before you commit: "Moved x to y to make z possible"