14 ms·

What I find truly bizarre is how many software engineers, who are aware of how much they earn and how long it really takes to make software, are so resistant to

by jmyeet 4y ago

What I find truly bizarre is how many software engineers, who are aware of how much they earn and how long it really takes to make software, are so resistant to paying anything for tools that make their job easier and faster. It blows my mind. Take the Jetbrains IDEs. I don't mean to offend any VSC fans out there but the Jetbrains IDEs are simply better and more mature in every single way. For individual use, most of them are <$100/year. In years past I saw this same struggle with IntelliJ vs Eclipse or even vim/emacs. The amount of time I saw people spend on tuning, fixing, tinkering, debugging and otherwise modifying their .vim or .emacs files or their various incompatible Eclipse plugins (eg famously there were 2 big big plugins for Eclipse at one point and neither of them completely worked). At least with vim/emacs it works over an SSH connection but Eclipse? Why are so many resistant so other people earning a living particularly when the payoff (ie time-saved) is so easily quantifiable? And why do people who generally earn so much value their time so little?

chadlavi 4y ago
Personal use is a different question, but if my employer doesn't pay for it I'm not buying software to use for their benefit. Any a lot of employers go huh, a free one eh? Use that.
alexalx666 4y ago
Actually, I recently had to switch from CLion to VSC b/c I could not figure out how to enable rust-analyzer in the latest version of CLion. Also platform.io support is better in VSC. I love UX of interllij tho. I should say that I do agree with your main point.
roblabla 4y ago
> I don't mean to offend any VSC fans out there but the Jetbrains IDEs are simply better and more mature in every single way. Yeah, no. Don't get me wrong, Jetbrains IDEs are great. But they're not as easy to extend, its proprietary nature makes it hard to debug when writing extensions. I use neovim primarily, but I've got licenses for a bunch of other editors (Nova, Sublime, used to have IntelliJ). I do sincerely try them, but I keep going back to open source, extensible editors like vim, emacs, vscode... because I invariably need to tweak something in the editor, and doing so in the proprietary editors can be so damn painful. Now, you do make a solid point though. I guess I probably should donate to neovim. Guess I'll go do that!
- aidos 4y ago
  Yup, it’s definitely not a money thing. There’s plenty of tooling I do pay for, but I like hacking on my editor. Sure, you need to go deep sometimes to tune things how you want, but hey, that’s what we do, right? The important point is that people have different priorities and will make different trade offs. For me I like lean, fast and hackable. For others it’s that they don’t want to have to understand or configure it. That’s totally fine.
  - sureglymop 4y ago
    I also like that Microsoft has made it incredibly easy to create an extension for VS Code. Most of the functionality usually doesn't even require code, just modifying the package.json file to add UI elements and such.
  - lopatin 4y ago
    You're right that it's a totally different mindset. I was going to post a comment along the lines of "anytime I need to hack my editor, it's a waste of my time". That's where IntelliJ shines. It's so mature and functional out of the box, that I don't need to hack it. I came from Emacs where, once the initial fun of hacking it wore off, it was just a drag.
- q-big 4y ago
  > Yeah, no. Don't get me wrong, Jetbrains IDEs are great. But they're not as easy to extend, its proprietary nature makes it hard to debug when writing extensions. IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition is open source under Apache License 2.0: https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community
  - f311a 4y ago
    This repo contains all the free versions including Pycharm
moonchrome 4y ago
I use and pay a subscription for entire jetbrains suite. That said - vscode is miles better for JS/TS development IMO. In that world I don't want the full fat IDE experience because : - it's slower - even some basic things like terminal rendering feels better/faster in vscode - ecosystem is developing independently and so fast that IDE support can't keep up - everyone else is using CLI centric workflows so it's maintained and tested
raverbashing 4y ago
I think it's an issue with some tools being "good enough" (majority of the free ones) + the feeling where you paid for something and it feels meh (or maybe it asks for paid upgrades, etc) I tried Sublime Text once and then never bothered later. There wasn't anything that exciting about it that I couldn't do one way or another anywhere else. The barrier to payment is higher if the comparison with a free tool is mixed. If there was one big thing the free ones couldn't do or they were much worse then there would be a case for paying for your tools
the_duke 4y ago
> but the Jetbrains IDEs are simply better and more mature in every single way That's just not true. I have access to the full Jetbrains suite for free, yet I still opt to use Neovim or VS Code/Codium for most languages. Jetbrains IDEs are great in many ways, but are objectively worse on several metrics: * slow startup times * slow initial operations until the JIT is warmed up * even once warm, you always eventually do something that lags or blocks the UI, maybe barely enough to consciously notice, maybe for several seconds; and it really affects user experience if you care about latency - it drives me crazy each time * plugins: VS Code has a wide range of great plugins, many more than the Jetbrains ecosystem and especially when it comes to more niche languages or functionality, Vim/emacs but also VS Code are much more extensible in general * keyboard warriors: the Vim plugin is fine, and you can configure the Jetbrains IDEs to do almost anything with the keyboard, but you need way more arcane knowledge in the form of memorized context-specific bindings, and you always eventually forget something and need to switch back to the mouse. Vim and emacs are just much better there. VS Code is actually also better, because the interactions are significantly more customizable. * Wayland / tiling WM / input lag: Jetbrains products really suck on tiling window managers like i3 / sway because they use native windows for dialogs. They also don't support Wayland natively, so they run through X server emulation which hurts input lag and brings plenty of bugs like weird dialog behaviour. In general the input lag is quite bad on Linux, it seems to be much better optimized on Mac OS There are plenty of valid reasons why you wouldn't want to use their IDEs, even if they provide more integration and superior refactoring.
- dominotw 4y ago
  I have jetbrains license but i still use vim almost 80% of the time for the reasons you mentioned.
- steve_adams_86 4y ago
  I haven’t checked in a couple years, but this mirrors my experience very closely. I pay for good editors just to support the creators. I want to pay for the one I use daily. The reality is that vscode is the most extensible, performant on average (not in all ways), and useful IDE I have.
- 4y ago
blip54321 4y ago
I think most of us value our freedom more. Most people don't think of it in terms of freedom, but freedom it is. With proprietary software: - You don't know when it will disappear or be discontinued. Even your paid-for existing version stops working when the activation servers go down. - You might be forced into an "upgrade" which breaks something you rely on - That's not to mention issues like being able to fix bugs yourself, extend it, or understand it. I don't do this often directly, but something like being able to understand a file format my data is in or similar is common I don't mind paying for things, but things need to be a lot better on other axes before this one becomes the most important. My experience is that: - Things I did decades ago are sometimes useful. Nearly 100% of the time, if this was in a proprietary system, it's gone or unusable. My LaTeX files still work. - Companies switch between growth mode and cash cow mode. When this happens, the cost to me is almost always higher than the initial benefit over free. - Which is better on other axes goes back-and-forth. An investment I make into a tool now doesn't mean it will be the leading tool in five years. - Those sorts of long-term considerations are almost always more important than short-term technical stuff.
- neurobashing 4y ago
  So do you only work for companies who have 100% open source and whose business model or product is a public benefit? Eg, "I value my freedom" is a perfectly acceptable position, until Mark Zuckerberg starts signing your checks, you know?
  - wiseowise 4y ago
    Facebook/Meta are huge contributors to open source, so I'm not sure what your comment is supposed to mean.
    - nightski 4y ago
      Their products are proprietary. Honestly open sourcing their stuff just nets free labor.
      - 4y ago
JoeAltmaier 4y ago
Not fair! Open-source, shareware, public-domain, freeware - been touted for decades now. But folks buy into all that and suddenly they're 'resistant to other people earning a living'. Or I interpreted that wrong, and it's supposed to be a criticism of open-source? Then I agree. Open-source is a pox on responsible and reliable software, cannibalizing good software by offering free, bad software.
illegalmemory 4y ago
I think developers do pay a Lot for hardware tools ( Mac / screen / custom keyboard / IOTs they will never play with and so on ). They just don't pay much for software tools. Marketing / Sales people will not pay that much for hardware but pay a lot for software tools.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
zitterbewegung 4y ago
I think that you are looking at it from the wrong perspective. 1. IDEs that are made primarily for your host operating system by who writes the operating system is basically a loss leader and is there to tie you to the host os 2. Emacs / vi / vim (full disclosure I am an Emacs user) are generally usable out of the box with no modification. Tinkering with your configuration for Emacs is for people who are experienced with Emacs and I primarily do it to make the text editor I want. 3. The actual paid solutions seem to be profitable enough for people to use but for reasons 1 and 2 will have a disadvantage to compete with them.
douglaswlance 4y ago
Do you use VSC extensions? People extend the web-based editor to make it easier to build web applications and share those tools on the web. Using a web-based editor to build web applications is a self-reinforcing, positive loop. I can see why people who aren't building web apps or aren't using extensions are confused why so many people prefer VSCode.
hotpotamus 4y ago
It seems to me that reasonably priced software is quite rare. To me and IDE is basically a fancy text editor and I've never really found one that really spoke to me (coding is not my primary job though), so $100/year seems steep for what looks like mostly a text editor to me. (Side note for all the vim/emacs wars, I'm quite satisfied with gedit). It also seems like the era of buying software is over; now it is a rent that you pay and all the other rents I must pay are going up so I'm not looking for any other. So I see the appeal of free software (as in liberty and as in beer) - I recently switched a work machine over to pure Debian and it's a breath of fresh air. No proprietary container based installs, no advertising/telemetry built in, and I can choose a desktop environment that I like with some idea that it won't randomly move GUI elements around and change things for the sake of change because some product manager or UX engineer or other needs to make said change to justify their over-inflated salary. LXDE still looked like the LXDE I remember and the same goes for Cinnamon and MATE.
realusername 4y ago
> Take the Jetbrains IDEs. I don't mean to offend any VSC fans out there but the Jetbrains IDEs are simply better and more mature in every single way. For individual use, most of them are <$100/year. They just aren't, I would not switch to Jetbrains from VSCode even if it was free. It's not a question of pricing and Jetbrains themselves started to realise it since they are building some VSC clone (forgot the name right now)
- elashri 4y ago
  Their new VSC alternative name is fleet and I don't think they confirmed it will be free like VSCode though.
  - realusername 4y ago
    Thanks for the name, I completely forgot about it. I'm totally fine paying for it if it's nice, it's just that I prefer something similar to VSCode rather than Jetbrains IDEs.
  - diffeomorphism 4y ago
    Are you refering to free or free? Paying money I don't mind, but being non-free would be a big drawback.
- jebronie 4y ago
  They just are though, once you realise how much more powerful they are. I had a collegue until recently (he was let go), who was a staunch VSCode fan that refused to use Jetbrains IDEs. His code is terrible and riddled with bugs. Most of them were even easily detected by the Jetbrains IDEs. Now I have to clean up his shitty projects. He also spend a lot of time configuring his shitty VSCode instead of working.
  - Volundr 4y ago
    I've tried IntelliJ for both Elixir and Clojure. While Cursive is ok, I can confidently say that the vscode Elixir support is far, far better, and in Cursive vs Cider I'd take Cider any day. Yeah, if your writing Kotlin/Java IntelliJ is a no-brainer, but for many of us the situation is much more nuanced.
II2II 4y ago
I have used modern editors. For the most part they are amazing. That being said, I always end up returning to the same old open source editor. Much of the reason can be attributed to one quality: it has been around for as long as I have been alive and it will likely be around long after I am gone. This means that I am continually building upon prior skills, rather than tossing them out the window each time a new fad comes along or a vendor goes out of business. Incidentally, this is also why I don't see the payoff from commercial editors as being easily quantifiable. They may do a rather good job at reducing the learning curve, but they cannot eliminate it.
lukastyrychtr 4y ago
Unfortunately for the paid IDEs, even the accessibility for screen readers is much better in VSC.
lelanthran 4y ago
I can afford lots of things, doesn't mean I'm going to buy them. What's bizarre about that? The only Bizarre Attitude I see here is yours: that there exists a best option and why aren't more people taking it? There's no such thing as a "Best Option".
ValleZ 4y ago
This is because most developers are not willing to learn even basic code completion and refactoring functions in IDE. When you write constructors and getters by hand in Intellij Idea, chances are you won’t pay for that.
- xigoi 4y ago
  Vim has auto-completion and snippets. I don't use VSCode, but I'm pretty sure it does too. So what's the point of paying for them?
  - ValleZ 4y ago
    Did you try any IDE from Intellij? Just spend 30 minutes on exploring what can it do out of the box.
  - ValleZ 4y ago
    And since you don't use an IDE you can try to spend this time on exploring what an IDE can do. If you really write code you can write code 10-100x faster.
encryptluks2 4y ago
You're really missing an important factor of software development which is making things accessible to all walks of life. I simply prefer open source because it doesn't exclude specific classes of people because of money. Imagine a future where only rich people and those from wealthy families get access to the good development tools to help them get richer, while poor developers and those not from a wealthy family struggle to even get access to basic tooling, or have to exchange their personal information and rights in exchange. Fortunately, many people in software are not simply money worshipers and envision a future where money isn't the priority in building a better world.
squiffsquiff 4y ago
There's also the issue of signing in or applying a licence file on a system owned by someone else. In some environments this simply isn't allowed.
- mattkrause 4y ago
  Actually making the purchase can also be a nightmare. I’m at an academic research institute, so I haven’t hit this problem with JetBrains (free licenses—thanks!), but there are lots of other products where spending $15 to save an hour is a no-brainer, but spending $15 + two hours of arguing with purchasing over whether it’s a “legitimate business purpose” is…also a no brainer.
wiseowise 4y ago
> Take the Jetbrains IDEs. I don't mean to offend any VSC fans out there but the Jetbrains IDEs are simply better and more mature in every single way. - Worse performance - Worse plugin ecosystem - No LSP support Also, their stance on supporting other ecosystems. While I completely understand their standpoint as a business, I prefer VSCode team's approach to this. https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360001627960-IntelliJ-support-for-Language-Server-Protocol-as-a-client- https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/community/po... https://discuss.kotlinlang.org/t/official-support-for-visual-studio-code/8242 https://discuss.kotlinlang.org/t/official-support-for-visual... > Why are so many resistant so other people earning a living particularly when the payoff (ie time-saved) is so easily quantifiable? Is it, though?
tharne 4y ago
> What I find truly bizarre is how many software engineers, who are aware of how much they earn and how long it really takes to make software, are so resistant to paying anything for tools that make their job easier and faster. It blows my mind. We're not resistant to paying, we're resistant to rent-seeking. I would, and have, happily buy a piece of software I use regularly. What I will not do is a pay a monthly fee in perpetuity for a piece of software that I cannot truly own, where features I need can be removed on a whim and where I am prohibited from adding features I want. I also find the massive amount of tracking and general disregard for privacy appalling, but that's a missive for another day. The subscription model that's become predominant is a nightmare and is increasingly user-hostile. Why is it so surprising that a lot of folks don't like it? So in summary, I will gladly pay for software when: 1. I can pay up front an actually own it 2. I can see the source code and modify it 3. It does not track or otherwise monitor me None of these things are a big ask.
- joshstrange 4y ago
  JetBrains products have a perpetual fallback license so you absolutely can pay up front and then never pay again if you are ok being on an older version of the software. Maybe you are the exception but I find that 99.99% of the people who use the "it's open source so I can modify it" argument never so much as look at the code let alone consider making modifications. JetBrains products have an open-core (IntelliJ [0]) that can look at and contribute to if you so desire. Lastly you say "None of these things are a big ask.", you just want the world on a silver platter for no cost, sorry but that is a big ask, especially if you care at all about the quality of your tools. If you're happy building an IDE from the group up using something like vscode and dealing with 100's of plugins that do the same thing slightly differently then be my guest but most of your arguments fall flat IMHO. Providing an excellent product with constant updates is not "rent-seeking". [0] https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community
  - tharne 4y ago
    > Lastly you say "None of these things are a big ask.", you just want the world on a silver platter for no cost, sorry but that is a big ask, Silver platter? Lol. Each of these things would require *less* effort on the part of software companies, not more. Upfront payment? It's easier to charge once than to set up recurring bill pay. Open source? You already have the code, just let me see it. Tracking? Just don't track me. Actually requires the company and it's devs to write less code not more. Companies managed to successfully sell software for many years without tracking and spying on their users > Providing an excellent product with constant updates is not "rent-seeking" It is when the updates are things I and others do not want, or need, and did not ask for. I have an old computer running 15 year-old version of MS Office. Not once have I have ever had need for one of the newer features for Office that MS has rolled out in the last decade and a half. That might not be true for everyone, but it's true for me and many others.
dinkleberg 4y ago
The thing that bothers me the most about the resistance to pay for anything is that you're not spreading the love to your fellow devs/creators. I know HN has grown so this may not be as true as before, but we're a community of builders! We should all understand the time and effort put into each of these projects. You'll tip a delivery person but won't support the people spending thousands of hours building the tools that makes your life tangibly better? </rant>
- elashri 4y ago
  I think of HN to more of a community of rational people. Rational people pay for what they believe would get value to their workflow or just support a principle or an idea like open source. I hardly can see any of that applies to Jetbrains products. many people here stated (which I agree) that Vscode and vim/emacs is better for them technically and for being open source.
synergy20 4y ago
I used VScode for 2 years then bought Jetbrains for 3 years, now I'm switching back to VScode. I feel vscode is getting better plus it is open source. Does open source matter a lot? maybe. For example, Jetbrains' Teamcity is still under investigation for Solarwinds hack which is a concern, plus I think a while ago the core developers are mostly from Russia at Jetbrains. Those combined with an improved vscode made the switch for me. I mainly use vim in practice but I do need a GUI IDE once a while.
tempodox 4y ago
I ditched VSCodium for JetBrains Rider and couldn't be happier. On the Mac Rider is miles ahead of Visual Studio (shuddering with revulsion). But no IDE will ever dissuade me from using vim. I just use them for different things.
ttctciyf 4y ago
This doesn't seem to have anything to do with the article or its author, who switched not because of cost but because of unavoidable telemetry and tracking. What I find truly bizarre is how many virtual monopoly owning companies, rather than concentrate on maximising the financial gains available from their enviable dominance of a market segment, instead focus on miserablising user experience and instrusively degrading their paying customers' sense of ownership and enjoyment in using the software they produce.
q-big 4y ago
> What I find truly bizarre is how many software engineers, who are aware of how much they earn [...] are so resistant to paying anything for tools that make their job easier and faster. It blows my mind. The property premise that software engineers earn so much clearly holds for the USA (and some other countries), but there are a lot of countries where it is not true.
prmoustache 4y ago
> What I find truly bizarre is how many software engineers, [...] are so resistant to paying anything for tools that make their job easier and faster. It blows my mind. What I find truly bizarre is why you bring this up in this discussion. The mentionned link is about a developper who switch from one proprietary to an open source software, both being free as in free beer. The rest of your post is about being a fanboy of Jetbrains. Sure you may like it and are free to do so but I don't see what is difficult to understand that other people may have different preferences. > The amount of time I saw people spend on tuning, fixing, tinkering, debugging and otherwise modifying their .vim or .emacs files Are you making things up? I only tinker with my neovim init file whem I want to add a plugin, which is adding one vim-plug line and command and don't take much more time than adding a plugin for another IDE. Most people have their preferred settings that they migrate from one machine to another. I used an example vim init file from someone else and only did a handful of changes that took me probably less than 10-15 minutes over as many years.
cmrdporcupine 4y ago
I love the Jetbrains IDEs and have used them for years and they'll pry CLion from my cold dead hands. I pay for a license for it. I've tried VSCode many times and always come back to CLion. However. JetBrains needs to consider rebuilding on something other than Java/Swing. The UI is relatively laggy. It fights with many window managers on Linux. It feels clunky compared to VS Code, from a UI POV.
jollofricepeas 4y ago
You’re 100% right. Developers are no different than other humans. Lazy, indifferent, unappreciative, self-absorbed… Sublime Text is a perfect example. It’s a travesty with as popular as that editor was that developers would literally use it for work and for personal projects but refuse to pay for what everyone agreed at the time was the best tool for those not using IDE’s. It pissed me off to the point that anytime I paired with someone and the SublimeText popup showed, I’d ask them to pay the $40 or whatever was being asked.
pphysch 4y ago
> What I find truly bizarre is how many software engineers, who are aware of how much they earn and how long it really takes to make software, are so resistant to paying anything for tools that make their job easier and faster. It blows my mind. How long have you worked in software, or any industry? "Pay for this thing that will make your job easier" is the Big Lie of software. ~Half of the time it becomes "makes your job harder" (often imperceptibly without hindsight!) because the product is primarily designed to lock-in paying enterprise customers and only secondarily to provide them with a productivity-boosting service. It is rational for people working in the industry to be skeptical of such claims.
deleted 4y ago
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legulere 4y ago
Software engineers know that it's creating new software that is expensive, not copying it. Why not give copies away for free when you satisfied the need that led to the software being written? Even microsoft now understands that it makes more sense to write software to better sell services than to try to sell software directly.
vehemenz 4y ago
This is something I wonder about all the time. I think there a number of reasons: 1. Ideological - probably can't reason with these people 2. Preference for small tools vs. one monolithic tool - less efficient, but I can understand it 3. Ignorance - Many younger/inexperienced developers never learned an IDE, and genuinely do not understand what they are missing 4. Cost - not a concern for most of us, but for minors, students, or developers in India, China, and other developing countries, this is a huge reason that drives ubiquity of VSCode 5. Reduced friction/ubiquity - See 4. Basically, people are already used to it when they get a well-paying job and in theory could use JetBrains IDEs 6. Performance - See 4 again. Not really an issue unless you're on old hardware (especially given that VSCode performs poorly, can't handle large files, etc.) In conclusion, I think there are some legitimate reasons, but your larger point still stands.
jonnycomputer 4y ago
I'm a fan of Jetbrains IDEs (despite having some complaints), and use them at work regularly (and because I work in academia, I get the enterprise version free of cost). But I think of Emacs as a life-long companion-tool, something that I'll be able to use, how I like it, until I die, on pretty much any operating system, and on pretty much any hardware.
ekidd 4y ago
> What I find truly bizarre is how many software engineers, who are aware of how much they earn and how long it really takes to make software, are so resistant to paying anything for tools that make their job easier and faster. The first time I paid for a fancy IDE, it ran on an Apple IIgs in the late 80s. It was the first of many. Unfortunately, commerical IDEs and editors go out of business constantly. The rare survivors, like BBEdit, tend to be limited to a single OS. Around 1997, I figured out what I want out of an editor: - Supports every language and text file format I'll need. - Runs on every desktop OS. - Customizable, and scriptable using an industry-standard language. - Will still be around in 20 years. Emacs met these requirements, and I used it for over 20 years. A few years ago, I switched to VS Code. I don't buy commercial editors because they don't provide the key features I want. And I don't trust them to stick around.
saghm 4y ago
> I don't mean to offend any VSC fans out there but the Jetbrains IDEs are simply better and more mature in every single way. I'm not sure if you mean this literally, but I think that's a bit of an exaggeration. I mentioned this the other day here [1], but for whatever reason, I've been completely unable to get Intellij to properly allow me to work on a remote codebase for my job. Despite my company giving me access to the Ultimate edition, the 2021 version of Intellij just flat out refused to connect when I tried to use the ssh plugin, and the 2022 edition's beta of a new ssh feature worked for about a week before somehow getting into a state where it would reconnect every 5 seconds or so and scroll me to the top of whatever file I was trying to edit. I'm sure there are ways to get it to work, but given that VS Code just worked the first time I set it up and never really got in my way, I have no motivation to spend more than a few minutes trying to get Intellij working before just giving up and going back to VS Code. I think if you see behavior that seems so obviously "wrong" to you, it's worth giving people the benefit of the doubt and actually trying to see _why_ people do things that way before just dismissing them as irrational. I wouldn't be surprised if you've actually talked to people who might have experiences like this that could explain the discrepancy, but if you start the conversation so dismissively, most people aren't going to bother trying to share their experiences with you. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31669461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31669461
NaN1352 4y ago
> For individual use, most of them are <$100/year. Except as a developer you need one app, then another, and another… soon enough you’ll be paying 10 x 50$/year. And paying a sub for software is repugnant to me. I bought FontAwesome 5 while it was in KickStarter, it’s no longer updated (it’s now version 6), but at least I can still fully use the thousands of icons I paid for. tldr: way too damn expensive.
- apple4ever 4y ago
  Yeah exactly. They are just too expensive. I'm happy to pay for things that I believe are worth it, but especially with yearly subscriptions I don't see the value equation meeting it for these IDEs.
LoveGracePeace 4y ago
Actually Eclipse (and Spring Tool Suite based on Eclipse) works great. Being able to simultaneously debug several microservices in one Eclipse instance is one amazing feature.
bitwize 4y ago
Who's to say we aren't productive with our chosen editors? I find malarkey like autocomplete to be distracting, so I use Emacs with it turned off. Because Emacs can be programmed and extended as it is used, it is way more productive to me than any "fixed function" IDE -- including Visual Studio Code[0] I could not do my job nearly as effectively in Visual Studio Code or JetBrains as I do in Emacs. There is a perspective dependence to what the "best tool for the job" is. You are most productive in JetBrains and that is fine, but that doesn't make your colleagues less productive in their choice of editor. [0] To extend Visual Studio Code, you have to start a new Node TypeScript project that uses VSCode's cumbersome API, compile it, test it in an "Extension Host", bundle it in a .vsix and then, at long last, you can use it in your regular editor. It's clear that Visual Studio Code's designers did not want end users programming their editor, let alone programming and using it at the same time. As a VSCode end user, the happy path is to select from pre-made extensions in Microsoft's extension catalog.
davidkunz 4y ago
I'd rather say instead of paying money they should spend time to master their tools. I don't see musicians complaining about learning their instrument.
axkdev 4y ago
I was a jetbrains guy until I discovered the vim/neovim ecosystem. Yes, configurling vim takes time but 1.its fun 2. I can fine tune it to my specific work flows in ways simply not achievable with Idea or any other editor. After configuration is finished, the actual time it takes to do my work is comparable with a full fledged ide. It's probably even faster, considering vim loads faster and also forces you to use the keyboard for everything.
- kingboss 4y ago
  Imagine being on your deathbed thinking: "Configuring vim was so fun. Totally worth it". I sometimes feel that most people on this forums are under 24 years of age. So sad to read these comments. So much to do, so many interesting things.... but people enjoy configuring text editors...
  - aeze 4y ago
    If people enjoy it, why do you think they would regret it later? It sounds like you just don't enjoy it, which is ok.
    - kingboss 4y ago
      A lot of regret actually comes from enjoying something and then later realising that it was stupid and a waste of time. Time that you would have liked to spend on a more useful endeavour.
      - aeze 4y ago
        A lot of your personal regret might come from that. I think it's important to note that there are many people who can look back fondly at times they were simply enjoying themselves, even if that time was not strictly 'useful'.
        kingboss 4y ago
        The joyful days of configuring vim. You are trolling me at this point.
manmal 4y ago
To me, IntelliJ IDEs feel clunky, slow, feature bloated, and messy. I did pay a couple times for AppCode, but eventually stopped doing that. VSCode on the other hand feels lightweight and fast. I use it exactly _because_ I value my time.
thebackup 4y ago
I mostly write C++ and I would love to use CLion, but my employer won’t pay for the license fees, so my choices are VSCode or Eclipse.
- kaashif 4y ago
  > my employer won’t pay for the license fees If it costs $200 or whatever and would clearly save you more than that in time ($200 is a few hours of developer time) then surely it's worth it. I guess the problem is that the process isn't in place to make buying CLion easy, so there'd be a lot of administrative overhead. Or no-one cares about maximising productivity. Or it's not clear to them that CLion actually is better than alternatives. Or maybe they want all developers using the same tools so any process improvements are shared. None of those seem like great reasons tbh, but I did just make them up as part of a strawman to lambast your employer.
rpdillon 4y ago
$100 for a tool that enables my career is completely worth it. There are two issues: * Freedom - my workflow is centered around modifying tools to suit my use case. OSI open source makes this easier sometimes. * Ubiquity - I detest spending time updating license keys, figuring out if that key works with the version I downloaded, finding out that new-feature isn't available in the version I paid for, or wrangling with how many computers my license will allow me to run the tool on. If the trappings and enforcement of monetization weren't present, I'd spend a lot more money on software tools. Aside: I worked on a team managing build infra at one point, and just getting license servers and license files set up so that CI could leverage proprietary tools was a major, sustained effort. I know personal tooling is more lightweight, but the same dynamics are present. So my investment in tuning Emacs feels to me like an actual investment: I've gotten really good at tuning Emacs for various uses, and the time I spent on that has made me a more effective engineer in some ways. I bring Emacs to every job I work and even if I end up using JetBrains for e.g. Android dev, I still have Emacs in my pocket for text editing, Magit, org mode, dired, and shells/terms. I don't feel the same way about time spent managing licenses for proprietary tooling, or even learning this particular company's git tooling; I just keep using Magit. Maybe others don't feel as strongly that their preferred tooling be "everywhere", but I really value it.
ksec 4y ago
>are so resistant to paying anything >Take the Jetbrains IDEs Because most of the modern day software engineers now works on Web related technology. And somehow everything on the Web has to be free or Open Source. It is much easier to sell IDE or paid for softwares to embedded or system programming developers, or basically any developers which doesn't have anything to do with the Web.
butbutbut123456 4y ago
> What I find truly bizarre is how many software engineers, who are aware of how much they earn and how long it really takes to make software, are so resistant to paying anything for tools that make their job easier and faster. It blows my mind. I agree. I'm always surprised at what technical people aren't willing to pay for. I think I used to be like this though. I used to really enjoy playing with my tools and learning about everything. Now that I'm older, I just want to get the job done, then go outside and play at the park or something.
indymike 4y ago
> Take the Jetbrains IDEs. I don't mean to offend any VSC fans out there but the Jetbrains IDEs are simply better and more mature in every single way. For individual use, most of them are <$100/year. After a particularly bad tooling week (js supply chain problems, plugin problems and more than the usual amount of DB changes) Our dev team made the unanimous call to move require all developers to use Jetbrains IDEs instead of the mix of VSCode, Emacs and whatever else... Our codebase is Python, Go and Javascript, and data is stored in Postgres, so we use Goland, PyCharm, WebStorm and Datagrip regularly. We also started using the awesome Micro editor when we need something that can be installed on a remote because it's key bindings are identical to JetBrains... A few thoughts: 1. We all picked up 2-3 hours per week of time we were spending pounding plugins on Emacs and VSCode into shape. There was a lot more fiddling going on than we thought. 2. The debugger in JetBrains IDEs is top notch. Debuggers are underrated, and bad debuggers make using print and over-logging seem like the best option. 3. When we want to do something new, (containers, notebooks, etc...) it is almost always supported, and there are not 100 incomplete plugins to sort out (both Emacs and VSCode have this issue). 4. We're doing things the same way, which sometimes really pays off. For example, instead of a mix of PostMan, python scripts, restclient, and bashified curl for making api requests, we just use the client in the IDE... which means we can share them. 5. Datagrip and the database tools in the IDEs are incredibly useful. Ok, so the payoff: By the end of the second week, we were over the learning curve, and the payoff came in the third week: a total of 16 hours of developer time not spent on twiddling with Emacs, vim, Sublime and VSCode. That time savings paid for the subscription for the year.
- ParetoOptimal 4y ago
  > Our dev team made the unanimous call to move require all developers to use Jetbrains IDEs Wow, it'd be time to look for a new job. I think having a blessed option and understanding of "use what you want but don't let it affect deliverables" is best.
  - cameronh90 4y ago
    While I've never worked anywhere that enforced the IDE, I can see the appeal. Problems like linting and formatting working differently for different developers because they're using different tools, not updating settings correctly because their IDE uses a different settings file. Junior developers struggling to find people to help them because everyone's using their own toolchain. It's not all just about deliverables.
mixmastamyk 4y ago
Jetbrains does quite a bit of telemetry as well, particularly on starter versions. This has made me hesitate, until I get an outbound firewall set up.
kcb 4y ago
Corporate expense processes are a pita. For critical applications like an IDE its not a problem, but for smaller one off tools it's usually more effort then it's worth to use paid software.
CuriousCosmic 4y ago
I am fully willing to pay somebody for software. I just also want the software to be free (in the FSF sense). Do I need to pay each time I want one of their updates? Or do I need to pay a subscription for support+code update? I'm 100% game to do that but I want to own what I get and I want the freedom to do with it what I want (within reason). If I want to recompile the software with some change I made, port the software to some other hardware, or go dig in the source to identify a bug, I want that option. It's that plain and simple. If the license says "no commercial use unless you pay X flat, Y subscription, or Z whatever else", that's perfectly fine with me. People already use pirated versions of proprietary software so if someone wants to use your software without paying they are going to do so. TLDR: I'll pay pretty much whatever you want for the product provided I have the means. I just want the freedom to do with my software & hardware as I please. Edit: I wanted to toss into this that if we want more projects to be viable open source or free software projects, we need to be willing to support the developers. If you have the means, sponsor developers even if it's only some pocket change each month.
ripvanwinkle 4y ago
I posit that the reason is we form a lot of habits and patterns when we are younger - like high school students or college students where most of us have more time and very little money. Some of us reassess spending patterns over time (and even there some do it more frequently than others). So you have this spread where a part of the population is still very frugal and some part is almost price insensitive and then everything in between. Love to hear what other folks think.
ukyrgf 4y ago
Creative Cloud.
devwastaken 4y ago
Don't assume people who code are all silicon valley funny money devs. Instead assume they're a moderate income to broke, that's a bigger userbase.
renox 4y ago
Except that Jetbrains IDE being better isn't always true. At work, our huge C++ project makes CLion very slow.. VSCode MS Intellisense works quite badly but at least it's faster (testing the CLang extension is in my TODO list).
matheusmoreira 4y ago
I'm not interested in paying to have my computing freedom violated. If I pay for software, I don't get software, I get a license which is a limited conditional permission to use the software, a privilege that can be taken away and also comes bundled with a stack of rules and prohibitions nobody really cares about. All proprietary software deserves the git treatment where people eventually get fed up with it and replace it with superior free software, thereby permanently enriching the world. We need to understand the factors that enabled such a development and somehow incentivize them.
akagusu 4y ago
It really is bizarre, specially because it doesn't make sense in terms of money. They prefer to spend dozens of hours seeking, testing and tweaking free/gratis products (in some cases their hour worth more than $100/h), but they don't want to pay $100/year in a product that will save them dozens of hours.
pojzon 4y ago
Jetbrains is a half-good example. A lot of stuff that was before opensource was close-sourced by Jetbrains and now their support for it is terrible. I.E. Terraform plugin. Stopped working past 1.0.11 and its half a year without an update. So yea. Ppl ARE willing to pay for stuff that „works”.
stjohnswarts 4y ago
I'll flip the script, why are you so worried about other people choosing editors like vim and emacs? Lots of people don't struggle. Lots of people don't mind a extra few hours for open source solution as it fits their life choices.
deleted 4y ago
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qmmmur 4y ago
You’re entire argument is predicated on your personal preference being superior. Sorry it’s not and neither is mine; it’s entirely context dependent and individual. I found all of the JetBrains offerings really tacky and expensive for the price. VSCode and neovim work far better for what I want and are more extensible.
WuxiFingerHold 4y ago
> Take the Jetbrains IDEs. I don't mean to offend any VSC fans out there but the Jetbrains IDEs are simply better and more mature in every single way. I just discontinued my Jetbrains subscription after 10 years or so. Now I'm using VS Code and don't miss anything. My reasons for switching to VS Code are unrelated to the costs but purely due to quality issues and missing or poorly implemented features: 1. For all Jetbrains IDEs, ISO keyboard layout with dead keys doesn't work on Ubuntu based distros. I was baffled when I found out after saying goodbye to Windows lately. When filing a bug I was asked to wade through years old pages of comments to find somewhere someone who posted a workaround that was not compatible with the Toolbox. Well, at least the support could have sent me the instructions to fix it to save me spending an hour to read those threads at Youtrack. 2. Vue 3 support was a disaster for itself. Still, Vue 3 support is very much behind the VS Code extension. 3. Same for Svelte. They are not even working on bugs / feature requests like intellisense in the templates. 4. Same for TailwindCSS. Never ending storing. Don't know and care if Jetbrains got it right by now. 5. Starting maybe 2 years ago, Jetbrains added feature for feature that were just distracting and annoying. This "run command in terminal" thingie for example. They're bloating their IDEs with new (mostly useless stuff) but don't fix essential bugs or get Webstorm back into shape. 6. Datagrip still doesn't (or maybe it does in the meantime) support SQLite STRICT TABLES (version 3.37). The simple answer from Jetbrains was: "The open source lib we're using does not support it so we don't." (Actually the lib (https://github.com/xerial/sqlite-jdbc https://github.com/xerial/sqlite-jdbc) is currently unmaintained - another reason to be careful depending on a lib maintained by a single person.). The reply would be perfectly fine for an open source project, but not for a multi billion dollar company I as a customer had payed accumulated several thousand Euros in the last years. I'm using mainly Go, Rust and several frontend frameworks. VS Code support for those is really good. Many things work much better in VS Code.
randyrand 4y ago
Proprietary tools are too big of a risk of going belly up, or not being maintained.

by jmyeet 4y ago

chadlavi 4y ago

Personal use is a different question, but if my employer doesn't pay for it I'm not buying software to use for their benefit. Any a lot of employers go huh, a free one eh? Use that.

alexalx666 4y ago

Actually, I recently had to switch from CLion to VSC b/c I could not figure out how to enable rust-analyzer in the latest version of CLion. Also platform.io support is better in VSC. I love UX of interllij tho. I should say that I do agree with your main point.

roblabla 4y ago

> I don't mean to offend any VSC fans out there but the Jetbrains IDEs are simply better and more mature in every single way. Yeah, no. Don't get me wrong, Jetbrains IDEs are great. But they're not as easy to extend, its proprietary nature makes it hard to debug when writing extensions. I use neovim primarily, but I've got licenses for a bunch of other editors (Nova, Sublime, used to have IntelliJ). I do sincerely try them, but I keep going back to open source, extensible editors like vim, emacs, vscode... because I invariably need to tweak something in the editor, and doing so in the proprietary editors can be so damn painful. Now, you do make a solid point though. I guess I probably should donate to neovim. Guess I'll go do that!

aidos 4y ago
Yup, it’s definitely not a money thing. There’s plenty of tooling I do pay for, but I like hacking on my editor. Sure, you need to go deep sometimes to tune things how you want, but hey, that’s what we do, right? The important point is that people have different priorities and will make different trade offs. For me I like lean, fast and hackable. For others it’s that they don’t want to have to understand or configure it. That’s totally fine.
- sureglymop 4y ago
  I also like that Microsoft has made it incredibly easy to create an extension for VS Code. Most of the functionality usually doesn't even require code, just modifying the package.json file to add UI elements and such.
- lopatin 4y ago
  You're right that it's a totally different mindset. I was going to post a comment along the lines of "anytime I need to hack my editor, it's a waste of my time". That's where IntelliJ shines. It's so mature and functional out of the box, that I don't need to hack it. I came from Emacs where, once the initial fun of hacking it wore off, it was just a drag.
q-big 4y ago
> Yeah, no. Don't get me wrong, Jetbrains IDEs are great. But they're not as easy to extend, its proprietary nature makes it hard to debug when writing extensions. IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition is open source under Apache License 2.0: https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community
- f311a 4y ago
  This repo contains all the free versions including Pycharm

moonchrome 4y ago

I use and pay a subscription for entire jetbrains suite. That said - vscode is miles better for JS/TS development IMO. In that world I don't want the full fat IDE experience because : - it's slower - even some basic things like terminal rendering feels better/faster in vscode - ecosystem is developing independently and so fast that IDE support can't keep up - everyone else is using CLI centric workflows so it's maintained and tested

raverbashing 4y ago

I think it's an issue with some tools being "good enough" (majority of the free ones) + the feeling where you paid for something and it feels meh (or maybe it asks for paid upgrades, etc) I tried Sublime Text once and then never bothered later. There wasn't anything that exciting about it that I couldn't do one way or another anywhere else. The barrier to payment is higher if the comparison with a free tool is mixed. If there was one big thing the free ones couldn't do or they were much worse then there would be a case for paying for your tools

the_duke 4y ago

> but the Jetbrains IDEs are simply better and more mature in every single way That's just not true. I have access to the full Jetbrains suite for free, yet I still opt to use Neovim or VS Code/Codium for most languages. Jetbrains IDEs are great in many ways, but are objectively worse on several metrics: * slow startup times * slow initial operations until the JIT is warmed up * even once warm, you always eventually do something that lags or blocks the UI, maybe barely enough to consciously notice, maybe for several seconds; and it really affects user experience if you care about latency - it drives me crazy each time * plugins: VS Code has a wide range of great plugins, many more than the Jetbrains ecosystem and especially when it comes to more niche languages or functionality, Vim/emacs but also VS Code are much more extensible in general * keyboard warriors: the Vim plugin is fine, and you can configure the Jetbrains IDEs to do almost anything with the keyboard, but you need way more arcane knowledge in the form of memorized context-specific bindings, and you always eventually forget something and need to switch back to the mouse. Vim and emacs are just much better there. VS Code is actually also better, because the interactions are significantly more customizable. * Wayland / tiling WM / input lag: Jetbrains products really suck on tiling window managers like i3 / sway because they use native windows for dialogs. They also don't support Wayland natively, so they run through X server emulation which hurts input lag and brings plenty of bugs like weird dialog behaviour. In general the input lag is quite bad on Linux, it seems to be much better optimized on Mac OS There are plenty of valid reasons why you wouldn't want to use their IDEs, even if they provide more integration and superior refactoring.

dominotw 4y ago
I have jetbrains license but i still use vim almost 80% of the time for the reasons you mentioned.
steve_adams_86 4y ago
I haven’t checked in a couple years, but this mirrors my experience very closely. I pay for good editors just to support the creators. I want to pay for the one I use daily. The reality is that vscode is the most extensible, performant on average (not in all ways), and useful IDE I have.
4y ago

blip54321 4y ago

I think most of us value our freedom more. Most people don't think of it in terms of freedom, but freedom it is. With proprietary software: - You don't know when it will disappear or be discontinued. Even your paid-for existing version stops working when the activation servers go down. - You might be forced into an "upgrade" which breaks something you rely on - That's not to mention issues like being able to fix bugs yourself, extend it, or understand it. I don't do this often directly, but something like being able to understand a file format my data is in or similar is common I don't mind paying for things, but things need to be a lot better on other axes before this one becomes the most important. My experience is that: - Things I did decades ago are sometimes useful. Nearly 100% of the time, if this was in a proprietary system, it's gone or unusable. My LaTeX files still work. - Companies switch between growth mode and cash cow mode. When this happens, the cost to me is almost always higher than the initial benefit over free. - Which is better on other axes goes back-and-forth. An investment I make into a tool now doesn't mean it will be the leading tool in five years. - Those sorts of long-term considerations are almost always more important than short-term technical stuff.

neurobashing 4y ago
So do you only work for companies who have 100% open source and whose business model or product is a public benefit? Eg, "I value my freedom" is a perfectly acceptable position, until Mark Zuckerberg starts signing your checks, you know?
- wiseowise 4y ago
  Facebook/Meta are huge contributors to open source, so I'm not sure what your comment is supposed to mean.
  - nightski 4y ago
    Their products are proprietary. Honestly open sourcing their stuff just nets free labor.
    - 4y ago

JoeAltmaier 4y ago

Not fair! Open-source, shareware, public-domain, freeware - been touted for decades now. But folks buy into all that and suddenly they're 'resistant to other people earning a living'. Or I interpreted that wrong, and it's supposed to be a criticism of open-source? Then I agree. Open-source is a pox on responsible and reliable software, cannibalizing good software by offering free, bad software.

illegalmemory 4y ago

I think developers do pay a Lot for hardware tools ( Mac / screen / custom keyboard / IOTs they will never play with and so on ). They just don't pay much for software tools. Marketing / Sales people will not pay that much for hardware but pay a lot for software tools.

deleted 4y ago

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zitterbewegung 4y ago

I think that you are looking at it from the wrong perspective. 1. IDEs that are made primarily for your host operating system by who writes the operating system is basically a loss leader and is there to tie you to the host os 2. Emacs / vi / vim (full disclosure I am an Emacs user) are generally usable out of the box with no modification. Tinkering with your configuration for Emacs is for people who are experienced with Emacs and I primarily do it to make the text editor I want. 3. The actual paid solutions seem to be profitable enough for people to use but for reasons 1 and 2 will have a disadvantage to compete with them.

douglaswlance 4y ago

Do you use VSC extensions? People extend the web-based editor to make it easier to build web applications and share those tools on the web. Using a web-based editor to build web applications is a self-reinforcing, positive loop. I can see why people who aren't building web apps or aren't using extensions are confused why so many people prefer VSCode.

hotpotamus 4y ago

It seems to me that reasonably priced software is quite rare. To me and IDE is basically a fancy text editor and I've never really found one that really spoke to me (coding is not my primary job though), so $100/year seems steep for what looks like mostly a text editor to me. (Side note for all the vim/emacs wars, I'm quite satisfied with gedit). It also seems like the era of buying software is over; now it is a rent that you pay and all the other rents I must pay are going up so I'm not looking for any other. So I see the appeal of free software (as in liberty and as in beer) - I recently switched a work machine over to pure Debian and it's a breath of fresh air. No proprietary container based installs, no advertising/telemetry built in, and I can choose a desktop environment that I like with some idea that it won't randomly move GUI elements around and change things for the sake of change because some product manager or UX engineer or other needs to make said change to justify their over-inflated salary. LXDE still looked like the LXDE I remember and the same goes for Cinnamon and MATE.

realusername 4y ago

> Take the Jetbrains IDEs. I don't mean to offend any VSC fans out there but the Jetbrains IDEs are simply better and more mature in every single way. For individual use, most of them are <$100/year. They just aren't, I would not switch to Jetbrains from VSCode even if it was free. It's not a question of pricing and Jetbrains themselves started to realise it since they are building some VSC clone (forgot the name right now)

elashri 4y ago
Their new VSC alternative name is fleet and I don't think they confirmed it will be free like VSCode though.
- realusername 4y ago
  Thanks for the name, I completely forgot about it. I'm totally fine paying for it if it's nice, it's just that I prefer something similar to VSCode rather than Jetbrains IDEs.
- diffeomorphism 4y ago
  Are you refering to free or free? Paying money I don't mind, but being non-free would be a big drawback.
jebronie 4y ago
They just are though, once you realise how much more powerful they are. I had a collegue until recently (he was let go), who was a staunch VSCode fan that refused to use Jetbrains IDEs. His code is terrible and riddled with bugs. Most of them were even easily detected by the Jetbrains IDEs. Now I have to clean up his shitty projects. He also spend a lot of time configuring his shitty VSCode instead of working.
- Volundr 4y ago
  I've tried IntelliJ for both Elixir and Clojure. While Cursive is ok, I can confidently say that the vscode Elixir support is far, far better, and in Cursive vs Cider I'd take Cider any day. Yeah, if your writing Kotlin/Java IntelliJ is a no-brainer, but for many of us the situation is much more nuanced.

II2II 4y ago

I have used modern editors. For the most part they are amazing. That being said, I always end up returning to the same old open source editor. Much of the reason can be attributed to one quality: it has been around for as long as I have been alive and it will likely be around long after I am gone. This means that I am continually building upon prior skills, rather than tossing them out the window each time a new fad comes along or a vendor goes out of business. Incidentally, this is also why I don't see the payoff from commercial editors as being easily quantifiable. They may do a rather good job at reducing the learning curve, but they cannot eliminate it.

lukastyrychtr 4y ago

Unfortunately for the paid IDEs, even the accessibility for screen readers is much better in VSC.

lelanthran 4y ago

I can afford lots of things, doesn't mean I'm going to buy them. What's bizarre about that? The only Bizarre Attitude I see here is yours: that there exists a best option and why aren't more people taking it? There's no such thing as a "Best Option".

ValleZ 4y ago

This is because most developers are not willing to learn even basic code completion and refactoring functions in IDE. When you write constructors and getters by hand in Intellij Idea, chances are you won’t pay for that.

xigoi 4y ago
Vim has auto-completion and snippets. I don't use VSCode, but I'm pretty sure it does too. So what's the point of paying for them?
- ValleZ 4y ago
  Did you try any IDE from Intellij? Just spend 30 minutes on exploring what can it do out of the box.
- ValleZ 4y ago
  And since you don't use an IDE you can try to spend this time on exploring what an IDE can do. If you really write code you can write code 10-100x faster.

encryptluks2 4y ago

You're really missing an important factor of software development which is making things accessible to all walks of life. I simply prefer open source because it doesn't exclude specific classes of people because of money. Imagine a future where only rich people and those from wealthy families get access to the good development tools to help them get richer, while poor developers and those not from a wealthy family struggle to even get access to basic tooling, or have to exchange their personal information and rights in exchange. Fortunately, many people in software are not simply money worshipers and envision a future where money isn't the priority in building a better world.

squiffsquiff 4y ago

There's also the issue of signing in or applying a licence file on a system owned by someone else. In some environments this simply isn't allowed.

mattkrause 4y ago
Actually making the purchase can also be a nightmare. I’m at an academic research institute, so I haven’t hit this problem with JetBrains (free licenses—thanks!), but there are lots of other products where spending $15 to save an hour is a no-brainer, but spending $15 + two hours of arguing with purchasing over whether it’s a “legitimate business purpose” is…also a no brainer.

wiseowise 4y ago

> Take the Jetbrains IDEs. I don't mean to offend any VSC fans out there but the Jetbrains IDEs are simply better and more mature in every single way. - Worse performance - Worse plugin ecosystem - No LSP support Also, their stance on supporting other ecosystems. While I completely understand their standpoint as a business, I prefer VSCode team's approach to this. https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360001627960-IntelliJ-support-for-Language-Server-Protocol-as-a-client- https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/community/po... https://discuss.kotlinlang.org/t/official-support-for-visual-studio-code/8242 https://discuss.kotlinlang.org/t/official-support-for-visual... > Why are so many resistant so other people earning a living particularly when the payoff (ie time-saved) is so easily quantifiable? Is it, though?

tharne 4y ago

> What I find truly bizarre is how many software engineers, who are aware of how much they earn and how long it really takes to make software, are so resistant to paying anything for tools that make their job easier and faster. It blows my mind. We're not resistant to paying, we're resistant to rent-seeking. I would, and have, happily buy a piece of software I use regularly. What I will not do is a pay a monthly fee in perpetuity for a piece of software that I cannot truly own, where features I need can be removed on a whim and where I am prohibited from adding features I want. I also find the massive amount of tracking and general disregard for privacy appalling, but that's a missive for another day. The subscription model that's become predominant is a nightmare and is increasingly user-hostile. Why is it so surprising that a lot of folks don't like it? So in summary, I will gladly pay for software when: 1. I can pay up front an actually own it 2. I can see the source code and modify it 3. It does not track or otherwise monitor me None of these things are a big ask.

joshstrange 4y ago
JetBrains products have a perpetual fallback license so you absolutely can pay up front and then never pay again if you are ok being on an older version of the software. Maybe you are the exception but I find that 99.99% of the people who use the "it's open source so I can modify it" argument never so much as look at the code let alone consider making modifications. JetBrains products have an open-core (IntelliJ [0]) that can look at and contribute to if you so desire. Lastly you say "None of these things are a big ask.", you just want the world on a silver platter for no cost, sorry but that is a big ask, especially if you care at all about the quality of your tools. If you're happy building an IDE from the group up using something like vscode and dealing with 100's of plugins that do the same thing slightly differently then be my guest but most of your arguments fall flat IMHO. Providing an excellent product with constant updates is not "rent-seeking". [0] https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community
- tharne 4y ago
  > Lastly you say "None of these things are a big ask.", you just want the world on a silver platter for no cost, sorry but that is a big ask, Silver platter? Lol. Each of these things would require *less* effort on the part of software companies, not more. Upfront payment? It's easier to charge once than to set up recurring bill pay. Open source? You already have the code, just let me see it. Tracking? Just don't track me. Actually requires the company and it's devs to write less code not more. Companies managed to successfully sell software for many years without tracking and spying on their users > Providing an excellent product with constant updates is not "rent-seeking" It is when the updates are things I and others do not want, or need, and did not ask for. I have an old computer running 15 year-old version of MS Office. Not once have I have ever had need for one of the newer features for Office that MS has rolled out in the last decade and a half. That might not be true for everyone, but it's true for me and many others.

dinkleberg 4y ago

The thing that bothers me the most about the resistance to pay for anything is that you're not spreading the love to your fellow devs/creators. I know HN has grown so this may not be as true as before, but we're a community of builders! We should all understand the time and effort put into each of these projects. You'll tip a delivery person but won't support the people spending thousands of hours building the tools that makes your life tangibly better? </rant>

elashri 4y ago
I think of HN to more of a community of rational people. Rational people pay for what they believe would get value to their workflow or just support a principle or an idea like open source. I hardly can see any of that applies to Jetbrains products. many people here stated (which I agree) that Vscode and vim/emacs is better for them technically and for being open source.

synergy20 4y ago

I used VScode for 2 years then bought Jetbrains for 3 years, now I'm switching back to VScode. I feel vscode is getting better plus it is open source. Does open source matter a lot? maybe. For example, Jetbrains' Teamcity is still under investigation for Solarwinds hack which is a concern, plus I think a while ago the core developers are mostly from Russia at Jetbrains. Those combined with an improved vscode made the switch for me. I mainly use vim in practice but I do need a GUI IDE once a while.

tempodox 4y ago

I ditched VSCodium for JetBrains Rider and couldn't be happier. On the Mac Rider is miles ahead of Visual Studio (shuddering with revulsion). But no IDE will ever dissuade me from using vim. I just use them for different things.

ttctciyf 4y ago

This doesn't seem to have anything to do with the article or its author, who switched not because of cost but because of unavoidable telemetry and tracking. What I find truly bizarre is how many virtual monopoly owning companies, rather than concentrate on maximising the financial gains available from their enviable dominance of a market segment, instead focus on miserablising user experience and instrusively degrading their paying customers' sense of ownership and enjoyment in using the software they produce.

q-big 4y ago

> What I find truly bizarre is how many software engineers, who are aware of how much they earn [...] are so resistant to paying anything for tools that make their job easier and faster. It blows my mind. The property premise that software engineers earn so much clearly holds for the USA (and some other countries), but there are a lot of countries where it is not true.

prmoustache 4y ago

> What I find truly bizarre is how many software engineers, [...] are so resistant to paying anything for tools that make their job easier and faster. It blows my mind. What I find truly bizarre is why you bring this up in this discussion. The mentionned link is about a developper who switch from one proprietary to an open source software, both being free as in free beer. The rest of your post is about being a fanboy of Jetbrains. Sure you may like it and are free to do so but I don't see what is difficult to understand that other people may have different preferences. > The amount of time I saw people spend on tuning, fixing, tinkering, debugging and otherwise modifying their .vim or .emacs files Are you making things up? I only tinker with my neovim init file whem I want to add a plugin, which is adding one vim-plug line and command and don't take much more time than adding a plugin for another IDE. Most people have their preferred settings that they migrate from one machine to another. I used an example vim init file from someone else and only did a handful of changes that took me probably less than 10-15 minutes over as many years.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago

I love the Jetbrains IDEs and have used them for years and they'll pry CLion from my cold dead hands. I pay for a license for it. I've tried VSCode many times and always come back to CLion. However. JetBrains needs to consider rebuilding on something other than Java/Swing. The UI is relatively laggy. It fights with many window managers on Linux. It feels clunky compared to VS Code, from a UI POV.

jollofricepeas 4y ago

You’re 100% right. Developers are no different than other humans. Lazy, indifferent, unappreciative, self-absorbed… Sublime Text is a perfect example. It’s a travesty with as popular as that editor was that developers would literally use it for work and for personal projects but refuse to pay for what everyone agreed at the time was the best tool for those not using IDE’s. It pissed me off to the point that anytime I paired with someone and the SublimeText popup showed, I’d ask them to pay the $40 or whatever was being asked.

pphysch 4y ago

> What I find truly bizarre is how many software engineers, who are aware of how much they earn and how long it really takes to make software, are so resistant to paying anything for tools that make their job easier and faster. It blows my mind. How long have you worked in software, or any industry? "Pay for this thing that will make your job easier" is the Big Lie of software. ~Half of the time it becomes "makes your job harder" (often imperceptibly without hindsight!) because the product is primarily designed to lock-in paying enterprise customers and only secondarily to provide them with a productivity-boosting service. It is rational for people working in the industry to be skeptical of such claims.

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legulere 4y ago

Software engineers know that it's creating new software that is expensive, not copying it. Why not give copies away for free when you satisfied the need that led to the software being written? Even microsoft now understands that it makes more sense to write software to better sell services than to try to sell software directly.

vehemenz 4y ago

This is something I wonder about all the time. I think there a number of reasons: 1. Ideological - probably can't reason with these people 2. Preference for small tools vs. one monolithic tool - less efficient, but I can understand it 3. Ignorance - Many younger/inexperienced developers never learned an IDE, and genuinely do not understand what they are missing 4. Cost - not a concern for most of us, but for minors, students, or developers in India, China, and other developing countries, this is a huge reason that drives ubiquity of VSCode 5. Reduced friction/ubiquity - See 4. Basically, people are already used to it when they get a well-paying job and in theory could use JetBrains IDEs 6. Performance - See 4 again. Not really an issue unless you're on old hardware (especially given that VSCode performs poorly, can't handle large files, etc.) In conclusion, I think there are some legitimate reasons, but your larger point still stands.

jonnycomputer 4y ago

I'm a fan of Jetbrains IDEs (despite having some complaints), and use them at work regularly (and because I work in academia, I get the enterprise version free of cost). But I think of Emacs as a life-long companion-tool, something that I'll be able to use, how I like it, until I die, on pretty much any operating system, and on pretty much any hardware.

ekidd 4y ago

> What I find truly bizarre is how many software engineers, who are aware of how much they earn and how long it really takes to make software, are so resistant to paying anything for tools that make their job easier and faster. The first time I paid for a fancy IDE, it ran on an Apple IIgs in the late 80s. It was the first of many. Unfortunately, commerical IDEs and editors go out of business constantly. The rare survivors, like BBEdit, tend to be limited to a single OS. Around 1997, I figured out what I want out of an editor: - Supports every language and text file format I'll need. - Runs on every desktop OS. - Customizable, and scriptable using an industry-standard language. - Will still be around in 20 years. Emacs met these requirements, and I used it for over 20 years. A few years ago, I switched to VS Code. I don't buy commercial editors because they don't provide the key features I want. And I don't trust them to stick around.

saghm 4y ago

> I don't mean to offend any VSC fans out there but the Jetbrains IDEs are simply better and more mature in every single way. I'm not sure if you mean this literally, but I think that's a bit of an exaggeration. I mentioned this the other day here [1], but for whatever reason, I've been completely unable to get Intellij to properly allow me to work on a remote codebase for my job. Despite my company giving me access to the Ultimate edition, the 2021 version of Intellij just flat out refused to connect when I tried to use the ssh plugin, and the 2022 edition's beta of a new ssh feature worked for about a week before somehow getting into a state where it would reconnect every 5 seconds or so and scroll me to the top of whatever file I was trying to edit. I'm sure there are ways to get it to work, but given that VS Code just worked the first time I set it up and never really got in my way, I have no motivation to spend more than a few minutes trying to get Intellij working before just giving up and going back to VS Code. I think if you see behavior that seems so obviously "wrong" to you, it's worth giving people the benefit of the doubt and actually trying to see _why_ people do things that way before just dismissing them as irrational. I wouldn't be surprised if you've actually talked to people who might have experiences like this that could explain the discrepancy, but if you start the conversation so dismissively, most people aren't going to bother trying to share their experiences with you. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31669461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31669461

NaN1352 4y ago

> For individual use, most of them are <$100/year. Except as a developer you need one app, then another, and another… soon enough you’ll be paying 10 x 50$/year. And paying a sub for software is repugnant to me. I bought FontAwesome 5 while it was in KickStarter, it’s no longer updated (it’s now version 6), but at least I can still fully use the thousands of icons I paid for. tldr: way too damn expensive.

apple4ever 4y ago
Yeah exactly. They are just too expensive. I'm happy to pay for things that I believe are worth it, but especially with yearly subscriptions I don't see the value equation meeting it for these IDEs.

LoveGracePeace 4y ago

Actually Eclipse (and Spring Tool Suite based on Eclipse) works great. Being able to simultaneously debug several microservices in one Eclipse instance is one amazing feature.

bitwize 4y ago

Who's to say we aren't productive with our chosen editors? I find malarkey like autocomplete to be distracting, so I use Emacs with it turned off. Because Emacs can be programmed and extended as it is used, it is way more productive to me than any "fixed function" IDE -- including Visual Studio Code[0] I could not do my job nearly as effectively in Visual Studio Code or JetBrains as I do in Emacs. There is a perspective dependence to what the "best tool for the job" is. You are most productive in JetBrains and that is fine, but that doesn't make your colleagues less productive in their choice of editor. [0] To extend Visual Studio Code, you have to start a new Node TypeScript project that uses VSCode's cumbersome API, compile it, test it in an "Extension Host", bundle it in a .vsix and then, at long last, you can use it in your regular editor. It's clear that Visual Studio Code's designers did not want end users programming their editor, let alone programming and using it at the same time. As a VSCode end user, the happy path is to select from pre-made extensions in Microsoft's extension catalog.

davidkunz 4y ago

I'd rather say instead of paying money they should spend time to master their tools. I don't see musicians complaining about learning their instrument.

axkdev 4y ago

I was a jetbrains guy until I discovered the vim/neovim ecosystem. Yes, configurling vim takes time but 1.its fun 2. I can fine tune it to my specific work flows in ways simply not achievable with Idea or any other editor. After configuration is finished, the actual time it takes to do my work is comparable with a full fledged ide. It's probably even faster, considering vim loads faster and also forces you to use the keyboard for everything.

kingboss 4y ago
Imagine being on your deathbed thinking: "Configuring vim was so fun. Totally worth it". I sometimes feel that most people on this forums are under 24 years of age. So sad to read these comments. So much to do, so many interesting things.... but people enjoy configuring text editors...
- aeze 4y ago
  If people enjoy it, why do you think they would regret it later? It sounds like you just don't enjoy it, which is ok.
  - kingboss 4y ago
    A lot of regret actually comes from enjoying something and then later realising that it was stupid and a waste of time. Time that you would have liked to spend on a more useful endeavour.
    - aeze 4y ago
      A lot of your personal regret might come from that. I think it's important to note that there are many people who can look back fondly at times they were simply enjoying themselves, even if that time was not strictly 'useful'.
      - kingboss 4y ago
        The joyful days of configuring vim. You are trolling me at this point.

manmal 4y ago

To me, IntelliJ IDEs feel clunky, slow, feature bloated, and messy. I did pay a couple times for AppCode, but eventually stopped doing that. VSCode on the other hand feels lightweight and fast. I use it exactly _because_ I value my time.

thebackup 4y ago

I mostly write C++ and I would love to use CLion, but my employer won’t pay for the license fees, so my choices are VSCode or Eclipse.

kaashif 4y ago
> my employer won’t pay for the license fees If it costs $200 or whatever and would clearly save you more than that in time ($200 is a few hours of developer time) then surely it's worth it. I guess the problem is that the process isn't in place to make buying CLion easy, so there'd be a lot of administrative overhead. Or no-one cares about maximising productivity. Or it's not clear to them that CLion actually is better than alternatives. Or maybe they want all developers using the same tools so any process improvements are shared. None of those seem like great reasons tbh, but I did just make them up as part of a strawman to lambast your employer.

rpdillon 4y ago

$100 for a tool that enables my career is completely worth it. There are two issues: * Freedom - my workflow is centered around modifying tools to suit my use case. OSI open source makes this easier sometimes. * Ubiquity - I detest spending time updating license keys, figuring out if that key works with the version I downloaded, finding out that new-feature isn't available in the version I paid for, or wrangling with how many computers my license will allow me to run the tool on. If the trappings and enforcement of monetization weren't present, I'd spend a lot more money on software tools. Aside: I worked on a team managing build infra at one point, and just getting license servers and license files set up so that CI could leverage proprietary tools was a major, sustained effort. I know personal tooling is more lightweight, but the same dynamics are present. So my investment in tuning Emacs feels to me like an actual investment: I've gotten really good at tuning Emacs for various uses, and the time I spent on that has made me a more effective engineer in some ways. I bring Emacs to every job I work and even if I end up using JetBrains for e.g. Android dev, I still have Emacs in my pocket for text editing, Magit, org mode, dired, and shells/terms. I don't feel the same way about time spent managing licenses for proprietary tooling, or even learning this particular company's git tooling; I just keep using Magit. Maybe others don't feel as strongly that their preferred tooling be "everywhere", but I really value it.

ksec 4y ago

>are so resistant to paying anything >Take the Jetbrains IDEs Because most of the modern day software engineers now works on Web related technology. And somehow everything on the Web has to be free or Open Source. It is much easier to sell IDE or paid for softwares to embedded or system programming developers, or basically any developers which doesn't have anything to do with the Web.

butbutbut123456 4y ago

> What I find truly bizarre is how many software engineers, who are aware of how much they earn and how long it really takes to make software, are so resistant to paying anything for tools that make their job easier and faster. It blows my mind. I agree. I'm always surprised at what technical people aren't willing to pay for. I think I used to be like this though. I used to really enjoy playing with my tools and learning about everything. Now that I'm older, I just want to get the job done, then go outside and play at the park or something.

indymike 4y ago

> Take the Jetbrains IDEs. I don't mean to offend any VSC fans out there but the Jetbrains IDEs are simply better and more mature in every single way. For individual use, most of them are <$100/year. After a particularly bad tooling week (js supply chain problems, plugin problems and more than the usual amount of DB changes) Our dev team made the unanimous call to move require all developers to use Jetbrains IDEs instead of the mix of VSCode, Emacs and whatever else... Our codebase is Python, Go and Javascript, and data is stored in Postgres, so we use Goland, PyCharm, WebStorm and Datagrip regularly. We also started using the awesome Micro editor when we need something that can be installed on a remote because it's key bindings are identical to JetBrains... A few thoughts: 1. We all picked up 2-3 hours per week of time we were spending pounding plugins on Emacs and VSCode into shape. There was a lot more fiddling going on than we thought. 2. The debugger in JetBrains IDEs is top notch. Debuggers are underrated, and bad debuggers make using print and over-logging seem like the best option. 3. When we want to do something new, (containers, notebooks, etc...) it is almost always supported, and there are not 100 incomplete plugins to sort out (both Emacs and VSCode have this issue). 4. We're doing things the same way, which sometimes really pays off. For example, instead of a mix of PostMan, python scripts, restclient, and bashified curl for making api requests, we just use the client in the IDE... which means we can share them. 5. Datagrip and the database tools in the IDEs are incredibly useful. Ok, so the payoff: By the end of the second week, we were over the learning curve, and the payoff came in the third week: a total of 16 hours of developer time not spent on twiddling with Emacs, vim, Sublime and VSCode. That time savings paid for the subscription for the year.

ParetoOptimal 4y ago
> Our dev team made the unanimous call to move require all developers to use Jetbrains IDEs Wow, it'd be time to look for a new job. I think having a blessed option and understanding of "use what you want but don't let it affect deliverables" is best.
- cameronh90 4y ago
  While I've never worked anywhere that enforced the IDE, I can see the appeal. Problems like linting and formatting working differently for different developers because they're using different tools, not updating settings correctly because their IDE uses a different settings file. Junior developers struggling to find people to help them because everyone's using their own toolchain. It's not all just about deliverables.

mixmastamyk 4y ago

Jetbrains does quite a bit of telemetry as well, particularly on starter versions. This has made me hesitate, until I get an outbound firewall set up.

kcb 4y ago

Corporate expense processes are a pita. For critical applications like an IDE its not a problem, but for smaller one off tools it's usually more effort then it's worth to use paid software.

CuriousCosmic 4y ago

I am fully willing to pay somebody for software. I just also want the software to be free (in the FSF sense). Do I need to pay each time I want one of their updates? Or do I need to pay a subscription for support+code update? I'm 100% game to do that but I want to own what I get and I want the freedom to do with it what I want (within reason). If I want to recompile the software with some change I made, port the software to some other hardware, or go dig in the source to identify a bug, I want that option. It's that plain and simple. If the license says "no commercial use unless you pay X flat, Y subscription, or Z whatever else", that's perfectly fine with me. People already use pirated versions of proprietary software so if someone wants to use your software without paying they are going to do so. TLDR: I'll pay pretty much whatever you want for the product provided I have the means. I just want the freedom to do with my software & hardware as I please. Edit: I wanted to toss into this that if we want more projects to be viable open source or free software projects, we need to be willing to support the developers. If you have the means, sponsor developers even if it's only some pocket change each month.

ripvanwinkle 4y ago

I posit that the reason is we form a lot of habits and patterns when we are younger - like high school students or college students where most of us have more time and very little money. Some of us reassess spending patterns over time (and even there some do it more frequently than others). So you have this spread where a part of the population is still very frugal and some part is almost price insensitive and then everything in between. Love to hear what other folks think.

ukyrgf 4y ago

Creative Cloud.

devwastaken 4y ago

Don't assume people who code are all silicon valley funny money devs. Instead assume they're a moderate income to broke, that's a bigger userbase.

renox 4y ago

Except that Jetbrains IDE being better isn't always true. At work, our huge C++ project makes CLion very slow.. VSCode MS Intellisense works quite badly but at least it's faster (testing the CLang extension is in my TODO list).

matheusmoreira 4y ago

I'm not interested in paying to have my computing freedom violated. If I pay for software, I don't get software, I get a license which is a limited conditional permission to use the software, a privilege that can be taken away and also comes bundled with a stack of rules and prohibitions nobody really cares about. All proprietary software deserves the git treatment where people eventually get fed up with it and replace it with superior free software, thereby permanently enriching the world. We need to understand the factors that enabled such a development and somehow incentivize them.

akagusu 4y ago

It really is bizarre, specially because it doesn't make sense in terms of money. They prefer to spend dozens of hours seeking, testing and tweaking free/gratis products (in some cases their hour worth more than $100/h), but they don't want to pay $100/year in a product that will save them dozens of hours.

pojzon 4y ago

Jetbrains is a half-good example. A lot of stuff that was before opensource was close-sourced by Jetbrains and now their support for it is terrible. I.E. Terraform plugin. Stopped working past 1.0.11 and its half a year without an update. So yea. Ppl ARE willing to pay for stuff that „works”.

stjohnswarts 4y ago

I'll flip the script, why are you so worried about other people choosing editors like vim and emacs? Lots of people don't struggle. Lots of people don't mind a extra few hours for open source solution as it fits their life choices.

deleted 4y ago

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qmmmur 4y ago

You’re entire argument is predicated on your personal preference being superior. Sorry it’s not and neither is mine; it’s entirely context dependent and individual. I found all of the JetBrains offerings really tacky and expensive for the price. VSCode and neovim work far better for what I want and are more extensible.

WuxiFingerHold 4y ago

> Take the Jetbrains IDEs. I don't mean to offend any VSC fans out there but the Jetbrains IDEs are simply better and more mature in every single way. I just discontinued my Jetbrains subscription after 10 years or so. Now I'm using VS Code and don't miss anything. My reasons for switching to VS Code are unrelated to the costs but purely due to quality issues and missing or poorly implemented features: 1. For all Jetbrains IDEs, ISO keyboard layout with dead keys doesn't work on Ubuntu based distros. I was baffled when I found out after saying goodbye to Windows lately. When filing a bug I was asked to wade through years old pages of comments to find somewhere someone who posted a workaround that was not compatible with the Toolbox. Well, at least the support could have sent me the instructions to fix it to save me spending an hour to read those threads at Youtrack. 2. Vue 3 support was a disaster for itself. Still, Vue 3 support is very much behind the VS Code extension. 3. Same for Svelte. They are not even working on bugs / feature requests like intellisense in the templates. 4. Same for TailwindCSS. Never ending storing. Don't know and care if Jetbrains got it right by now. 5. Starting maybe 2 years ago, Jetbrains added feature for feature that were just distracting and annoying. This "run command in terminal" thingie for example. They're bloating their IDEs with new (mostly useless stuff) but don't fix essential bugs or get Webstorm back into shape. 6. Datagrip still doesn't (or maybe it does in the meantime) support SQLite STRICT TABLES (version 3.37). The simple answer from Jetbrains was: "The open source lib we're using does not support it so we don't." (Actually the lib (https://github.com/xerial/sqlite-jdbc https://github.com/xerial/sqlite-jdbc) is currently unmaintained - another reason to be careful depending on a lib maintained by a single person.). The reply would be perfectly fine for an open source project, but not for a multi billion dollar company I as a customer had payed accumulated several thousand Euros in the last years. I'm using mainly Go, Rust and several frontend frameworks. VS Code support for those is really good. Many things work much better in VS Code.

randyrand 4y ago

Proprietary tools are too big of a risk of going belly up, or not being maintained.