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JetBrains invites developers to join the Fleet Public Preview Program

352 points by topka 4y ago

hampereddustbin 4y ago
I've been browsing their site for a few minutes now and I'm still lost on what Fleet actually is. It says it's a new IDE, built from scratch, sure, but isn't IntelliJ already the gold standard for many languages? What problems does creating an entirely new IDE solve?
- Denvercoder9 4y ago
  It seems to mostly be a competitor to VS Code, i.e. a relatively lightweight editor with support for distributed operation (where the local part is only a UI, and everything else can run remotely).
- mnd999 4y ago
  I think they’re trying to move to a browser / cloud model, presumably so that they can charge more for less.
  - keyle 4y ago
    Yeah I'm getting strange adobe-like vibes from creative cloud announcements.
    - Jack_rando_fang 4y ago
      Exactly, when you want to download JetBrian fleet, you'll first have to download their "JetBrain Toolbox", which looks and functions VERY similar to the adobe CC menubar app.
      - jpgvm 4y ago
        To be fair they ship a large number of IDEs and Toolbox makes managing them a lot easier. I mostly only use IDEA Ultimate and CLion but I use the others occasionally too for certain tasks but don't necessarily have them installed all the time. Toolbox is installed on all my machines so I can simply install what I need when I need it, i.e Datagrip to generate some nice diagrams of some random DB I need to look at, etc.
      - monlockandkey 4y ago
        Well it makes it easier to manage rather than wrangling with multiple stand alone IDEs and versions
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    I think it's more that there are now many large companies that now deploy VSCode as a shared, distributed editor. When I was at Google they were starting to replace their proprietary "Cider" web-based editor (for Google3) with a "CiderV" which was a modified hosted VSCode. A hosted VSCode instance makes a lot of sense for a company like Google where source-code-on-laptops is generally forbidden and developers are often issued Chromebooks etc. It solves & improves the distributed/remote development problem without requiring organizational changes. And it's much faster and smoother than RDP, etc. So those are potential customers that JetBrains was/is losing. My brain is almost 20-years-wired for JetBrains products. I would have been much happier to be able to use a remote JetBrains IDE vs a remote VSCode. There are also people for whom the existing JetBrains IDEs will always feel big slow and bloated. They have a lot of features packed in and come with a lot of lifestyle assumptions. I can see the value in JetBrains rolling out something that feels lighter-weight.
  - tomjen3 4y ago
    They just raised their prices, but their competitor is VS code, which is no cost so they can't run that route.
- user3939382 4y ago
  From what I’ve seen the difference is that Fleet is much faster.
- hennell 4y ago
  The linked product page seems to sum it up pretty well: >We built Fleet to be a fast and lightweight text editor for when you need to quickly browse and edit your code. It starts up in an instant so you can begin working immediately, and it can easily transform into an IDE, with the IntelliJ code-processing engine running separately from the editor itself. It's splitting the difference between text editor and IDE. It's their answer to people complaining "IntelliJ takes too long to start up" while keeping the IDE features that you lose just using a text editor.
- origin_path 4y ago
  My gut sense from watching this for a while is that Fleet is a hedge by JetBrains against the risk of technical obsolescence for the IJ platform. VSCode introduced some key architectural changes and new UI which may or may not actually be better than their own products, but, if they are better then JB would be left without a good way to respond. So. They start Fleet. Different to their existing products in several ways: 1. Doesn't use the Swing UI toolkit. Uses a custom home-grown thing on top of Skia. Still JVM based though. 2. Runs heavy computation in a backend with a network protocol between that and the UI. 3. Has a VSCode style UI. 4. Uses JSON files for configuration. Meanwhile they are also attempting to respond to the threat with IJ itself. So they have been prototyping a new VSCode style UI in IJ, implemented with Swing. I'm using it at the moment and I have to say it's actually quite nice. I was super skeptical at first. No, really skeptical. I liked the classic IJ UI, nice and dense, lots of features. But the new UI has won me over. It's been freshened up, is still just as efficient, looks nicer too. I think the success of that project (at least for users who want it) calls into question a big part of the Fleet value prop. Also they've been adding remote development/backend support into IJ itself, a lot of that is being built around their pair programming Code-with-me thing which is a fairly sophisticated data sync protocol under the hood. So JetBrains is setting themselves up here for some serious product management pain. The IJ team are rising to the challenge and it's not at all clear that VSCode will retain its competitive advantages beyond price within a year or two. Swing is not turning out to be the millstone around their neck they apparently feared, and the new UI feels modern and fast even though it's based on this old toolkit. Meanwhile the VSCode architecture in many ways doesn't make sense and is clearly the result of asking "how can we build an IDE within the constraints of a web browser" and not "how do we build a great IDE"? The client/server architecture is quite painful in all kinds of ways compared to threads+locks, devs tend to have good enough machines for code indexing and comprehension, and IntelliJ index builds can be outsourced to the cloud anyway. If IJ starts to really nail the Gateway stuff (see the recent Google Cloud Workstation announcement), what does it leave Fleet for? And how would they resolve these two competing products? If I were running JetBrains I'd be tempted to keep resources assigned to Fleet relatively limited and wait to see if it takes off organically, whilst simultaneously closing the gaps in IJ with VSCode. This does not just mean the features listed so far but also means getting serious about their "lightedit mode" and plugin API. JetBrains have a cultural problem in which they historically have actively resisted anything resembling code documentation, thinking that code should be self-documenting. Their plugin API docs are still poor and incomplete even after many years partly as a consequence, and although the JVM can run many languages, JB only really support Java and Kotlin for plugin dev. VSCode has taken off partly for the same reason NodeJS and Electron did - it lets web devs apply their skills in a new context. Language server took off because it lets obscure language communities use their own language to make IDE plugins instead of needing to use Java. Add Graal to IntelliJ, make JS a first-class plugin language and explore how to do non-network based integration with other languages. It would help them a lot.
TheChaplain 4y ago
I'm sure this is great for enterprises but for me, a single developer on a local machine, what benefits does Fleet bring?
- austinpena 4y ago
  Yeah, I'm curious of this too, especially compared to just running standard Intellij IDEs
- suchar 4y ago
  Probably not that much if you are not looking forward to a remote development: - new UI (they couldn't change it in any meaningful way without breaking workflows, but with a new IDE there are no existing workflows) - single IDE for all languages (it was possible for most of them with IJ ultimate, but for e.g. Python the experience was slightly worse than with PyCharm)
capableweb 4y ago
> Fleet is our new distributed polyglot editor and IDE. Ok, polygot makes sense, it supports more than just one language. But what does distributed mean in this context? You run the editor across many machines? What does that mean? Coming from a backend perspective, it quite doesn't make much sense. Thinking about it from a client-side perspective, I'm guessing they mean the architecture is decoupled, meaning basically plugins/extensions but with a fancier word? Judging by the "Features Matrix" (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vTWt9RlJPfIJwD5H7Gsqbu9xHTd-K1oj_zCpP6YIQq8xvjARDYqC6OnVIVt5WPi2-B-vWHZw5qMnhvx/pubhtml?gid=0&single=true https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vTWt9RlJ...), sad to see not a single non C-like language is being considered.
- deleted 4y ago
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- kuschku 4y ago
  Distributed means you can run the editor UI and the actual backend on separate machines. One long-term goal of such deployments is developers just having a thin chromebook with the UI and the actual code being on a corporate server, like terminals and mainframes in ye olde days. I believe this is a reaction to VS Code, which has supported this functionality for a while already.
  - kevincox 4y ago
    Another big use case is running the "backend" inside a VM or container that has a well-defined set of dependencies installed while the host OS can be updated and managed by the user.
  - woojoo666 4y ago
    But conventionally the word "distributed” is for apps running on multiple servers. Your definition makes every web app "distributed". And I feel like most of HN would disagree with calling Spotify Web a "distributed app"
    - kuschku 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
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PeterStuer 4y ago
Still confused. Is Fleet to IntelliJ as VS.Code is to Visual Studio?
- ZeroCool2u 4y ago
  Basically yes.
- amcsi 4y ago
  Better. It's like a VS.Code that you can turn into a Visual Studio (if needed) within the same application.
monlockandkey 4y ago
I just downloaded the Fleet beta from the App toolbox. First impressions is that it is very clean. This is essentially Vscode but with Jetbrains language and refactoring engine. Quick thoughts: - It needs a bit more autocomplete e.g automatically close tags for React components - GUI run configuration - they have made it so it uses a JSON file like Vscode to configure, GUI is quicker and easier (can still click run on gutter for package.json scripts so not that bad) - Sometimes you want to use Vscode to make some quick changes/play around instead of firing up an IDE. Fleet replaces that for me - Part of me think that Jetbrains should have created paid extensions for Vscode much like Resharper for Visual Studio
- RamblingCTO 4y ago
  > - GUI run configuration - they have made it so it uses a JSON file like Vscode to configure, GUI is quicker and easier (can still click run on gutter for package.json scripts so not that bad) And better auto-complete for that. I tried to add my golang project, but had no clue what it wants from me for goExecPath or buildTargets. Why not show the help inside the editor? I had to google and look around (goExecPath is the actual link to the bin, not GOPATH or something) and buildTargets means files (main.go). The naming feels weird.
- suchar 4y ago
  > - Part of me think that Jetbrains should have created paid extensions for Vscode much like Resharper for Visual Studio IIRC, JetBrains considers LSP to be too limiting for refactoring and code-insight capabilities that they want to provide (I think they said that when there was discussion about language server for Kotlin). So it's possible that such extension wouldn't be on par with a "real" JetBrains IDE.
robertlagrant 4y ago
> Fleet is an opportunity for us to provide a different user experience for developers Given they're presumably spending a lot on this development, it would be useful to give a bit more detail than this. What is different?
- mgkimsal 4y ago
  It's free to download and try (well... it's in my 'toolbox'). Comment I made to a friend earlier... Loads relatively quick. On par with or slightly faster than vscode on my M1. Very 'project unaware' up front, which may be OK for some uses. Might be a step up from vim for one-off changes. Collab seems easier/faster. No plugins(?). No UI to connect to other machines so far.
pjmlp 4y ago
JetBrains trying to fight back Visual Studio Code taking over their market share.
- rob74 4y ago
  The main difference between VS Code and the various JetBrains IDEs is that for VS Code, you have to find and install the relevant plugins for your use case yourself, whereas the various JetBrains IDEs tend to work out of the box (while still supporting plugins). That's usually the difference between most free/open source solutions and commercial software: you can do mostly the same with the open source alternative, you just have to invest more effort. As far as I'm concerned, as long as my company is paying the JetBrains IDE license, why should I go to extra lengths to set up VS Code?
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    That is why one has the IT department configuring development images. I remeber there was a blog post from JetBrains where they complain about VSCode taking over InteliJ market, by indirectly asserting they don't understand why VSCode adoption was rising. Surprise surprise, a couple of months later Fleet was announced.
    - mgkimsal 4y ago
      I think "projector" was a beta/trial thing before fleet. And I could never get it to work. Or... I think I got it to work once, but it was decidedly a not-great experience.
    - dmitriid 4y ago
      I'd say they still don't understand why VSCode adoption is rising. There are two reasons: - People don't know better (yes, they really don't) - Language server allowed languages with abysmal tools to finally have some semblance of an IDE None of us know the future, but in my opinion Fleet is a mistake: - It tries to fight VSCode at VSCode's turf (an editor with primitive IDE functionality) - while trying to be a testbed for new UI for JetBrains IDEs - while trying to both serve the Language Server crowd and keep JetBrain's vastly superior language tools - while diluting JetBrains' offer of development tools
tommica 4y ago
Tried the private beta for a while, and although it was rough on the edges, I really enjoyed the ability to "enable" the smart mode - if I needed to do a quick edit in a file, without having to load all the IDE magic, I had an editor that was quick to start, and if I needed all the bits and bobs, I just clicked a button and off we went. What kept me using their main products instead of fleet was the plugins that are available, that makes working just more enjoyable.
nik736 4y ago
Maybe this can replace Atom. But for that we need a OneDark theme :)
_fat_santa 4y ago
This looks really promising. But by far the biggest moat that Jetbrains is going to have to cross to get into VSCode territory is the plugin ecosystem. Personally I work on React projects so my first thought was: "is there a Prettier[1] plugin?". Looking through the landing page it looks like Plugins are in the works but until that is implemented, it's going to be hard adopting it. ALSO I just noticed this but can someone (ideally from JetBrains) explain what this line means: "Requires login and periodic connection to JetBrains servers to verify the project" (specifically the last 3 words of that sentence). Quite frankly this line is extremely alarming, are you saying that you're scanning my project to make sure it's not a "professional" project? I'm going to assume this line means that they are checking the IDE and not your source but I won't be using this product until I get an explanation for this. You can find this at the very bottom in the licensing and pricing section. [1]: https://prettier.io/ https://prettier.io/
- keithnz 4y ago
  webstorm is the way to go for react and other web type stuff... though I'm not sure if the intention of fleet is for it to be free forever or not.
  - nicce 4y ago
    Probably same than previous pricing model - you need license for commercial use.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  > But by far the biggest moat that Jetbrains is going to have to cross to get into VSCode territory is the plugin ecosystem. Personally I work on React projects so my first thought was: "is there a Prettier[1] plugin?". This just reinforces my feeling that a major driver behind VSCode's popularity is that people just don't know better [1] 1. Download WebStorm (or IDEA) and write some React in it. And Typescript. Refactor. Move code around. Use suggestions. It's leaps and bounds ahead of VSCode 2. Open settings, navigate to plugins, type in Prettier. Oh look, there's the plugin. An official plugin from JetBrains [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=33176123 https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=33176123
bestest 4y ago
Yet another editor with no ability to switch to vertical tabs. Looks like I'm staying with the old-school JetBrains IDEs for the time being.
mgkimsal 4y ago
Mostly OT, I know, but... anyone have any clue as to when 'spaces' might actually be a supported task server for their IDE products? They offer 'spaces' as a project tool - keep track of issues/bugs, planning, communication, etc. But you can't connect your IDE to it the same way it can connect to Jira, Github, Trello, Gitlab, Redline, Pivotal and others. It seemed like a short-term oversight at the start, but after... 2 years(?) ... it seems like a vote of no-confidence in their own product. I was excited to use spaces but... some of the most basic stuff I wanted to use wasn't there, and still isn't. https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/4404467672594-How-to-create-task-at-Space-from-PyCharm https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/community/po...
artdigital 4y ago
Looks and feels nice Sadly no plugin support yet, and no VIM keybdings, that's a bummer. I loaded up a JS project, but no support for prettier, LSP or eslint formatting means the Format Code feature doesn't match with the rest of the projects style, so I can't use it. I'll keep it installed and revisit now and then (similar to Nova). Excited to see what they have planned
Asdrubalini 4y ago
Rust support seems good and it's already integrated if you press the lightning button in the top right. Sadly no vim support so it's not really usable yet (at least for me).
__warlord__ 4y ago
I installed this 30 min ago. 1. My M1 temp went from 28c to 60c 2. CPU utilization to 103%? 3. It's using 3.29Gb of RAM And it hasn't changed. With a single python project with 3k lines of code. VSCode sits at 280Mb and CPU temp around 28c. Edit: Vim + SpaceVim sitting at 17Mb :)
- daitangio 4y ago
  It still a beta, so I think it can be acceptable BUT it is not tiny. What I like about VSCode is that is slick and lean without plugins, and with remote support it is still "light"... And I was a huge Emacs, Emacs-org fan, so if I use VSCode because it gets the work done at the end of the day (TM)
- dicknuckle 4y ago
  I probably have that many LoC between all the open files in VScode on an M1 and also love the performance. Only issue I've had so far is the Terraform Language Server running 18 threads at all times and grabbing too much CPU once or twice a month.
  - __warlord__ 4y ago
    Yeah, I had the same issue with the terraform plugins, I honestly had to delete them. So far I haven't found an alternative but honestly I don't write that much terraform anymore.
- ksec 4y ago
  I think, correct me if I am wrong, Fleet is written in Kotlin, hence running on top of JVM. ( I am assuming Kotlin Native not being used yet ) While I dont think VSCode is fast and lean when compared to Sublime or other Native Editor. It is well optimised. I do wonder if Fleet could catch up or even exceed VSC in the performance / resources usage department.
  - ta988 4y ago
    It totally could, the JVM is really fast. JS interpreters are fast too these days. So I don't expect much difference between the two. One department where the JVM may win is latency (the new GCs are incredibly fast so no impact there) for typing to display. Other than that I don't expect much difference.
deleted 4y ago
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cheptsov 4y ago
Already saw it in Toolbox App and installed ;-) Gonna give it a try. Congrats on the launch, and kudos to the Fleet team!
randomsearch 4y ago
A bit OT but if any JetBrains employees read this: please, please could you change the icon for webstorm? It is so ugly that it hurts my eyes. I will pay you to change the icon. Thanks.
davb 4y ago
It’s so slow to startup. On a laptop with 11th gen i5, 16GB ram and a fairly fast NVMe SSD running Windows 11 and I see ~10s startup time. I really hope it succeeds but for a lightweight editor it’s just too slow to start.
krzyk 4y ago
I wonder if it would be possible to use vim as the UI and connect to the backend of Fleet - best of both worlds.
- eddiezane 4y ago
  This is my dream. Being able to use Fleet/JetBrains's backend as an LSP/DAP for Neovim. It sounds like the architecture is there with Fleet. Please JetBrains friends!
pknerd 4y ago
Instead of coming up with a new project, why just they do not provide a community edition for each of their products? Currently they provide a CE edition for PyCharm only? I remember I loved the initial version of Goland a lot but found out it is not free and expired after a while, I switched back to VSCode and did not regret at all
- dbrgn 4y ago
  "Instead of trying to innovate, why don't they just give out their existing products for free to customers that aren't willing to pay?" Jetbrains make good products. And it's great that they're trying to explore the potential for a more lightweight editor based on their technology.
- neverartful 4y ago
  "Currently they provide a CE edition for PyCharm only?" If I'm not mistaken, I think they have a CE edition of IntelliJ (java) too.
  - mdaniel 4y ago
    Yes, both are Apache 2 licensed: https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community#readme https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community#readme (pycharm is in the "python" subdirectory). It used to be painless to build them both, but the recently doubled down on jps and now it's hit-or-miss and a ton more complicated, but I can attest it is possible
bluelightning2k 4y ago
I have read all the comments on this thread. I'm fascinated by people's thoughts of VSC Vs JetBrains. It seems the consensus is that JB is better, except for web platform? Maybe this is because TypeScript is an excellent language server
- insane_dreamer 4y ago
  Can't speak of other JB IDEs, by PyCharm is awesome
- hbn 4y ago
  The only thing that matters to me is JetBrains stuff seems to actually understand my code. i.e. it never fails to be able to jump me to references if I cmd+click a symbol, it's never messed up an automatic refactor (like a variable rename or something), etc. And it just works out of the box. I've never been able to configure VS Code to work in a way that's anywhere approaching intelligent. Maybe there's a way but I don't want to be messing with plugins and settings. And every time I've tried I just get frustrated and give up. I keep it installed for quick one-off text editing cause it launches faster than JB, but Fleet might just replace it for that usecase now.
- mmastrac 4y ago
  VSCode is still best for anything that isn't Android development, IMO. The C/C++, Rust, JS/TS integrations in VSCode have been amazing for me. IntelliJ is a battery killer, but VSCode is something I can run on a plane or in a cafe without a power cord.
- no_wizard 4y ago
  I don't know if it even wins there, to be honest. I'd say they're on par if anything, with a slight edge to JetBrains, as they have better support built-in vs needing plugins. I'm a long time JetBrains user though, so I admit upfront I may have some bias here.
bluelightning2k 4y ago
For what this is for: I think the clue is in the name. It targets large groups of developers offloading the language server with thin clients. At least that's my understanding.
kburman 4y ago
Jetbrains seems so confident about future being full of collaboration. For me it would be very hard to work if someone else is also updating the codebase at the same time. Anyone working like can you share your experience
- CSDude 4y ago
  We prefer sync code reviews sometimes and it's easier.
- leadingthenet 4y ago
  Same here, but maybe it's for education / quickly talking through an issue or solution? Otherwise, I really fail to see the value add vs git.
- tomjen3 4y ago
  It only makes sense for distributed pair programming. But that’s not a bad idea either.
kaladin_1 4y ago
Nice one Jetbrains!!! Let's see if this competition eventually leads to one of them launching something as snappy as vim but with IDE functionalities. VS Code is close but noticeably slows down as soon as you install many plugins. With Fleet, newbies now have an alternative editor cum IDE. Many people that were into programming in my University couldn't afford the kind of machine that would load IntelliJ or Jetbrains IDEs in short time. Rooting for Jetbrains to put up a good fight and recover some market share :)
gnerkus 4y ago
I wish they'd provide more support for C++; CLion is incredibly slow on older Macbooks.
onebot 4y ago
I would love this if it wasn't also built on the Java runtime. I hoped the "from ground up" rewrite to include a new much more performant backend that didn't burn resources. To be fair, I even think VSCode is too slow. I have been loving Helix Editor since it gives a great out-of-the box experience for terminal. But craving a better VSCode replacement. Had high hopes for Fleet, but I guess you can't teach an old dog new tricks.
- kobepanda 4y ago
  I've been liking https://zed.dev/ https://zed.dev/ for something that gives me more smarts out of the box than Sublime Text but maintains the responsiveness. Limited set of languages but it supports the ones I use on the daily
  - pgo 4y ago
    Would you happen to have an invite for zed.dev ? I typically have 10-15 VSCode windows open and have been looking for an performant but modern IDE
    - kobepanda 4y ago
      Yes I have a few - is the email in your profile current?
      - pgo 4y ago
        Yes, palash [at] dyte.io Thanks for the invite
      - weakfish 4y ago
        Hi, is there any chance I could ask for one too? No worries if not :-) My email is in profile. jack [at] weakphi [dot] sh
      - ezschemi 4y ago
        If you have another invite for zed.dev, could ask for one too? No worries if not! Email is en [at] ruw.io
EugeneOZ 4y ago
Requires some mega-ugly “toolbox” app as an installer for all the JetBrains apps - no, thanks, Adobe taught me to burn such things when I see them.
rz123 4y ago
Problem with JetBrains support docker for PyCharm and most likely other IDEs. 1. Why JetBrains can not connect to docker running container by using exec operation and read installed packages? Issue: - It is not possible to just go into running container install some library and get it visible within IDE, it needs to go via all pain to clear caches and wait until IDE will load again. How it works now: - It creates copy of docker image and read installed packages from it, does not read anything installed within currently running container. - Developer needs to install packages within image creation for PyCharm to pickup it. If package is installed in current container, developer needs to go clear caches, restart IDE, wait until it loads etc. and it is because the way how JetBrains integrates and supports running docker containers. ::Reproducing issue with running docker containers within Pycharm:: --- If you want to reproduce issue create docker-compose installation with python. Start by running "docker-compose up" from terminal load PyCharm and configure everything what is require within PyCharm. Going into running container by terminal: # docker-compose exec ... bash # pip install pip-licenses This pip-licenses package will not be visible inside IDE! Developer needs to go clear all caches, reload PyCharm and do other things just to get package recognised from running docker container. ---- 2. Why jetbrains can not find proper solution to see packages from currently running container without clearing caches? Cache should be update if recognised that new package exist within currently running container, not by developers maintaining jetbrains IDE caches. 3. VSCode(free IDE) did find how to support running docker containers, but paid product by Jetbrains can not solve this problem? 4. Can you at least implement something similar level to VSCode for running docker containers?
Kukumber 4y ago
They made a mistake to keep using the JVM.. They should have went with kotlin-native from the start EDIT: Ok i gave it a try, so far very responsive, typing latency feels much better than vscode, overall i like the UX, they kept it simple yet very well organized Much better than vscode already, congrats!
- vips7L 4y ago
  Kotlin native is barely usable... it doesn't even have a standard library.
- speed_spread 4y ago
  Native code makes it much harder to design a runtime plugin system. Also, other than fast startup and lower memory usage, native code does not make the app faster.
  - Kukumber 4y ago
    > Native code makes it much harder to design a runtime plugin system That's not true, lua, lua-jit, quickjs, v8, c#, even java Game engines already have the lead in that area and they proved that it's possible and can be made very efficient The UI and host of the program should be native to maximize performance Native code helps write fast code that runs fast with optimized memory layouts
    - Mikeb85 4y ago
      > Game engines already have the lead in that area and they proved that it's possible and can be made very efficient Game engines basically implement their own "runtime". They all have stuff like memory management, scripting languages (and usually plugins use the scripting API), and the game is just a package of assets and code that are run by the engine...
    - speed_spread 4y ago
      > lua, lua-jit, quickjs, v8, c#, even java Huh? None of these are compiled to native code ahead of time. By definition using a JIT compiler is not making things "native", it's just a way of making a very fast interpreter. Those languages you mention are used in gaming precisely because of their dynamic qualities compensating for the rigidness of the otherwise C++ based engines.
ddorian43 4y ago
> Run in a performant virtual machine with up to: 16 CPU cores 32 GB Memory 40 GB Disk Drive Literally my laptop that I bought for $1300 3 years ago.
- nigerianbrince 4y ago
  Model?
  - ddorian43 4y ago
    Acer predator helios 300 (was $1000), 12vcores, 256GB NVME, upgraded to 32GB ram.
cpctheman 4y ago
Unfortunately it doesn’t look like this supports remote development (at least from what I can tell poking around their site). Until Gateway is performant & stable enough to use, I’m sticking with VSCode. It’s a shame because I prefer IntelliJ for Java development, but lacking remote development stability is a deal breaker.
- Jtsummers 4y ago
  https://www.jetbrains.com/help/fleet/install-on-a-remote-machine.html#options https://www.jetbrains.com/help/fleet/install-on-a-remote-mac... - It seems it does support remote dev. Just played with it on my laptop and a Linux VPS I toss things onto from time to time, it worked alright. Haven't tried anything serious with it yet. When Fleet launched I had the option of connecting via SSH, specified the IP and port, and was able to connect. It uploaded some programs which run on the remote host to support the work. I was able to edit a program and then run it. There was also a terminal available on the remote host from inside Fleet.
  - sz4kerto 4y ago
    It's extremely far from IJ in terms of functionality, at the moment. I don't think Jetbrains will avoid the need of making Gateway stable too.
dangerboysteve 4y ago
To use Fleet you have to download the JetBrains Toolbox. Really? Look, I'm a JB subscriber and have the toolbox, but Fleet should not require another app to launch or update itself.
- topka 4y ago
  [JetBrains employee] In the future Fleet will be able to update itself. Right now, we use Toolbox App as it can do Fleet updates easier.
  - ZeroCool2u 4y ago
    I personally love Toolbox in our corporate environment. I just wish it would default to using system proxy settings on Windows and propagate Proxy settings to the IDE's it installs by default.
    - chunkyks 4y ago
      And a better way to handle certs for it, and all the IDEs, behind a corporate MITM SSL proxy would really improve my day.
      - ZeroCool2u 4y ago
        Yes, absolutely!
    - mdaniel 4y ago
      While I believe there are JB employees in this thread, your wish is more likely to be fulfilled if it is a formal ticket: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issues/TBX https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issues/TBX
cmrdporcupine 4y ago
So I tried it out. I own a CLion license and have been using Jetbrains products since IntelliJ 3.0. It seems ok, but very very VSCode-ish. I tried it with our Rust codebase and it seemed to be fairly competitive with CLion in terms of analysis. I didn't try any refactorings but I did notice that it doesn't have many of them. It was fairly snappy, felt more responsive than CLion. I was disappointed that even after I switched it to "IntelliJ" keybindings many keybindings still were more like VSCode than IntelliJ. I.e. Ctrl-N was still "open new tab" and not "jump to symbol" (have to do ctrl-shift-alt-N for that.) Overall, I guess I'm curious where they go with it. I won't be trading in my CLion license, though. I am probably not the target audience; I suspect they're looking to capture customers who work in large corporations where VSCode is getting penetration as a hosted/fleet solution. With the default keybindings I suspect those coming from VSCode will find Fleet very comfortable. For myself, I continue to give Jetbrains money for their IDEs, because as a company they do great work and give good value. I'm happy to modestly help pay the salaries of their employees. I wish them luck.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
  that's exactly what i was afraid of. them copying vscode. vscode is getting worse and worse IMo. its not even good at the one thing it initially excelled at - being fast. im not even talking about sluggish ui, just all the bullshit what's new and oh let me connect to ssh before you can enter a single keystroke. but more importantly, i like that intellij is full featured and has proper windows and dialogs and keybindings. vscode tries to cram everything into a single textbox or ui element and it makes everything worse. give me intellij but let me build a language backend in whatever language i want instead of forcing java on me. and also so that i can run it at my work which doesn't like code on laptops
junaid1460 4y ago
3 gigs for a web app :crycat:
fayten 4y ago
Some neat info on the performance side of things, Fleet is using Skija[1] and Compose[2] as a rendering engine and UI framework. Skija is a java wrapper for Skia and still does not support the full API. Compose is still relatively new and has not had nearly the amount of man hours devoted to it as Swing. This is just a technical preview, I'm sure there will be plenty of optimizations to come. I think it's pretty exciting to see Skija being used for a mainstream project! [1] https://github.com/HumbleUI/Skija https://github.com/HumbleUI/Skija [2] https://github.com/JetBrains/compose-jb https://github.com/JetBrains/compose-jb
- EddieRingle 4y ago
  JetBrains Compose UI is using Skiko, not Skija: https://github.com/JetBrains/skiko https://github.com/JetBrains/skiko
  - fayten 4y ago
    Oh my mistake, thanks for the info!
- tsvetkov 4y ago
  Fleet does not use Compose, but it does use Skiko[1], which also provides binding for Skia[2] (the native graphics library also used by Chrome & Flutter). The main difference between the libraries is that Skija provides Java/JVM bindings for Skia, whereas Skiko provides Kotlin bindings for Kotlin/JVM, Kotlin/JS, and Kotlin/Native targets. Of course Skiko's Kotlin/JVM bindings can be used with other JVM languages, not just with Kotlin. [1] https://github.com/JetBrains/skiko https://github.com/JetBrains/skiko [2] https://skia.org/ https://skia.org/
neilv 4y ago
I think the name is a little funny, and maybe the funny is so crude and juvenile, that no one was willing to mention it? Like the Pepsi logo, I can't unsee it. "OK, people, creative time! Blank slate, no second system syndrome. Let's rethink the JetBrains concept, from the bottom, up!" "Jet-- Butts?" "Will the JetButts brand fly in all markets? Riff alternatives?" "...Fleet?" "Explosive! Sounds fast and productive! Can we get a mark search?" https://www.amazon.com/s?k=fleet https://www.amazon.com/s?k=fleet
- neilv 4y ago
  Someone had to mention it before launch.
hbn 4y ago
Seems pretty slick from what I've played with so far. I don't need anything fancy, I kinda just want something to replace my usecase for VS Code which is a quick-to-open text editor that I don't need a PhD in in order to use effectively. For getting work done I'll continue to use IntelliJ, but sometimes I just need to edit a file or open a directory of files and don't want to open a big IDE for that and have it start indexing things. Slightly disappointed they've changed the default key mappings? I went to open a file with cmd+shift+o but that immediately launched a symbol search and I have to hit cmd-p to open a file search. Seems like the git comparison UI is worse. Aside from it stacking up a giant list of diffs, it seems very simple, like Github's PR diff UI. Not doing the nice thing where it shows which lines map to which lines in the changes. I'll chock that up to being a preview.
mi_lk 4y ago
I like the fleet light/dark theme, can JetBrains put it as a plugin so I can use it in other JB products?
- hbn 4y ago
  I want Darcula back. It's the only dark theme I've ever liked in any piece of software. It's grey instead of black so it doesn't hurt my eyes, and the color contrasts for symbol highlighting and whatnot are very well tuned.
cheeaun 4y ago
Just wondering, there's no way to launch Fleet directly without launching it from Toolbox or using CLI?
- hiyer 4y ago
  It gets installed as an application, so you can open it with your usual app launchers on Mac and Linux (I haven't used it on Windows). You can open it from the terminal also, but the path it gets installed in is a convoluted one and includes the version, so you will need to update your aliases/links every time a new version is installed.
  - cheeaun 4y ago
    Thanks! I guess I'm using Raycast (instead of Spotlight), so it actually need a reindex.
uticus 4y ago
No Ruby support out of the box - yet there is support for Java (a la IntelliJ), C# (a la Rider), Go (a la GoLand), C (a la CLion), Python (a la PyCharm), Web-anything (a la WebStorm & PhpStorm)... RubyMine is a great IDE, worth paying for, but this looks like writing on the wall.
chewmieser 4y ago
Felt really great! Snappy and familiar to modern equivalents (e.g. VS Code). That said, memory consumption is pretty high at around 3.35 GB for the backend, 1.83 GB for the frontend on a decently sized project. Compared to Nova which has that and a lot more loaded at 1.26 GB. PHP smart mode definitely needs work. A lot of errors that wouldn't be errors if we could specify which version of PHP the project was running as. Using any PHP7+ feature ends up in an error. Some silly issues with namespacing as well - like using "string" type-hinting on class functions in a namespaced class shows an error. And some highlighting oddities with some of our files, but all-in-all I really liked Fleet. Will keep an eye on it!
stunt 4y ago
It looks very practical and I like the choices they made. But, I can't use it as a daily driver because it doesn't have vim mode.
lfmunoz4 4y ago
no_circuit 4y ago
So if they are making progress to a distributed polyglot editor, then this mean that we'd be able to run multiple windows of Fleet working on different projects connecting to the same remote host? Is the connection mechanism basically the same as the Gateway product? If so, I wonder if this bug will ever gets fixed, or if it is a "works as intended" that you cannot run multiple projects on the same host? [1] However this issue doesn't really apply if you create a VM per workspace either manually or the service that is provided... [1] https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/GTW-813 https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/GTW-813
noob_07 4y ago
Anybody having memory issues with it? I opened a large react project and it utilized nearly 2GB of RAM. I am on a linux machine.
- stusmall 4y ago
  That doesn't seem that extreme if it is a large project. JetBrains products are more than just a text editor and tend to be pretty aggressive with RAM usage.
- chewmieser 4y ago
  I'm at 3.28GB backend + 1.83GB frontend for a medium-large PHP project as well. Pretty huge memory requirements but I've got plenty so not a big deal, just noticeable compared to alternatives.
lopkeny12ko 4y ago
I'm pretty confused by the product positioning. If Fleet is built on the same technologies as other Jetbrains IDEs, describes itself as an IDE, and is natively polyglot, why shouldn't it replace the other language-based IDEs? From the marketing material, it's not clear to me the value proposition of, for example, IntelliJ compared to Fleet.
- andrewaylett 4y ago
  Maybe eventually the other IDEs will evolve into Fleet. But in the meantime, I can see why they'd want to avoid spooking their existing customer base into worrying that their investment in existing tooling is at risk.
Brystephor 4y ago
How is this different from intelliJ Ultimate?
nobleach 4y ago
I had high hopes that JetBrains would relent on their decision to avoid implementing a Language Server Protocol server. There is a 3rd party implementation out there, but it needs a lot of help. I realize this cuts into their core business... but it'd sure make using Vim to write Kotlin a more pleasant experience.
- tasubotadas 4y ago
  Never seen language server come even close to what intellij offers.
  - iudqnolq 4y ago
    When I last used them for Rust about two years ago they were racing neck and neck against a language server being refactored to share a backend with the reference compiler. I switched to the language server because I felt running the actual compiler will in the long term always work better than writing your own parser. I was on the Jetbrains student discount, so I made a small recurring contribution to the rust language server project. I think in retrospect that was the correct decision. The language server team has done great work, and they support things impractical to do with just parsing like autocompleting functions defined by macros.
    - dmitriid 4y ago
      > running the actual compiler will in the long term always work better than writing your own parser. No, it won't. A compiler and an IDE code analyzer have completely different non-intersecting goals. As an example, consider error recovery. Where a compiler can just fail with an error, in an IDE you need to continue to provide full correct syntax highlighting, display all other potential errors and warnings, continue providing code analysis (including suggestions on how to fix the error) etc. > The language server team has done great work, and they support things impractical to do with just parsing like autocompleting functions defined by macros. None of these are provided by the language server team. These are provided by whoever wrote the code to analyze your stuff and provide data to the language server.
mehphp 4y ago
Very sluggish and no vim support. It looks promising but I’m going to let it bake for a while.
nikolay 4y ago
I was hopeful, but after playing with it, I'm not impressed!
savingGrace 4y ago
I have used JetBrains products for a decade (IntelliJ, Android Studio, WebStorm, PHPStorm). Does this mean that those products are having resources shifted away from them to work on Fleet? I am not a developer who enjoys the 'plugin' mindset and tend to install very few. I prefer Visual Studios over VSCode as well...
barefeg 4y ago
Sorry for the unfamiliarity with JetBrains products. Is this architecture similar to VSCode’s? So the ide has a backend that can run remotely and a frontend client that can run in multiple environments including web? I remember a long time ago pyCharm had the ability to run the interpreter remotely. What are the benefits of pulling more stuff in the backend? Is it in order to be able to run the editor in different environments?
- dexwiz 4y ago
  I actually have a use case for this. I work on a big JVM app that needs some serious hardware to run locally. If I want to develop remotely I have to use a Remote Desktop to access a workstation, which is hell. You can remote debug, but you can’t really remote develop. Intellij is index heavy so you need Intellij and the code to be collocated on a machine, otherwise IntelliJ will overload the network. You can get around this by having two copies of the code and manually transfer any differences to machine running the JVM, but it’s really brittle. Separating the front and back ends will allow me to have JVM, code, and compiler all on one machine, but the editor on another.
deagle50 4y ago
When will IdeaVim (or similar) work? Can't use it until then.
wg0 4y ago
I think Visual Studio code has great influence on it but after trying it, I think VS code can also learn few things about interface from it. Really neat. Probably JetBrains thought to leverage tons of in house Java code otherwise I think Rust + Skia or similar would have been a great option with almost no run time requirements. Rust gurus can say better but I have seen pretty impressive cross platform apps in Rust such as alacritty and warp.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  I honestly think it would be painful to write a large GUI app like this in Rust, and it's not something I would attempt. Backend and code analytics side, sure. But like you said they have lots of in-house code written in Java. It's interesting they stuck with Java for the UI, but it does seem to be snappy and I'm glad to see them walk away from Swing.
anotherrandom 4y ago
Interesting! Looking forward to trying it out. I won't consider paying for it until it's at least FOSS though, like IntelliJ or PyCharm. I paid for those 2 products and those 2 products alone solely because they are free and open source (I can't get shafted by a sudden change in licensing and can switch to a functionally equivalent free version on a whim).
moogly 4y ago
Looks pretty and well-designed. Snappy too, but they're going to have to work on the startup time. I'll check back in a year when it's a bit more feature rich. And when you can disable the smooth scrolling.
idk1 4y ago
Might need some Apple Silicon testing, I could toss and egg on my M1 MBP and it'll be done by the time I scroll to the bottom of the document.
tibbydudeza 4y ago
Ditched VSCode for PyCharm when I started learning Python. Simply using it for a few months convinced me to upgrade to the Pro edition, the same vibes as when I used Borland Turbo C - VSCode just has that bloated feeling like Eclipse.

352 points by topka 4y ago

I've been browsing their site for a few minutes now and I'm still lost on what Fleet actually is. It says it's a new IDE, built from scratch, sure, but isn't IntelliJ already the gold standard for many languages? What problems does creating an entirely new IDE solve?

Denvercoder9 4y ago
It seems to mostly be a competitor to VS Code, i.e. a relatively lightweight editor with support for distributed operation (where the local part is only a UI, and everything else can run remotely).
mnd999 4y ago
I think they’re trying to move to a browser / cloud model, presumably so that they can charge more for less.
- keyle 4y ago
  Yeah I'm getting strange adobe-like vibes from creative cloud announcements.
  - Jack_rando_fang 4y ago
    Exactly, when you want to download JetBrian fleet, you'll first have to download their "JetBrain Toolbox", which looks and functions VERY similar to the adobe CC menubar app.
    - jpgvm 4y ago
      To be fair they ship a large number of IDEs and Toolbox makes managing them a lot easier. I mostly only use IDEA Ultimate and CLion but I use the others occasionally too for certain tasks but don't necessarily have them installed all the time. Toolbox is installed on all my machines so I can simply install what I need when I need it, i.e Datagrip to generate some nice diagrams of some random DB I need to look at, etc.
    - monlockandkey 4y ago
      Well it makes it easier to manage rather than wrangling with multiple stand alone IDEs and versions
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  I think it's more that there are now many large companies that now deploy VSCode as a shared, distributed editor. When I was at Google they were starting to replace their proprietary "Cider" web-based editor (for Google3) with a "CiderV" which was a modified hosted VSCode. A hosted VSCode instance makes a lot of sense for a company like Google where source-code-on-laptops is generally forbidden and developers are often issued Chromebooks etc. It solves & improves the distributed/remote development problem without requiring organizational changes. And it's much faster and smoother than RDP, etc. So those are potential customers that JetBrains was/is losing. My brain is almost 20-years-wired for JetBrains products. I would have been much happier to be able to use a remote JetBrains IDE vs a remote VSCode. There are also people for whom the existing JetBrains IDEs will always feel big slow and bloated. They have a lot of features packed in and come with a lot of lifestyle assumptions. I can see the value in JetBrains rolling out something that feels lighter-weight.
- tomjen3 4y ago
  They just raised their prices, but their competitor is VS code, which is no cost so they can't run that route.
user3939382 4y ago
From what I’ve seen the difference is that Fleet is much faster.
hennell 4y ago
The linked product page seems to sum it up pretty well: >We built Fleet to be a fast and lightweight text editor for when you need to quickly browse and edit your code. It starts up in an instant so you can begin working immediately, and it can easily transform into an IDE, with the IntelliJ code-processing engine running separately from the editor itself. It's splitting the difference between text editor and IDE. It's their answer to people complaining "IntelliJ takes too long to start up" while keeping the IDE features that you lose just using a text editor.
origin_path 4y ago
My gut sense from watching this for a while is that Fleet is a hedge by JetBrains against the risk of technical obsolescence for the IJ platform. VSCode introduced some key architectural changes and new UI which may or may not actually be better than their own products, but, if they are better then JB would be left without a good way to respond. So. They start Fleet. Different to their existing products in several ways: 1. Doesn't use the Swing UI toolkit. Uses a custom home-grown thing on top of Skia. Still JVM based though. 2. Runs heavy computation in a backend with a network protocol between that and the UI. 3. Has a VSCode style UI. 4. Uses JSON files for configuration. Meanwhile they are also attempting to respond to the threat with IJ itself. So they have been prototyping a new VSCode style UI in IJ, implemented with Swing. I'm using it at the moment and I have to say it's actually quite nice. I was super skeptical at first. No, really skeptical. I liked the classic IJ UI, nice and dense, lots of features. But the new UI has won me over. It's been freshened up, is still just as efficient, looks nicer too. I think the success of that project (at least for users who want it) calls into question a big part of the Fleet value prop. Also they've been adding remote development/backend support into IJ itself, a lot of that is being built around their pair programming Code-with-me thing which is a fairly sophisticated data sync protocol under the hood. So JetBrains is setting themselves up here for some serious product management pain. The IJ team are rising to the challenge and it's not at all clear that VSCode will retain its competitive advantages beyond price within a year or two. Swing is not turning out to be the millstone around their neck they apparently feared, and the new UI feels modern and fast even though it's based on this old toolkit. Meanwhile the VSCode architecture in many ways doesn't make sense and is clearly the result of asking "how can we build an IDE within the constraints of a web browser" and not "how do we build a great IDE"? The client/server architecture is quite painful in all kinds of ways compared to threads+locks, devs tend to have good enough machines for code indexing and comprehension, and IntelliJ index builds can be outsourced to the cloud anyway. If IJ starts to really nail the Gateway stuff (see the recent Google Cloud Workstation announcement), what does it leave Fleet for? And how would they resolve these two competing products? If I were running JetBrains I'd be tempted to keep resources assigned to Fleet relatively limited and wait to see if it takes off organically, whilst simultaneously closing the gaps in IJ with VSCode. This does not just mean the features listed so far but also means getting serious about their "lightedit mode" and plugin API. JetBrains have a cultural problem in which they historically have actively resisted anything resembling code documentation, thinking that code should be self-documenting. Their plugin API docs are still poor and incomplete even after many years partly as a consequence, and although the JVM can run many languages, JB only really support Java and Kotlin for plugin dev. VSCode has taken off partly for the same reason NodeJS and Electron did - it lets web devs apply their skills in a new context. Language server took off because it lets obscure language communities use their own language to make IDE plugins instead of needing to use Java. Add Graal to IntelliJ, make JS a first-class plugin language and explore how to do non-network based integration with other languages. It would help them a lot.

TheChaplain 4y ago

I'm sure this is great for enterprises but for me, a single developer on a local machine, what benefits does Fleet bring?

austinpena 4y ago
Yeah, I'm curious of this too, especially compared to just running standard Intellij IDEs
suchar 4y ago
Probably not that much if you are not looking forward to a remote development: - new UI (they couldn't change it in any meaningful way without breaking workflows, but with a new IDE there are no existing workflows) - single IDE for all languages (it was possible for most of them with IJ ultimate, but for e.g. Python the experience was slightly worse than with PyCharm)

capableweb 4y ago

> Fleet is our new distributed polyglot editor and IDE. Ok, polygot makes sense, it supports more than just one language. But what does distributed mean in this context? You run the editor across many machines? What does that mean? Coming from a backend perspective, it quite doesn't make much sense. Thinking about it from a client-side perspective, I'm guessing they mean the architecture is decoupled, meaning basically plugins/extensions but with a fancier word? Judging by the "Features Matrix" (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vTWt9RlJPfIJwD5H7Gsqbu9xHTd-K1oj_zCpP6YIQq8xvjARDYqC6OnVIVt5WPi2-B-vWHZw5qMnhvx/pubhtml?gid=0&single=true https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vTWt9RlJ...), sad to see not a single non C-like language is being considered.

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kuschku 4y ago
Distributed means you can run the editor UI and the actual backend on separate machines. One long-term goal of such deployments is developers just having a thin chromebook with the UI and the actual code being on a corporate server, like terminals and mainframes in ye olde days. I believe this is a reaction to VS Code, which has supported this functionality for a while already.
- kevincox 4y ago
  Another big use case is running the "backend" inside a VM or container that has a well-defined set of dependencies installed while the host OS can be updated and managed by the user.
- woojoo666 4y ago
  But conventionally the word "distributed” is for apps running on multiple servers. Your definition makes every web app "distributed". And I feel like most of HN would disagree with calling Spotify Web a "distributed app"
  - kuschku 4y ago

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PeterStuer 4y ago

Still confused. Is Fleet to IntelliJ as VS.Code is to Visual Studio?

ZeroCool2u 4y ago
Basically yes.
amcsi 4y ago
Better. It's like a VS.Code that you can turn into a Visual Studio (if needed) within the same application.

monlockandkey 4y ago

I just downloaded the Fleet beta from the App toolbox. First impressions is that it is very clean. This is essentially Vscode but with Jetbrains language and refactoring engine. Quick thoughts: - It needs a bit more autocomplete e.g automatically close tags for React components - GUI run configuration - they have made it so it uses a JSON file like Vscode to configure, GUI is quicker and easier (can still click run on gutter for package.json scripts so not that bad) - Sometimes you want to use Vscode to make some quick changes/play around instead of firing up an IDE. Fleet replaces that for me - Part of me think that Jetbrains should have created paid extensions for Vscode much like Resharper for Visual Studio

RamblingCTO 4y ago
> - GUI run configuration - they have made it so it uses a JSON file like Vscode to configure, GUI is quicker and easier (can still click run on gutter for package.json scripts so not that bad) And better auto-complete for that. I tried to add my golang project, but had no clue what it wants from me for goExecPath or buildTargets. Why not show the help inside the editor? I had to google and look around (goExecPath is the actual link to the bin, not GOPATH or something) and buildTargets means files (main.go). The naming feels weird.
suchar 4y ago
> - Part of me think that Jetbrains should have created paid extensions for Vscode much like Resharper for Visual Studio IIRC, JetBrains considers LSP to be too limiting for refactoring and code-insight capabilities that they want to provide (I think they said that when there was discussion about language server for Kotlin). So it's possible that such extension wouldn't be on par with a "real" JetBrains IDE.

robertlagrant 4y ago

> Fleet is an opportunity for us to provide a different user experience for developers Given they're presumably spending a lot on this development, it would be useful to give a bit more detail than this. What is different?

mgkimsal 4y ago
It's free to download and try (well... it's in my 'toolbox'). Comment I made to a friend earlier... Loads relatively quick. On par with or slightly faster than vscode on my M1. Very 'project unaware' up front, which may be OK for some uses. Might be a step up from vim for one-off changes. Collab seems easier/faster. No plugins(?). No UI to connect to other machines so far.

pjmlp 4y ago

JetBrains trying to fight back Visual Studio Code taking over their market share.

rob74 4y ago
The main difference between VS Code and the various JetBrains IDEs is that for VS Code, you have to find and install the relevant plugins for your use case yourself, whereas the various JetBrains IDEs tend to work out of the box (while still supporting plugins). That's usually the difference between most free/open source solutions and commercial software: you can do mostly the same with the open source alternative, you just have to invest more effort. As far as I'm concerned, as long as my company is paying the JetBrains IDE license, why should I go to extra lengths to set up VS Code?
- pjmlp 4y ago
  That is why one has the IT department configuring development images. I remeber there was a blog post from JetBrains where they complain about VSCode taking over InteliJ market, by indirectly asserting they don't understand why VSCode adoption was rising. Surprise surprise, a couple of months later Fleet was announced.
  - mgkimsal 4y ago
    I think "projector" was a beta/trial thing before fleet. And I could never get it to work. Or... I think I got it to work once, but it was decidedly a not-great experience.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    I'd say they still don't understand why VSCode adoption is rising. There are two reasons: - People don't know better (yes, they really don't) - Language server allowed languages with abysmal tools to finally have some semblance of an IDE None of us know the future, but in my opinion Fleet is a mistake: - It tries to fight VSCode at VSCode's turf (an editor with primitive IDE functionality) - while trying to be a testbed for new UI for JetBrains IDEs - while trying to both serve the Language Server crowd and keep JetBrain's vastly superior language tools - while diluting JetBrains' offer of development tools

tommica 4y ago

Tried the private beta for a while, and although it was rough on the edges, I really enjoyed the ability to "enable" the smart mode - if I needed to do a quick edit in a file, without having to load all the IDE magic, I had an editor that was quick to start, and if I needed all the bits and bobs, I just clicked a button and off we went. What kept me using their main products instead of fleet was the plugins that are available, that makes working just more enjoyable.

nik736 4y ago

Maybe this can replace Atom. But for that we need a OneDark theme :)

_fat_santa 4y ago

This looks really promising. But by far the biggest moat that Jetbrains is going to have to cross to get into VSCode territory is the plugin ecosystem. Personally I work on React projects so my first thought was: "is there a Prettier[1] plugin?". Looking through the landing page it looks like Plugins are in the works but until that is implemented, it's going to be hard adopting it. ALSO I just noticed this but can someone (ideally from JetBrains) explain what this line means: "Requires login and periodic connection to JetBrains servers to verify the project" (specifically the last 3 words of that sentence). Quite frankly this line is extremely alarming, are you saying that you're scanning my project to make sure it's not a "professional" project? I'm going to assume this line means that they are checking the IDE and not your source but I won't be using this product until I get an explanation for this. You can find this at the very bottom in the licensing and pricing section. [1]: https://prettier.io/ https://prettier.io/

keithnz 4y ago
webstorm is the way to go for react and other web type stuff... though I'm not sure if the intention of fleet is for it to be free forever or not.
- nicce 4y ago
  Probably same than previous pricing model - you need license for commercial use.
dmitriid 4y ago
> But by far the biggest moat that Jetbrains is going to have to cross to get into VSCode territory is the plugin ecosystem. Personally I work on React projects so my first thought was: "is there a Prettier[1] plugin?". This just reinforces my feeling that a major driver behind VSCode's popularity is that people just don't know better [1] 1. Download WebStorm (or IDEA) and write some React in it. And Typescript. Refactor. Move code around. Use suggestions. It's leaps and bounds ahead of VSCode 2. Open settings, navigate to plugins, type in Prettier. Oh look, there's the plugin. An official plugin from JetBrains [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=33176123 https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=33176123

bestest 4y ago

Yet another editor with no ability to switch to vertical tabs. Looks like I'm staying with the old-school JetBrains IDEs for the time being.

mgkimsal 4y ago

Mostly OT, I know, but... anyone have any clue as to when 'spaces' might actually be a supported task server for their IDE products? They offer 'spaces' as a project tool - keep track of issues/bugs, planning, communication, etc. But you can't connect your IDE to it the same way it can connect to Jira, Github, Trello, Gitlab, Redline, Pivotal and others. It seemed like a short-term oversight at the start, but after... 2 years(?) ... it seems like a vote of no-confidence in their own product. I was excited to use spaces but... some of the most basic stuff I wanted to use wasn't there, and still isn't. https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/4404467672594-How-to-create-task-at-Space-from-PyCharm https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/community/po...

artdigital 4y ago

Looks and feels nice Sadly no plugin support yet, and no VIM keybdings, that's a bummer. I loaded up a JS project, but no support for prettier, LSP or eslint formatting means the Format Code feature doesn't match with the rest of the projects style, so I can't use it. I'll keep it installed and revisit now and then (similar to Nova). Excited to see what they have planned

Asdrubalini 4y ago

Rust support seems good and it's already integrated if you press the lightning button in the top right. Sadly no vim support so it's not really usable yet (at least for me).

__warlord__ 4y ago

I installed this 30 min ago. 1. My M1 temp went from 28c to 60c 2. CPU utilization to 103%? 3. It's using 3.29Gb of RAM And it hasn't changed. With a single python project with 3k lines of code. VSCode sits at 280Mb and CPU temp around 28c. Edit: Vim + SpaceVim sitting at 17Mb :)

daitangio 4y ago
It still a beta, so I think it can be acceptable BUT it is not tiny. What I like about VSCode is that is slick and lean without plugins, and with remote support it is still "light"... And I was a huge Emacs, Emacs-org fan, so if I use VSCode because it gets the work done at the end of the day (TM)
dicknuckle 4y ago
I probably have that many LoC between all the open files in VScode on an M1 and also love the performance. Only issue I've had so far is the Terraform Language Server running 18 threads at all times and grabbing too much CPU once or twice a month.
- __warlord__ 4y ago
  Yeah, I had the same issue with the terraform plugins, I honestly had to delete them. So far I haven't found an alternative but honestly I don't write that much terraform anymore.
ksec 4y ago
I think, correct me if I am wrong, Fleet is written in Kotlin, hence running on top of JVM. ( I am assuming Kotlin Native not being used yet ) While I dont think VSCode is fast and lean when compared to Sublime or other Native Editor. It is well optimised. I do wonder if Fleet could catch up or even exceed VSC in the performance / resources usage department.
- ta988 4y ago
  It totally could, the JVM is really fast. JS interpreters are fast too these days. So I don't expect much difference between the two. One department where the JVM may win is latency (the new GCs are incredibly fast so no impact there) for typing to display. Other than that I don't expect much difference.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

cheptsov 4y ago

Already saw it in Toolbox App and installed ;-) Gonna give it a try. Congrats on the launch, and kudos to the Fleet team!

randomsearch 4y ago

A bit OT but if any JetBrains employees read this: please, please could you change the icon for webstorm? It is so ugly that it hurts my eyes. I will pay you to change the icon. Thanks.

davb 4y ago

It’s so slow to startup. On a laptop with 11th gen i5, 16GB ram and a fairly fast NVMe SSD running Windows 11 and I see ~10s startup time. I really hope it succeeds but for a lightweight editor it’s just too slow to start.

krzyk 4y ago

I wonder if it would be possible to use vim as the UI and connect to the backend of Fleet - best of both worlds.

eddiezane 4y ago
This is my dream. Being able to use Fleet/JetBrains's backend as an LSP/DAP for Neovim. It sounds like the architecture is there with Fleet. Please JetBrains friends!

pknerd 4y ago

Instead of coming up with a new project, why just they do not provide a community edition for each of their products? Currently they provide a CE edition for PyCharm only? I remember I loved the initial version of Goland a lot but found out it is not free and expired after a while, I switched back to VSCode and did not regret at all

dbrgn 4y ago
"Instead of trying to innovate, why don't they just give out their existing products for free to customers that aren't willing to pay?" Jetbrains make good products. And it's great that they're trying to explore the potential for a more lightweight editor based on their technology.
neverartful 4y ago
"Currently they provide a CE edition for PyCharm only?" If I'm not mistaken, I think they have a CE edition of IntelliJ (java) too.
- mdaniel 4y ago
  Yes, both are Apache 2 licensed: https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community#readme https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community#readme (pycharm is in the "python" subdirectory). It used to be painless to build them both, but the recently doubled down on jps and now it's hit-or-miss and a ton more complicated, but I can attest it is possible

bluelightning2k 4y ago

I have read all the comments on this thread. I'm fascinated by people's thoughts of VSC Vs JetBrains. It seems the consensus is that JB is better, except for web platform? Maybe this is because TypeScript is an excellent language server

insane_dreamer 4y ago
Can't speak of other JB IDEs, by PyCharm is awesome
hbn 4y ago
The only thing that matters to me is JetBrains stuff seems to actually understand my code. i.e. it never fails to be able to jump me to references if I cmd+click a symbol, it's never messed up an automatic refactor (like a variable rename or something), etc. And it just works out of the box. I've never been able to configure VS Code to work in a way that's anywhere approaching intelligent. Maybe there's a way but I don't want to be messing with plugins and settings. And every time I've tried I just get frustrated and give up. I keep it installed for quick one-off text editing cause it launches faster than JB, but Fleet might just replace it for that usecase now.
mmastrac 4y ago
VSCode is still best for anything that isn't Android development, IMO. The C/C++, Rust, JS/TS integrations in VSCode have been amazing for me. IntelliJ is a battery killer, but VSCode is something I can run on a plane or in a cafe without a power cord.
no_wizard 4y ago
I don't know if it even wins there, to be honest. I'd say they're on par if anything, with a slight edge to JetBrains, as they have better support built-in vs needing plugins. I'm a long time JetBrains user though, so I admit upfront I may have some bias here.

bluelightning2k 4y ago

For what this is for: I think the clue is in the name. It targets large groups of developers offloading the language server with thin clients. At least that's my understanding.

kburman 4y ago

Jetbrains seems so confident about future being full of collaboration. For me it would be very hard to work if someone else is also updating the codebase at the same time. Anyone working like can you share your experience

CSDude 4y ago
We prefer sync code reviews sometimes and it's easier.
leadingthenet 4y ago
Same here, but maybe it's for education / quickly talking through an issue or solution? Otherwise, I really fail to see the value add vs git.
tomjen3 4y ago
It only makes sense for distributed pair programming. But that’s not a bad idea either.

kaladin_1 4y ago

Nice one Jetbrains!!! Let's see if this competition eventually leads to one of them launching something as snappy as vim but with IDE functionalities. VS Code is close but noticeably slows down as soon as you install many plugins. With Fleet, newbies now have an alternative editor cum IDE. Many people that were into programming in my University couldn't afford the kind of machine that would load IntelliJ or Jetbrains IDEs in short time. Rooting for Jetbrains to put up a good fight and recover some market share :)

gnerkus 4y ago

I wish they'd provide more support for C++; CLion is incredibly slow on older Macbooks.

onebot 4y ago

I would love this if it wasn't also built on the Java runtime. I hoped the "from ground up" rewrite to include a new much more performant backend that didn't burn resources. To be fair, I even think VSCode is too slow. I have been loving Helix Editor since it gives a great out-of-the box experience for terminal. But craving a better VSCode replacement. Had high hopes for Fleet, but I guess you can't teach an old dog new tricks.

kobepanda 4y ago
I've been liking https://zed.dev/ https://zed.dev/ for something that gives me more smarts out of the box than Sublime Text but maintains the responsiveness. Limited set of languages but it supports the ones I use on the daily
- pgo 4y ago
  Would you happen to have an invite for zed.dev ? I typically have 10-15 VSCode windows open and have been looking for an performant but modern IDE
  - kobepanda 4y ago
    Yes I have a few - is the email in your profile current?
    - pgo 4y ago
      Yes, palash [at] dyte.io Thanks for the invite
    - weakfish 4y ago
      Hi, is there any chance I could ask for one too? No worries if not :-) My email is in profile. jack [at] weakphi [dot] sh
    - ezschemi 4y ago
      If you have another invite for zed.dev, could ask for one too? No worries if not! Email is en [at] ruw.io

EugeneOZ 4y ago

Requires some mega-ugly “toolbox” app as an installer for all the JetBrains apps - no, thanks, Adobe taught me to burn such things when I see them.

rz123 4y ago

Problem with JetBrains support docker for PyCharm and most likely other IDEs. 1. Why JetBrains can not connect to docker running container by using exec operation and read installed packages? Issue: - It is not possible to just go into running container install some library and get it visible within IDE, it needs to go via all pain to clear caches and wait until IDE will load again. How it works now: - It creates copy of docker image and read installed packages from it, does not read anything installed within currently running container. - Developer needs to install packages within image creation for PyCharm to pickup it. If package is installed in current container, developer needs to go clear caches, restart IDE, wait until it loads etc. and it is because the way how JetBrains integrates and supports running docker containers. ::Reproducing issue with running docker containers within Pycharm:: --- If you want to reproduce issue create docker-compose installation with python. Start by running "docker-compose up" from terminal load PyCharm and configure everything what is require within PyCharm. Going into running container by terminal: # docker-compose exec ... bash # pip install pip-licenses This pip-licenses package will not be visible inside IDE! Developer needs to go clear all caches, reload PyCharm and do other things just to get package recognised from running docker container. ---- 2. Why jetbrains can not find proper solution to see packages from currently running container without clearing caches? Cache should be update if recognised that new package exist within currently running container, not by developers maintaining jetbrains IDE caches. 3. VSCode(free IDE) did find how to support running docker containers, but paid product by Jetbrains can not solve this problem? 4. Can you at least implement something similar level to VSCode for running docker containers?

Kukumber 4y ago

They made a mistake to keep using the JVM.. They should have went with kotlin-native from the start EDIT: Ok i gave it a try, so far very responsive, typing latency feels much better than vscode, overall i like the UX, they kept it simple yet very well organized Much better than vscode already, congrats!

vips7L 4y ago
Kotlin native is barely usable... it doesn't even have a standard library.
speed_spread 4y ago
Native code makes it much harder to design a runtime plugin system. Also, other than fast startup and lower memory usage, native code does not make the app faster.
- Kukumber 4y ago
  > Native code makes it much harder to design a runtime plugin system That's not true, lua, lua-jit, quickjs, v8, c#, even java Game engines already have the lead in that area and they proved that it's possible and can be made very efficient The UI and host of the program should be native to maximize performance Native code helps write fast code that runs fast with optimized memory layouts
  - Mikeb85 4y ago
    > Game engines already have the lead in that area and they proved that it's possible and can be made very efficient Game engines basically implement their own "runtime". They all have stuff like memory management, scripting languages (and usually plugins use the scripting API), and the game is just a package of assets and code that are run by the engine...
  - speed_spread 4y ago
    > lua, lua-jit, quickjs, v8, c#, even java Huh? None of these are compiled to native code ahead of time. By definition using a JIT compiler is not making things "native", it's just a way of making a very fast interpreter. Those languages you mention are used in gaming precisely because of their dynamic qualities compensating for the rigidness of the otherwise C++ based engines.

ddorian43 4y ago

> Run in a performant virtual machine with up to: 16 CPU cores 32 GB Memory 40 GB Disk Drive Literally my laptop that I bought for $1300 3 years ago.

nigerianbrince 4y ago
Model?
- ddorian43 4y ago
  Acer predator helios 300 (was $1000), 12vcores, 256GB NVME, upgraded to 32GB ram.

cpctheman 4y ago

Unfortunately it doesn’t look like this supports remote development (at least from what I can tell poking around their site). Until Gateway is performant & stable enough to use, I’m sticking with VSCode. It’s a shame because I prefer IntelliJ for Java development, but lacking remote development stability is a deal breaker.

Jtsummers 4y ago
https://www.jetbrains.com/help/fleet/install-on-a-remote-machine.html#options https://www.jetbrains.com/help/fleet/install-on-a-remote-mac... - It seems it does support remote dev. Just played with it on my laptop and a Linux VPS I toss things onto from time to time, it worked alright. Haven't tried anything serious with it yet. When Fleet launched I had the option of connecting via SSH, specified the IP and port, and was able to connect. It uploaded some programs which run on the remote host to support the work. I was able to edit a program and then run it. There was also a terminal available on the remote host from inside Fleet.
- sz4kerto 4y ago
  It's extremely far from IJ in terms of functionality, at the moment. I don't think Jetbrains will avoid the need of making Gateway stable too.

dangerboysteve 4y ago

To use Fleet you have to download the JetBrains Toolbox. Really? Look, I'm a JB subscriber and have the toolbox, but Fleet should not require another app to launch or update itself.

topka 4y ago
[JetBrains employee] In the future Fleet will be able to update itself. Right now, we use Toolbox App as it can do Fleet updates easier.
- ZeroCool2u 4y ago
  I personally love Toolbox in our corporate environment. I just wish it would default to using system proxy settings on Windows and propagate Proxy settings to the IDE's it installs by default.
  - chunkyks 4y ago
    And a better way to handle certs for it, and all the IDEs, behind a corporate MITM SSL proxy would really improve my day.
    - ZeroCool2u 4y ago
      Yes, absolutely!
  - mdaniel 4y ago
    While I believe there are JB employees in this thread, your wish is more likely to be fulfilled if it is a formal ticket: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issues/TBX https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issues/TBX

cmrdporcupine 4y ago

So I tried it out. I own a CLion license and have been using Jetbrains products since IntelliJ 3.0. It seems ok, but very very VSCode-ish. I tried it with our Rust codebase and it seemed to be fairly competitive with CLion in terms of analysis. I didn't try any refactorings but I did notice that it doesn't have many of them. It was fairly snappy, felt more responsive than CLion. I was disappointed that even after I switched it to "IntelliJ" keybindings many keybindings still were more like VSCode than IntelliJ. I.e. Ctrl-N was still "open new tab" and not "jump to symbol" (have to do ctrl-shift-alt-N for that.) Overall, I guess I'm curious where they go with it. I won't be trading in my CLion license, though. I am probably not the target audience; I suspect they're looking to capture customers who work in large corporations where VSCode is getting penetration as a hosted/fleet solution. With the default keybindings I suspect those coming from VSCode will find Fleet very comfortable. For myself, I continue to give Jetbrains money for their IDEs, because as a company they do great work and give good value. I'm happy to modestly help pay the salaries of their employees. I wish them luck.

8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
that's exactly what i was afraid of. them copying vscode. vscode is getting worse and worse IMo. its not even good at the one thing it initially excelled at - being fast. im not even talking about sluggish ui, just all the bullshit what's new and oh let me connect to ssh before you can enter a single keystroke. but more importantly, i like that intellij is full featured and has proper windows and dialogs and keybindings. vscode tries to cram everything into a single textbox or ui element and it makes everything worse. give me intellij but let me build a language backend in whatever language i want instead of forcing java on me. and also so that i can run it at my work which doesn't like code on laptops

junaid1460 4y ago

3 gigs for a web app :crycat:

fayten 4y ago

Some neat info on the performance side of things, Fleet is using Skija[1] and Compose[2] as a rendering engine and UI framework. Skija is a java wrapper for Skia and still does not support the full API. Compose is still relatively new and has not had nearly the amount of man hours devoted to it as Swing. This is just a technical preview, I'm sure there will be plenty of optimizations to come. I think it's pretty exciting to see Skija being used for a mainstream project! [1] https://github.com/HumbleUI/Skija https://github.com/HumbleUI/Skija [2] https://github.com/JetBrains/compose-jb https://github.com/JetBrains/compose-jb

EddieRingle 4y ago
JetBrains Compose UI is using Skiko, not Skija: https://github.com/JetBrains/skiko https://github.com/JetBrains/skiko
- fayten 4y ago
  Oh my mistake, thanks for the info!
tsvetkov 4y ago
Fleet does not use Compose, but it does use Skiko[1], which also provides binding for Skia[2] (the native graphics library also used by Chrome & Flutter). The main difference between the libraries is that Skija provides Java/JVM bindings for Skia, whereas Skiko provides Kotlin bindings for Kotlin/JVM, Kotlin/JS, and Kotlin/Native targets. Of course Skiko's Kotlin/JVM bindings can be used with other JVM languages, not just with Kotlin. [1] https://github.com/JetBrains/skiko https://github.com/JetBrains/skiko [2] https://skia.org/ https://skia.org/

neilv 4y ago

I think the name is a little funny, and maybe the funny is so crude and juvenile, that no one was willing to mention it? Like the Pepsi logo, I can't unsee it. "OK, people, creative time! Blank slate, no second system syndrome. Let's rethink the JetBrains concept, from the bottom, up!" "Jet-- Butts?" "Will the JetButts brand fly in all markets? Riff alternatives?" "...Fleet?" "Explosive! Sounds fast and productive! Can we get a mark search?" https://www.amazon.com/s?k=fleet https://www.amazon.com/s?k=fleet

neilv 4y ago
Someone had to mention it before launch.

hbn 4y ago

Seems pretty slick from what I've played with so far. I don't need anything fancy, I kinda just want something to replace my usecase for VS Code which is a quick-to-open text editor that I don't need a PhD in in order to use effectively. For getting work done I'll continue to use IntelliJ, but sometimes I just need to edit a file or open a directory of files and don't want to open a big IDE for that and have it start indexing things. Slightly disappointed they've changed the default key mappings? I went to open a file with cmd+shift+o but that immediately launched a symbol search and I have to hit cmd-p to open a file search. Seems like the git comparison UI is worse. Aside from it stacking up a giant list of diffs, it seems very simple, like Github's PR diff UI. Not doing the nice thing where it shows which lines map to which lines in the changes. I'll chock that up to being a preview.

mi_lk 4y ago

I like the fleet light/dark theme, can JetBrains put it as a plugin so I can use it in other JB products?

hbn 4y ago
I want Darcula back. It's the only dark theme I've ever liked in any piece of software. It's grey instead of black so it doesn't hurt my eyes, and the color contrasts for symbol highlighting and whatnot are very well tuned.

cheeaun 4y ago

Just wondering, there's no way to launch Fleet directly without launching it from Toolbox or using CLI?

hiyer 4y ago
It gets installed as an application, so you can open it with your usual app launchers on Mac and Linux (I haven't used it on Windows). You can open it from the terminal also, but the path it gets installed in is a convoluted one and includes the version, so you will need to update your aliases/links every time a new version is installed.
- cheeaun 4y ago
  Thanks! I guess I'm using Raycast (instead of Spotlight), so it actually need a reindex.

uticus 4y ago

No Ruby support out of the box - yet there is support for Java (a la IntelliJ), C# (a la Rider), Go (a la GoLand), C (a la CLion), Python (a la PyCharm), Web-anything (a la WebStorm & PhpStorm)... RubyMine is a great IDE, worth paying for, but this looks like writing on the wall.

chewmieser 4y ago

Felt really great! Snappy and familiar to modern equivalents (e.g. VS Code). That said, memory consumption is pretty high at around 3.35 GB for the backend, 1.83 GB for the frontend on a decently sized project. Compared to Nova which has that and a lot more loaded at 1.26 GB. PHP smart mode definitely needs work. A lot of errors that wouldn't be errors if we could specify which version of PHP the project was running as. Using any PHP7+ feature ends up in an error. Some silly issues with namespacing as well - like using "string" type-hinting on class functions in a namespaced class shows an error. And some highlighting oddities with some of our files, but all-in-all I really liked Fleet. Will keep an eye on it!

stunt 4y ago

It looks very practical and I like the choices they made. But, I can't use it as a daily driver because it doesn't have vim mode.

lfmunoz4 4y ago

no_circuit 4y ago

So if they are making progress to a distributed polyglot editor, then this mean that we'd be able to run multiple windows of Fleet working on different projects connecting to the same remote host? Is the connection mechanism basically the same as the Gateway product? If so, I wonder if this bug will ever gets fixed, or if it is a "works as intended" that you cannot run multiple projects on the same host? [1] However this issue doesn't really apply if you create a VM per workspace either manually or the service that is provided... [1] https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/GTW-813 https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/GTW-813

noob_07 4y ago

Anybody having memory issues with it? I opened a large react project and it utilized nearly 2GB of RAM. I am on a linux machine.

stusmall 4y ago
That doesn't seem that extreme if it is a large project. JetBrains products are more than just a text editor and tend to be pretty aggressive with RAM usage.
chewmieser 4y ago
I'm at 3.28GB backend + 1.83GB frontend for a medium-large PHP project as well. Pretty huge memory requirements but I've got plenty so not a big deal, just noticeable compared to alternatives.

lopkeny12ko 4y ago

I'm pretty confused by the product positioning. If Fleet is built on the same technologies as other Jetbrains IDEs, describes itself as an IDE, and is natively polyglot, why shouldn't it replace the other language-based IDEs? From the marketing material, it's not clear to me the value proposition of, for example, IntelliJ compared to Fleet.

andrewaylett 4y ago
Maybe eventually the other IDEs will evolve into Fleet. But in the meantime, I can see why they'd want to avoid spooking their existing customer base into worrying that their investment in existing tooling is at risk.

Brystephor 4y ago

How is this different from intelliJ Ultimate?

nobleach 4y ago

I had high hopes that JetBrains would relent on their decision to avoid implementing a Language Server Protocol server. There is a 3rd party implementation out there, but it needs a lot of help. I realize this cuts into their core business... but it'd sure make using Vim to write Kotlin a more pleasant experience.

tasubotadas 4y ago
Never seen language server come even close to what intellij offers.
- iudqnolq 4y ago
  When I last used them for Rust about two years ago they were racing neck and neck against a language server being refactored to share a backend with the reference compiler. I switched to the language server because I felt running the actual compiler will in the long term always work better than writing your own parser. I was on the Jetbrains student discount, so I made a small recurring contribution to the rust language server project. I think in retrospect that was the correct decision. The language server team has done great work, and they support things impractical to do with just parsing like autocompleting functions defined by macros.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    > running the actual compiler will in the long term always work better than writing your own parser. No, it won't. A compiler and an IDE code analyzer have completely different non-intersecting goals. As an example, consider error recovery. Where a compiler can just fail with an error, in an IDE you need to continue to provide full correct syntax highlighting, display all other potential errors and warnings, continue providing code analysis (including suggestions on how to fix the error) etc. > The language server team has done great work, and they support things impractical to do with just parsing like autocompleting functions defined by macros. None of these are provided by the language server team. These are provided by whoever wrote the code to analyze your stuff and provide data to the language server.

mehphp 4y ago

Very sluggish and no vim support. It looks promising but I’m going to let it bake for a while.

nikolay 4y ago

I was hopeful, but after playing with it, I'm not impressed!

savingGrace 4y ago

I have used JetBrains products for a decade (IntelliJ, Android Studio, WebStorm, PHPStorm). Does this mean that those products are having resources shifted away from them to work on Fleet? I am not a developer who enjoys the 'plugin' mindset and tend to install very few. I prefer Visual Studios over VSCode as well...

barefeg 4y ago

Sorry for the unfamiliarity with JetBrains products. Is this architecture similar to VSCode’s? So the ide has a backend that can run remotely and a frontend client that can run in multiple environments including web? I remember a long time ago pyCharm had the ability to run the interpreter remotely. What are the benefits of pulling more stuff in the backend? Is it in order to be able to run the editor in different environments?

dexwiz 4y ago
I actually have a use case for this. I work on a big JVM app that needs some serious hardware to run locally. If I want to develop remotely I have to use a Remote Desktop to access a workstation, which is hell. You can remote debug, but you can’t really remote develop. Intellij is index heavy so you need Intellij and the code to be collocated on a machine, otherwise IntelliJ will overload the network. You can get around this by having two copies of the code and manually transfer any differences to machine running the JVM, but it’s really brittle. Separating the front and back ends will allow me to have JVM, code, and compiler all on one machine, but the editor on another.

deagle50 4y ago

When will IdeaVim (or similar) work? Can't use it until then.

wg0 4y ago

I think Visual Studio code has great influence on it but after trying it, I think VS code can also learn few things about interface from it. Really neat. Probably JetBrains thought to leverage tons of in house Java code otherwise I think Rust + Skia or similar would have been a great option with almost no run time requirements. Rust gurus can say better but I have seen pretty impressive cross platform apps in Rust such as alacritty and warp.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago
I honestly think it would be painful to write a large GUI app like this in Rust, and it's not something I would attempt. Backend and code analytics side, sure. But like you said they have lots of in-house code written in Java. It's interesting they stuck with Java for the UI, but it does seem to be snappy and I'm glad to see them walk away from Swing.

anotherrandom 4y ago

Interesting! Looking forward to trying it out. I won't consider paying for it until it's at least FOSS though, like IntelliJ or PyCharm. I paid for those 2 products and those 2 products alone solely because they are free and open source (I can't get shafted by a sudden change in licensing and can switch to a functionally equivalent free version on a whim).

moogly 4y ago

Looks pretty and well-designed. Snappy too, but they're going to have to work on the startup time. I'll check back in a year when it's a bit more feature rich. And when you can disable the smooth scrolling.

idk1 4y ago

Might need some Apple Silicon testing, I could toss and egg on my M1 MBP and it'll be done by the time I scroll to the bottom of the document.

tibbydudeza 4y ago

Ditched VSCode for PyCharm when I started learning Python. Simply using it for a few months convinced me to upgrade to the Pro edition, the same vibes as when I used Borland Turbo C - VSCode just has that bloated feeling like Eclipse.