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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. Personal

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
- mariusmg 4y ago
  >It's leaps and bounds ahead of VSCode It's also paid vs free. For some reason, some people are very reluctant to pay for tools, even though they use them every day in their job.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    > For some reason, some people are very reluctant to pay for tools, even though they use them every day in their job. This also really baffles me. You can see it a lot in various discussions even here on HN.
    - HideousKojima 4y ago
      Because if your tooling is closed source (and if it's paid it almost certainly is) then your ability to maintain a project is dependent on some corporation's willingness to continue to support the tooling etc.
      - frou_dh 4y ago
        Not really in the case of Jetbrains vs VScode, because if the fateful day came, it would simply be an inconvenience to have to set up the alternative, not the end of the world.
      - kaba0 4y ago
        Most of intellij is open-source.
      - lolinder 4y ago
        If the possibility of your tooling being discontinued is a real concern for you, paying for a Jetbrains license is your best bet. Their entire business is developer tooling: IntelliJ isn't going away until Jetbrains goes under, and they're not going under until people stop paying them. Microsoft, on the other hand, could decide to drop VSCode at any point as soon as the bean counters start questioning how it's benefiting the bottom line. And if Microsoft decides to kill VSCode, I seriously doubt anyone is going to keep maintaining it at the place where it is now. Even if someone decides to continue maintaining the base editor, Microsoft abandoning it will pretty quickly dry up the plugin ecosystem. "It's open source, so it will always be available to me" only really makes sense if your backup plan is to maintain it yourself. In the case of VSCode, you are relying on a whole ecosystem continuing to survive after the sponsor abandons it.
techdragon 4y ago
I’m pretty sure the verification is going to just be the normal jetbrains license verification service stuff. Since if anything I use has been shut down or offline for about that long I notice it phoning home to check my account license.
insane_dreamer 4y ago
Sounds like license verification.
MikhailVink 4y ago
JetBrains employee here, and I can clarify the point about “Requires login and periodic connection to JetBrains servers to verify the project”. If you are using Fleet in a Free (hobby) mode, we are verifying that the project comply with one of three criteria: 1. your project is local (no Git or Git Remote). 2. your project is public on GitHub. 3. your project is private but has less than 3 committers. In this case, we will need a periodic connection to JetBrains servers to exchange information verifying that you can use Fleet for free, but in no way we would send any sensitive information, such as source code, file names, etc. If you have Fleet license (paid, for example) there are no criteria checks at all, just the license verification with your JetBrains Account. And we plan to support offline usage similar to how it’s done for IntelliJ IDEA-based IDEs now (offline license keys, floating license server.) Right now Fleet is in the EAP, and there are no licensing checks at all, they are not yet implemented, and we are not yet done with the verification workflow design.
- ihateolives 4y ago
  Will the pricing be same for all users or do users with existing licences (e.g. Ultimate) get a discount on Fleet licence?
  - MikhailVink 4y ago
    We are not ready to share more details on pricing yet, but we are working on it. Will share as soon as we have it!
- zamalek 4y ago
  > your project is public on GitHub. What about Gitlab, or some other repo such as gitlab.gnome.org? This seems like it's ripe for edge cases.
  - MikhailVink 4y ago
    Yeah, right, I was not specific enough on this one. It'll definitely go beyond GitHub, extending to some other git solutions, but we don't have a decision whether it's "any" public repo or public repo hosted on the service from some list (like, GitHub, GitLab, Gitee, etc.) We'll look into it later on. gitlab.gnome.org - I'd expect it to be all open source, right? Open source program should cover such cases.
shp0ngle 4y ago
JetBrains/IDEA/IntelliJ/whatever is the name now has quite a good plugin support. I have looked into source codes of some and were horrified, but well, some people actually like Java and like that sort of stuff. Maybe I looked into wrong ones. VSCode plugins seems to be easier to write, but maybe that’s because I know JavaScript already. What made me switch to VSCode is that it’s generally snappier, IDEA has the “Indexing” mode that always takes forever
syspec 4y ago
"New thing not perfect!"
Justsignedup 4y ago
Just to add: Fleet seems like a new lighter architecture. Which is fantastic. My hope is they can actually bring the tools from their other platforms into this. Otherwise... they might as well just sell a IDE plugin architecture for VSCode.

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

mariusmg 4y ago
>It's leaps and bounds ahead of VSCode It's also paid vs free. For some reason, some people are very reluctant to pay for tools, even though they use them every day in their job.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  > For some reason, some people are very reluctant to pay for tools, even though they use them every day in their job. This also really baffles me. You can see it a lot in various discussions even here on HN.
  - HideousKojima 4y ago
    Because if your tooling is closed source (and if it's paid it almost certainly is) then your ability to maintain a project is dependent on some corporation's willingness to continue to support the tooling etc.
    - frou_dh 4y ago
      Not really in the case of Jetbrains vs VScode, because if the fateful day came, it would simply be an inconvenience to have to set up the alternative, not the end of the world.
    - kaba0 4y ago
      Most of intellij is open-source.
    - lolinder 4y ago
      If the possibility of your tooling being discontinued is a real concern for you, paying for a Jetbrains license is your best bet. Their entire business is developer tooling: IntelliJ isn't going away until Jetbrains goes under, and they're not going under until people stop paying them. Microsoft, on the other hand, could decide to drop VSCode at any point as soon as the bean counters start questioning how it's benefiting the bottom line. And if Microsoft decides to kill VSCode, I seriously doubt anyone is going to keep maintaining it at the place where it is now. Even if someone decides to continue maintaining the base editor, Microsoft abandoning it will pretty quickly dry up the plugin ecosystem. "It's open source, so it will always be available to me" only really makes sense if your backup plan is to maintain it yourself. In the case of VSCode, you are relying on a whole ecosystem continuing to survive after the sponsor abandons it.

techdragon 4y ago

I’m pretty sure the verification is going to just be the normal jetbrains license verification service stuff. Since if anything I use has been shut down or offline for about that long I notice it phoning home to check my account license.

insane_dreamer 4y ago

Sounds like license verification.

MikhailVink 4y ago

JetBrains employee here, and I can clarify the point about “Requires login and periodic connection to JetBrains servers to verify the project”. If you are using Fleet in a Free (hobby) mode, we are verifying that the project comply with one of three criteria: 1. your project is local (no Git or Git Remote). 2. your project is public on GitHub. 3. your project is private but has less than 3 committers. In this case, we will need a periodic connection to JetBrains servers to exchange information verifying that you can use Fleet for free, but in no way we would send any sensitive information, such as source code, file names, etc. If you have Fleet license (paid, for example) there are no criteria checks at all, just the license verification with your JetBrains Account. And we plan to support offline usage similar to how it’s done for IntelliJ IDEA-based IDEs now (offline license keys, floating license server.) Right now Fleet is in the EAP, and there are no licensing checks at all, they are not yet implemented, and we are not yet done with the verification workflow design.

ihateolives 4y ago
Will the pricing be same for all users or do users with existing licences (e.g. Ultimate) get a discount on Fleet licence?
- MikhailVink 4y ago
  We are not ready to share more details on pricing yet, but we are working on it. Will share as soon as we have it!
zamalek 4y ago
> your project is public on GitHub. What about Gitlab, or some other repo such as gitlab.gnome.org? This seems like it's ripe for edge cases.
- MikhailVink 4y ago
  Yeah, right, I was not specific enough on this one. It'll definitely go beyond GitHub, extending to some other git solutions, but we don't have a decision whether it's "any" public repo or public repo hosted on the service from some list (like, GitHub, GitLab, Gitee, etc.) We'll look into it later on. gitlab.gnome.org - I'd expect it to be all open source, right? Open source program should cover such cases.

shp0ngle 4y ago

JetBrains/IDEA/IntelliJ/whatever is the name now has quite a good plugin support. I have looked into source codes of some and were horrified, but well, some people actually like Java and like that sort of stuff. Maybe I looked into wrong ones. VSCode plugins seems to be easier to write, but maybe that’s because I know JavaScript already. What made me switch to VSCode is that it’s generally snappier, IDEA has the “Indexing” mode that always takes forever

syspec 4y ago

"New thing not perfect!"

Justsignedup 4y ago

Just to add: Fleet seems like a new lighter architecture. Which is fantastic. My hope is they can actually bring the tools from their other platforms into this. Otherwise... they might as well just sell a IDE plugin architecture for VSCode.