27 ms·

Dear JetBrains, Don't mess with your UI

• langsoul-com 4y ago
  Seems a bit dumb to change ui to match vscode. Why would anyone pay $$$ per year when vscode is free then?
• ftyhbhyjnjk 4y ago
  Seriously! Their slick, compact, and beautifully well laid out UI is one of the primary reasons I use I Intellij Idea. If they force this update, I'll just not update it. Not to mention, since I now will not be updating it, I can cancel my yearly, recurring subscription too. Hey Jetbrains: You just have to do one thing. And that is: to NOT mess up existing thing. Even if you stop launching new features into your product for next few years, I'll still happily pay you folks just because your product is so damn perfect as of now. Please don't ruin it. Forget what VSCode is doing. They are far far far behind you folks. Don't let THEM ruin your product.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • neilpanchal 4y ago
    We need to apply Chesterton's fence [1] in situations like this. [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Chesterton%27s_fence https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Chesterton%27s_fence
  • imron 4y ago
    > Forget what VSCode is doing. Except for remote development extension. Do that. It's the killer feature of VSCode.
    • sverhagen 4y ago
      JetBrains has Code With Me, in case you hadn't seen that. I have no idea how they compare, though, so I don't mean this as a dismissal.
    • suction 4y ago
    • 9dev 4y ago
      They do that, I’m playing with it now. Have a look at Jetbrains Gateway: https://www.jetbrains.com/remote-development/gateway/ https://www.jetbrains.com/remote-development/gateway/
      • this_is_not_you 4y ago
        How is it working for you? I tried the beta version last year and I was not impressed. Is it worth trying again?
        • marcolussetti 4y ago
          I found the performance very poor and had to discontinue using it. It permanently pinned 4 cores on the remote server where VS Code used <0.25 (codebase was a very small Django app)
      • philliphaydon 4y ago
        I tried out fleet last night and it worked amazingly well.
      • GordonS 4y ago
        Does it work with Rider yet? At launch it didn't, something to do with Rider using (or not, I forget!) an out of process language server.
        • easton 4y ago
          It’s supposed to work (like, it’s an option in Rider’s project selection), but it can’t find MSBuild in the WSL. I’m guessing you’d have better luck if you just spun up a normal Linux VM though.
      • gorjusborg 4y ago
        I'll admit I haven't looked recently, but last time I looked, it felt like Jetbrains didn't quite get my use cases for remote development. I don't want to install/manage any infrastructure at all. I just want to connect via ssh to a fresh box and have it work. If that isn't possible, back to the drawing board.
    • this_is_not_you 4y ago
      Last time I tried remote development with PyCharm was when they released their "Remote development" beta in version 2021.3 [1]. It was a bad experience. Before that they only had some complicated sync workaround for remote development which I could not get used to. I gave up on remote development with PyCharm and went with VSCode. Based on your comment it seems they still haven't figured it out? [1] https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/whatsnew/2021-3/#remote-development-support https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/whatsnew/2021-3/#remote-de...
    • dotancohen 4y ago
      > Except for remote development extension. And the roads.
    • sgt 4y ago
      Why would one do remote development with laptops being as powerful as they are today (think: the raw power of an M1 Mac Book Air even).
      • shitlord 4y ago
        Because my ec2 dev server is even more powerful, and I can easily upgrade the hardware configuration without spending $1k on a new laptop. I never really appreciated a remote dev server until I had to work on a behemoth Java project and then a behemoth C++ project. Having the extra memory and the extra cores is great. Never having to worry about your laptop heating up or having your battery die due to CPU load is even better.
        • sgt 4y ago
          I guess if your IDE is as responsive as anything else locally and only the compiling and runtime happens in the cloud it might be somewhat pleasant to work with. But what if you decide to do something from a coffee shop and the WiFi is super laggy. Or doing something while traveling etc. I like to know that my dev station is independent of an Internet connection.
          • suchar 4y ago
            With crappy Internet connection you still can do remote development (it doesn't take much bandwidth, after all it's mostly text). But what if you need to download dependencies/docker images or upload e.g. docker image? With a remote development you can offload that to a beefy server with gigabit connection.
            • sgt 4y ago
              That is indeed a good point.
      • nigerianbrince 4y ago
        7950x
      • 4y ago
    • selfhoster11 4y ago
      This is literally the only reason I use VS Code right now.
  • happymellon 4y ago
    On the flip side, the only thing I want Jetbrains to do is implement proper UI scaling. I want to be able to hit Command+Plus and scale up the whole interface for presenting something to the team or when I have to code pair with someone who doesn't have as large of a monitor as I do. Presentation mode is an absolute mess, and does not help with code pairing or code review presentations, and font scaling only affects the one file and not all the fonts, so the project navigation is still small and I have to repeat it for every file and again in reverse to reset it. And the best past is, they could do it without impacting anyone else who doesn't need it, unlike this proposal.
    • sylv3r 4y ago
      > On the flip side, the only thing I want Jetbrains to do is implement proper UI scaling. Oh man I'm still mad that if I want to present my Jetbrains IDE screen and make it readable, I have to change 2 fonts, one for the editor, one for the interface.
      • happymellon 4y ago
        It's nice that it's being an accepted point of view this time. Usually I get a lot of aggressive responses about how I don't understand presentation mode. I do, and it's crap.
        • jen20 4y ago
          By contrast, I only want the content to scale, and actively cannot stand entire UIs scaling and looking and feeling like web pages. If this was ever implemented, it would need an opt-out to please us both.
          • happymellon 4y ago
            Which is fine. As I already mentioned, even if they just had a text scaling which applied to all the editors so I didn't have to keep doing it every time I opened a file that would be a massive QOL improvement.
  • nimchimpsky 4y ago
  • marginalia_nu 4y ago
    > Seriously! Their slick, compact, and beautifully well laid out UI is one of the primary reasons I use I Intellij Idea. Fascinating. Their flat, contrast-less and confusing UI is one of my biggest chafing points with their product. If I want to resize an UI element, I often have to make several guesses before I find the right border, let alone pixel.
    • nikanj 4y ago
      What are the odds of a redesign adding color / borders / 3d? The UI fashion is still trending towards a uniform single-colored surface. Hard to imagine them adding borders, let alone color
      • marginalia_nu 4y ago
        Probably not great, but still by necessity better than the odds of the UI improving while not changing at all.
    • jeroenhd 4y ago
      Their UI may be a bit low contrast out of the box (there are themes to fix that, luckily) but if you have a problem with it now, the new UI looks much worse. All the colors are gone and all the icons are now bland shapes. It looks like they're copying VS Code's UI style which is a huge step backwards in my opinion. This UI minimalism looks great on paper but it's terribly confusing to actually work with and it can take weeks to get around it through sheer brute force and muscle memory. I agree that their UI needs an overhaul but this isn't the solution.
    • biofox 4y ago
      Flat UIs, icons with no text, and countless undocumented features are the reasons I now hate using computers. The mental overhead in trying to learn and remember what to click to achieve what I want is exhausting, and somehow, in far too many apps, there's no way to look-up what the shortcut keys are.
  • danwee 4y ago
    Indeed. I think they are trying to imitate VSCode UI... which in my opinion sucks big time.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• djha-skin 4y ago
  Obligatory xkcd reference to "UI Change": https://xkcd.com/1770/ https://xkcd.com/1770/ JetBrains is obviously becoming more like VS Code here so that they aren't edged out of the market. "Copy your competitors". Complaining as if we are paying customers is understandable because UI changes are annoying. However we have to see things from JetBrain's perspective. They're trying to stay alive in a market where their market share is rapidly decreasing being taken by VS Code.
  • art0rz 4y ago
    Kind of a strange move indeed, considering their announcement of Fleet, which aims to do exactly that
    • wiseowise 4y ago
      Kind of strange move to unify UI between two unrelated, but complementing products, yeah, really strange.
  • spockz 4y ago
    Why is VSCode eating their lunch? IntelliJ’s refactoring is miles ahead. As well as support for the jvm languages. Intellisafe and jump to declaration are also better imho. The only thing that I can think of is that vscode is free and “good enough”. The integration for JavaScript and golang seems to be more “natural” in VSCode, somehow. If you are using the free IntelliJ tools you get a crappy js editor when using the rust or Java specific IDE. Now I need to install another IntelliJ app. Also I like being able to run vscode with a dev container. It allows new team members to instantly start working on a project and grt most things done.
    • vladvasiliu 4y ago
      I wonder if people are actually leaving Jetbrains' products for VS Code, or whether VS Code simply has more new people starting to use it. People who, probably, wouldn't have used IntelliJ anyway (just like many, many people used to use Eclipse – and, likely, many still do). Looking around me, I see many people who have to work on crappy corporate PCs where management figures VS Code is good enough, and it's free, so why pay for IntelliJ? And since the devs themselves don't seem to complain, they'll just use VS Code.
• xwowsersx 4y ago
  If you use keyboard shortcuts for everything, as I do, the rest of the UI outside of the editor really doesn't matter a whole lot. I won't be searching for buttons based on color memory or anything like that.
  • xani__ 4y ago
  • vladvasiliu 4y ago
    While I agree with this point, I also like my interfaces small. Because, since I don't click around on them, I don't like them taking up space. I also use a mouse on my PC, so I'm fairly precise in case I want to use the icons. There's no need to blow them up, so my fat fingers wouldn't misclick on a tablet. I like to code with two windows side by side, usually IDE + browser for docs, sometimes on a small screen. I'd rather have the extra pixels for the docs instead of random useless space around the IDE's widgets.
    • xwowsersx 4y ago
      I like them small too which is why I hide basically everything except for the editor itself :)
      • dfee 4y ago
        I just wish the panels would default hide. I run bazel sync and half my window is build logs until I get around to closing them. If it’s not in active use, maybe after 5s, get it out of the way of code.
        • xwowsersx 4y ago
          I hear you, but...when in the editor, ⇧ ⌘ F12 hides all windows except the active editor. I also added ⌘⇧H as a shortcut.
  • pjerem 4y ago
• xwowsersx 4y ago
  JetBrains also published a separate post addressing the concerns about the new UI https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2022/06/addressing-the-new-ui-comments/ https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2022/06/addressing-the-new-u...
  • smilekzs 4y ago
    I'm not even being cynical --- this to me reads like: Sure, we will eventually shove it down your throat whether you like it or not, so there's no need to worry for the time being!
    • rob74 4y ago
      Yes you are being cynical - what they write is: > The current UI will remain available for at least two years, and we’re not going to remove it until we’ve seen that the vast majority of our users have successfully made the switch to the new UI. this sounds like you have to actively switch to the new UI if you already have an older version installed, and that they will be monitoring how many users have made the switch. Only after the "vast majority" (>80% ?) have switched will they "shove it down the throat" of the other 20%. Well, let's see how this promise will hold up...
      • dotancohen 4y ago
        > will remain available Sounds to me that it will not be the default. And their is a time-honoured trick in our industry of hiding an option deep in the menus, to drive down adoption, to preclude removal of a feature. Not to mention how many bug reports with be followed up with "Try in the new UI" as their only reply. We've seen this with Firefox, LibreOffice, KDE, Gnome, and so many other once-useful software.
      • _tom_ 4y ago
        What they have written is they are going to force a change. It's very clear. As soon as we have moved most people over, we will force you to move. You don't even have to read between the lines, it's explicit. "We won't force it for two years". We are gonna force it in two years. "We won't until the vast minority" we will as soon as most people have moved.
• cercatrova 4y ago
  Maybe I don't understand the praise but the JetBrains UI is one of the most clunky UIs I've ever used for coding. I'm honestly glad to see something more VSCode-like in Fleet.
  • sverhagen 4y ago
    I agree that some areas are very clunky. But overall, as a Java developer, I am just incredibly productive in IntelliJ. Such that I happily take the rough edges for granted. Happily.
  • presentation 4y ago
    It was definitely a breath of fresh air after using Eclipse.
  • steve_taylor 4y ago
    I agree. The only reason I find VS Code somewhat interesting is that the UI is a lot smoother. But if this is going to be a new look on top of the same old molasses that is Swing, then I don’t see the point.
    • wiseowise 4y ago
      It is going to be Swing.
      • steve_taylor 4y ago
        Yeah, I figured they were rolling the turd in glitter one more time. I’d love to see their IDEs re-platformed on Electron. I’m not ordinarily a fan, but VS Code has shown us how good an Electron-based IDE can be (while Atom showed us the opposite).
        • dmitriid 4y ago
          > I’m not ordinarily a fan, but VS Code has shown us how good an Electron-based IDE can be yes, if you invest hundreds of millions of dollars and spend hundreds of man years on trivial things like "we can't make terminal output fast because web tech". Do not mistake a single success story achieved through insane effort and unlimited money with "this is the way".
• lowbloodsugar 4y ago
  Aaaand for some reason, creating a new project from a directory no longer does that. If I select the directory and click Next, it instead creates a directory called Untitled in that directory and opens a project there. Since all my projects, ever, are created in existing directories, and since I do that pretty often, I’ve uninstalled the latest one (after two uses) and gone back to the old one. I’ve used IntelliJ since 2009. Jetbrains, what the fuck are you doing?
  • nigerianbrince 4y ago
    Are you on an EAP build?
    • lowbloodsugar 4y ago
      Nope. I'm on 2021.3.1 and went to 2022.x. I have toolbox and a full subscription so I just rolled back.
• alatkins 4y ago
  > A user interface is like an API for your eyeballs. Great analogy.
  • moonchrome 4y ago
    Not really because most often when working with APIs you figure out what you need then you disproportionately more time using it - UI is used for triggering short running operations - if the cost of finding it is high it's often higher than (not) using the tool. And often it's used to interact with rarely used or unknown features - UI clutter just leads to a mess - not discoverability.
  • wiseowise 4y ago
    Except in IDE you work with your brain, not eyes.
    • alpaca128 4y ago
      You write software without looking at the screen? I doubt it. GUIs have no other purpose than providing ways to interact with the software and communicating those controls via our eyes. Buttons are spread across the window because that turns out to be very efficient at both showing users what common features are available, and giving them a way to quickly use those features without having to dig through menus.
  • tanseydavid 4y ago
    I agree completely. This is a great analogy. It makes the intended point very succinctly.
• rustybolt 4y ago
  Wow, that looks pretty much exactly like VS code!
• antipaul 4y ago
  "The whole interface is going to feel like turbulent molasses"
• keyle 4y ago
  After years of using IntelliJ I finally moved to VSCode. IntelliJ simply could do C/C++ but they chose to push people towards a new IDE... C Lion. That was a huge blow for me, a polyglot. Then I had a couple of bug opened with them... it took years for them to fix it. Except they marked it as fixed and it was indeed not fixed... Years later! I kept paying until that point, I just couldn't do it anymore. The company is a victim of its own success if you ask me. And that's a shame. VSCode isn't perfect, but it does 90% of what IntelliJ does, and arguably 40% of it better. Also VSCode is faster which still boggles my mind as to how that's possible. I suppose the buttload of cash that Microsoft has thrown at it probably helps there... Since IntelliJ went through their "milliseconds latency blabla" years ago, it's gone downhill. I imagine that retina pixel displays + java 2nd class child on the macOS platform = big oof (pre-metal). I dream of a native vscode-like IDE...
  • TylerE 4y ago
    Huh? If you buy the full IntelliJ you get all the modules. It’s no different than running CLion.
    • happymellon 4y ago
      That and you can use the different apps to sandbox the plugins so you aren't loading unused ones for each project!
    • vladvasiliu 4y ago
      Nope, you don't get everything. I don't use CLion, so I don't know what all the differences are, but for the Rust plugin, CLion gets more functionality than IntelliJ: https://github.com/intellij-rust/intellij-rust#compatible-ides https://github.com/intellij-rust/intellij-rust#compatible-id... I understand the same goes for yet a third branch, which is .Net, and possibly a fourth, which is AppCode. But I don't have any contact with those ecosystems, so don't really know.
    • DominoTree 4y ago
      When did that happen? For a long time you couldn't, say, install the "CLion module" in IntellJ - it simply didn't exist in their plugin repos.
• karlshea 4y ago
  Literally the last thing I want in my IDE is anything to be animated.
  • lostmsu 4y ago
    Have you turned off cursor blinking yet?
    • bauble 4y ago
      Of course.
    • tom_ 4y ago
      It might be less the animation itself and more the extra latency.
    • dotancohen 4y ago
      In VIM the cursor never blinked.
    • ivanche 4y ago
      Not OP but that's the first thing I try to turn off in any editor/IDE/terminal.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• javajosh 4y ago
  It's a little surprising that these UI choices are not a matter of user choice. Although when you think of the complexity of making a truly skinnable UI, or a component framework (I'm thinking Swing and the pluggable look and feel, or PLAF) Swing that IntelliJ used to be nominally written in. In that universe you could have made your own PLAF and rendered IntelliJ in that PLAF without asking permission. It turns out, though, there is a lot of value in homogenizing your application skin. Users can recognize each other's applications, and help each other out. Whole categories of problems are avoided, like poorly written custom components that aren't PLAF compatible. I don't have the answer, but I find it interesting to consider the forces pushing for and against putting greater UI control in user hands.
  • tsuujin 4y ago
    > It turns out, though, there is a lot of value in homogenizing your application skin. This is pretty well documented in the UX world, it’s called Jacob’s Law[1] and it states that your users spend most of their time using other products, and they generally prefer yours to work like others they’ve already trained themselves to use. I get that change always comes with resistance, but I will never understand the knee jerk reaction of “they’re morons and they have no idea what they’re doing” that is so common with change. [1]: https://lawsofux.com/jakobs-law/ https://lawsofux.com/jakobs-law/
    • izacus 4y ago
      > I get that change always comes with resistance, but I will never understand the knee jerk reaction of “they’re morons and they have no idea what they’re doing” that is so common with change. What's there to understand? In most cases they are morons that don't know what they're doing (and are not doing the change to improve users' lives, but to drive internal promotions for product people).
• galaxyLogic 4y ago
  Maybe they could make it a user-choice between the old and new GUIs.
• fareesh 4y ago
  I find the entire "java world" as I like to think of it, littered with slow IDEs. The "Electron bloat world" editors have been much more snappy in my experience. Typically the "java world" editors will lag out to the point where tapping on the "File" menu will take 3-5 seconds on occasion. Also they seem to rely on "indexing" and while the "indexing" operating is taking place, the entire editor just slows to a complete crawl. I've seen this in Android Studio, IntelliJ, Tizen Studio, Eclipse - pretty much anything that's "java world". Apologies for the imprecise nomenclature, but this has been my experience and after so many years it has reached a stage of just low expectations from me whenever I see anything related to these IDEs.
  • mo_po2 4y ago
    I also had this feeling for Java IDEs, but my idea changed when I tried IntelliJ IDEs 10 years ago. I still feel IntelliJ IDEs fast and, many times, more powerful than VSCode. But I also see the gap getting thinner. Maybe that's why they created Fleet. If they match the dominant UX and add features only they can offer, they might stay in the throne.
  • fedeb95 4y ago
    I don't find this to be true. Have used eclipse for four years, IntelliJ for three. IntelliJ is never slow and it's very easy to remove and add modules, this way you can keep the workspace clean. Also eclipse took ages to open, two instances at best could be running together. I run four IntelliJ and it works very well.
  • pkulak 4y ago
    If you want to alt-click on any function and instantly get taken to its definition, even in a library, some indexes need to be built. At least I assume. Last time I tried VS Code it wasn’t anywhere near IntelliJ’s capabilities.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • fredrikholm 4y ago
    I have a similar experience. Sublime is the only non-ancient editor I've used that is actually snappy, I can't perceive any lag. It feels like native software used to feel, yet looks half decent. Vscode is slower, with both input and general UI lag. It helps to turn off hardware acceleration, but only a little. Luckily, you get used to it. Unless you go back to Sublime/Vim/Nano for a while, you stop noticing it. Then there's the "you should be using"-ones... * Visual Studio. Syntax highlighting takes a second or two when opening "large" files, input latency is bad, sometimes it takes longer to save a file than it does to compile your project, which now runs without your changes. * XCode. Syntax highlighting works on Tuesdays, input latency is horrible. Randomly need to restart when certain features just stop working. * Android Studio. Input and UI latency, needed 5 out of my then 8 gigabytes of RAM to load an empty project, had to close most other programs when working on a medium sized app, including my browser (Slack, Email, Teams etc). * Goland. I've tried using this on both Windows and Linux, but I've never gotten anything to compile consistently. Indexing takes minutes, CPU usage randomly spikes, memory consumption constantly climbs... it just seems to eat resources doing nothing. Sublime is the only (non-Vim/Emacs) editor I've used that takes my time, room/lap temperature and ergonomics seriously.
• chrisbrandow 4y ago
  These up trends make me nuts. Just like so much of apple’s desktop apps like App Store are removing classic list interfaces with two column collections views. Totally non standard, so lacking all of the useful filtering/alerting by column, etc. Why?? For more white space.
• imron 4y ago
  > What now? vim + billion plugins? Just vim :-)
• mastermedo 4y ago
  Yes, vim + a couple of plugins. It has it’s downsides, but one thing it does well is being familiar, and never breaking a contract. Even the plugins themselves can be pinned to a certain version.
  • surrTurr 4y ago
    As much as I love Vim, it simply isn't an IDE.
    • suction 4y ago
  • rob74 4y ago
    Well, you can pin the IntelliJ IDEs to a version too, and thanks to the "perpetual fallback" license, you can use that version forever (once you have paid for an annual subscription once).
  • radiKal07 4y ago
    What Java LSP do you use for Vim?
  • EmilyHughes 4y ago
    I imagine doing enterprise level java work with vim is a nightmare.
  • systemvoltage 4y ago
    How is the vim + python experience, especially with the debugger?
  • 3836293648 4y ago
    Admittedly I do update my plugins, but I've had ridiculous levels of breakage with CoC
• anthropodie 4y ago
  I love Jebrains IDEs. They can save you lot of time. For example, VSCode does not even come close to Jetbrains git branch comparison. It's insanely good. I think a proper IDE is always better than adding 10s of extension to get similar functionality from VScode. Even then it does not compare to the beast that is Jetbrains IDE. Jetbrains should keep working on their own thing instead of trying to change because of someone else. This holds true for people as well.
  • neilpanchal 4y ago
    Me too, I don't think I can function without JetBrain products as an engineer. It is ridiculously powerful. PyCharm + Database tab + Debugger + Little calculator icon for impromptu interpreter + long tail of features that totally make it amazing. I don't use built in Git but I heard that's great too. The database feature has stuff like copy results of a query as INSERT statements. Mind blown.
    • cole-k 4y ago
      The built-in git is honestly quite intuitive while still being pretty powerful. I haven't tried other GUI-like git integrations but I was a fan of IntelliJ's. That said I was talking to a friend about how great it was and he was like "yeah all these things you describe seem like they were lifted from magit" so I suppose once again the answer is "magit is still the best". Maybe if I ever have the motivation to actually set up an editor I'll try Spacemacs again but I get frustrated when things don't just work and end up going down the configuration rabbit hole anyway.
  • manmal 4y ago
    As a VSCode user, I can see myself switching to Jetbrains because of these changes. Doing the occasional Flutter project, I always use VSCode for that instead of Android Studio. I just can’t stand the clutter and UI bloat in classic IntelliJ. I’m often on a 15“ screen, maybe that’s a contributing factor.
• matsemann 4y ago
  I love how all the panels/windows in Jetbrains are just text. Like "run", "maven", "database", "terminal". The new icons take up more than twice the space (thickness vs the vertical text), and conveys nothing at all about what they do. Also one of the reasons I'm not that thrilled about Fleet. I get it's easy to just in general be negative to change. But these are professional tools. I've used it for over a decade. I don't need it to be dumbed down. Right now I'm comfortable and never enjoyed VSCode and others. But if I'm forced this change, what's stopping me then from trying a completely different IDE?
  • presentation 4y ago
    From their FAQ: Will Fleet replace any existing JetBrains IDEs? No, it will not. We are fully committed to continuing active development of our IntelliJ-based IDEs. With Fleet, we’re aiming to offer an alternative view on how an IDE can be organized, and this is impossible to implement within our current product line without going against the expectations of developers currently using those other IDEs. This means Fleet will co-exist with our established products. Additionally, Fleet heavily relies on the IntelliJ code-processing engine for its smart code-editing features, such as project-aware and context-aware code completion, navigation to definitions and usages, refactorings, on-the-fly code quality checks, and quick-fixes.
    • patates 4y ago
      > This means Fleet will co-exist with our established products This means it will take resources away from the development of the established products. You cannot have the cake and eat it.
      • monlockandkey 4y ago
        Fleet has been in development for multiple years. It has already "taken away" dev resource. It is not my our job to micro manage their dev resources.
        • 4y ago
• forgotmypw17 4y ago
  I use IntelliJ to write mostly Perl. Since trying the 2020 and 2021 series of IntelliJ, I sat down for an hour and tried every major release since I started using it, and I settled on the one I like the most. I'm quite happy with it, and I'm not planning to upgrade again. Thank you, JetBrains, for supporting your older versions. To OP, I recommend downloading the version you like and sticking with it. You'll be good for years. Use this time to occasionally research alternatives.
• searchableguy 4y ago
  One reason for increasing space and element size is due to increase of myopia and other vision related problems in recent decades.
  • RedShift1 4y ago
    Unpopular opinion: so the majority has to suffer for the minority? Just give us the option to have both and the users can decide for themselves whether they need a special UI or not.
  • wiseowise 4y ago
    While I like new UI, this argument is just bogus. IntelliJ interface scales nicely without redesign.
• faizshah 4y ago
  Eh, I have used vim, spacemacs, sublime, vscode, atom, eclipse and netbeans. Jetbrains IDEs have superior functionality out of the box across languages and don’t require me to mess with and debug a million plugins. I don’t mind a UI refresh, it’s going to be just like the gmail refresh everyone hated it and now we’re all fine with it. I just wish they would invest more money into things that are actually a problem currently like how slow indexing is and how disruptive it is when you do a clean re-install and it indexes all your dependencies again. I have tried spacemacs which gives a lot of functionality out the box with less configuration needed than DIY vim or emacs but it still just doesn’t compare to the ease of use of Jetbrains IDEs across languages (I use Java, Python, Ruby and Typescript every week).
  • lars_francke 4y ago
    Switch branches? Let's index it all again! Working on a Rust project? Let's index the Go stdlib. It'll be ready in 10-20 min, please hold. I've been waiting for indexing improvemence for over 10 years, not holding my breath.
    • Traubenfuchs 4y ago
      IntelliJ reindexes existing jdks and the whole spring ecosystem on my system, daily. I think their developers have no idea how it works either and just gave up some time after the useless shared indices came out.
      • miskin 4y ago
        Do you have enabled "Public shared indexes"? It should be able to download pre-built indexes for both JDK and many Maven libraries.
        • Traubenfuchs 4y ago
          It's on. I just switched to an IntelliJ window that hasn't been used for a few days and -indexing!
    • 4y ago
• dstaley 4y ago
  I actually _really_ like these changes, but then again I was previously a VS Code user. I think JetBrains is specifically courting users who, like me, don't deal well with user interfaces that utilize large numbers of text labels. I think they're catching up to "modern design", and trying to skate to where the puck is so to speak. However, I do want to point out that I don't think the author has actually used the new UI considering they mention the overuse of animations, considering that the new UI doesn't have _any_ as far as I can tell.
  • beanaroo 4y ago
    I haven't really used VSCode, so I can't really compare, but as a long time user of JetBrains IDEs I too really enjoy the new interface. I mostly use keyboard shortcuts and when I don't know the combination, I rely on the Search Anywhere (double shift) and Run Anything (double ctrl) functionalities. I find the new UI less distracting and the new VCS menu is a nice addition. I also wonder how much technical debt has accumulated in the previous UI that is being addressed by a refresh.
  • smilekzs 4y ago
    > user interfaces that utilize large numbers of text labels That, happens to be exactly what I want (icon + label for most things).
• codeptualize 4y ago
  To give a different perspective; these changes actually make me consider giving it another go.
• solardev 4y ago
  I dunno, people have their preferences. I've used and loved IntelliJ for a decade but the VSCode UI is miles ahead. I'm really excited about the new Jetbrains IDE and am looking forward to it maturing.
• dudeinjapan 4y ago
  This happens when a company hires new product managers who don't give a hoot about what made the product originally great to begin with. I call it "Skypeification"
  • wiseowise 4y ago
    What made product originally great? Features, not UI.
    • DocTomoe 4y ago
      Unless in the cases where the UI was actually part of the featureset.
    • dudeinjapan 4y ago
      Products become great by being "mission-oriented": they help their users achieve a goal. Often the UI evolves organically based on user feedback and becomes "locally-optimized" for the user's workflow. When you get a PM/Designer who insists on following the design principles they learned on YouTube, they tend to throw out the UI along with all the implicit knowledge accumulated within it. This is related to Chesterton's Fence https://fs.blog/chestertons-fence/ https://fs.blog/chestertons-fence/
• Thristle 4y ago
  The old UI should still be available in the settings. atleast, that's what they promised after the first UI beta Also Fleet isn't replacing the other IDEs
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• eyelidlessness 4y ago
  This is like HN candy. Complain about “modern UI trends” even if it isn’t true. Even if you explicitly admit it isn’t true because you speculate it might someday be true. Bash the nearest Electron app that isn’t even involved in the thing being hypothesized about. Modern UI Trends front page post here we go!
• wolpoli 4y ago
  > Removal of color from icons. Software is getting very depressing as designers decide that everything needs to be shades of grey. It's really sad.
  • pyridines 4y ago
    IMO it's a usability issue. Instead of scanning the UI for a color+shape, there's only a shape. It's less distinguishable from the other icons, so I'll be slower to find it on the screen. (Similarly, this also bothers me with the PS5 controller. The triangle, circle, square and X buttons no longer have different colors. This might not be an issue if you're already familiar with the button layout, but I bet it makes it more difficult to learn for somebody that is new to the controller.)
    • Maxburn 4y ago
      Agree, color+shape is important in finding things. I rather like the way thunderbird went recently with the important folder colors. Much better. Moving away from that is a step in the wrong direction.
• qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
  So company internal proof of work produces UI Components, that over time make a "breaking" change necessary destroying user work worth in the billions and a pr-word of mouth disaster. Worser still, all those features accumulating over time (nobody deletes codes) destroy the product. So as a product manager you can a) Anticipate it, create UIs that allow for large scale changes without breaking the old user flow and automatically prioritize hotkey-commands by user usage if there is a conflict. You also need to stop the Designers from going amok, rendering the whole tutorial section of your product on youtube obsolete. It will always be a paint point, but as you anticipated the bloat on success you integrated it into the architecture. b) Phoenix Lifecycle it. When it all becomes to much, a smaller, more lightweight version of your product emerges out of the ashes, capable of integrating the newest, shiniest changes, without having the weight of all the bloat, it is first ignored, laughed at, finally emulated and it becomes your new product. There it slowly aggregates the same bloat, waiting for a challenger to appear. Its inevitable. Is your IDE still a program, or is it in fact a OS for interacting addons and a really hungry text editor?
• wodenokoto 4y ago
  Is there a side-by-side comparison?
• bugbuddy 4y ago
  Yet another another great product that is falling prey to the newism ideology where change is almost worshipped for its own sake. You see this problem everywhere nowadays from Cinemas to architecture. People have lost the ability to appreciate timeless designs. Another good example of this is the new Apple iPhone 14 pro hole. To many it is better because it is newer. Never mind that the fact that there is actually now a narrow band of useless pixels at the top of the hole and overall contiguous vertical center screen height is reduced.
  • manmal 4y ago
    It’s not change for change‘s sake though. People are migrating towards mobile displays and actually doing work on those - as small as 11“. IntelliJ doesn’t work well on those displays. I‘m not saying we shouldn’t have both options (eg minimal mode and pro mode or whatever).
    • Marazan 4y ago
      I used Eclipse on an asus eee901. It was fine.
      • manmal 4y ago
        Eclipse wasn’t optimized for 4K displays as IntelliJ is now.
  • aembleton 4y ago
    > People have lost the ability to appreciate timeless designs So they weren't timeless. If they were, then the appreciation wouldn't have been lost.
• wiseowise 4y ago
  I’m sorry, It’s impossible to take someone seriously who considers them professional and yet relies on clicking (!) icons for their workflow in IDE. The only right way to work on IntelliJ products is to leave only code editor, hide everything else and work through keyboard.
  • winrid 4y ago
    I've worked with dozens of jetbrains IDE users and nobody ever did that. Sure, we use a lot of keyboard bindings, but...
  • neilpanchal 4y ago
    I use dozens of keyboard shortcuts in PyCharm. Most editing takes place without reaching for the mouse (vim plugin). GUI is still an integral part of Jetbrains IDEs regardless of how good you're with shortcuts. There are 10,000 things in there, with at most you can memorize and assign 100 shortcuts.
  • kaeruct 4y ago
    Nah, real programmers use butterflies to deflect cosmic rays to flip bits on hard drive platters.
• kioleanu 4y ago
  As others, I would much prefer they would just shovel this money into fixing bugs. I have simple bugs opened FOR YEARS and they only fix them if there's some backlash, like many people commenting and showing discontent.
• physicles 4y ago
  "Change is bad, unless it's great." - Friend who was a UX researcher on Windows in the Windows 7 days
• michaelanckaert 4y ago
  If they end up removing the current UI I’ll end up cancelling my subscription. I’ve been a very happy paying customer for over 8 years now but this is ridiculous. The current UI has text (!!) tabs instead of bland non descriptive icons. It has toolbars and menu items that I can configure. I understand that the current generation of new developers are intimidated by so much raw power at their hands ;) But we have got to stop dumbing things down. It is killing a lot of experience and knowledge and will come back to haunt us as a society. Jetbrains is currently THE reference when it comes to professional IDEs, changing what they’re doing will not go well for them :-(
  • mariusmg 4y ago
    >I understand that the current generation of new developers are intimidated by so much raw power at their hands ;) The new generation is fucking things up for us. Text > icons.
  • conradfr 4y ago
    Based on how they interacted with the users when they removed the colors for the icons, I don't think they care about user feedback and will just post made up reasons for the change ("colors are distracting when coding").
• jsiepkes 4y ago
  > and many of our new users tell us that the UI appears heavyweight and dated. Since IntellIJ is available for many languages / platforms (Java, Android, Python, PHP, Rust, etc.) I'm seriously interested from which user group this is coming. Because in this context "dated" seems to mean: "does not look like VSCode". Since most Java devs I know don't even use VSCode I doubt it's coming from that user group.
• ehakan 4y ago
  I honestly like it. IMO IntelliJ UIs were unnecessarily clunky. Vertical text was weird, and hard to read for me on higher resolutions, along with really small icons that forced you to actually parse the list for what I need. If you’re on a small resolution and have a lot of tool windows on the left side, the upper left tool window text and lower left texts runs into each other. Bottom bar was inconsistent, the items on that bar constantly change. 2 bars of vertical text, and an endless bottom bar, it felt like they were trying to back my editor into a corner. After using it like that for years, I finally gave up, just disabled most UI components and tolerated suboptimal keyboard shortcuts for finding and using tool windows. This UI update for the first time feels like I’m not flanked by clutter in a Jetbrains IDE
• avarun 4y ago
  This has to be the most cringe post I've read on HN in my life, and that's saying something.
• jbhouse 4y ago
  Hot take time. Actual professionals use keyboard shortcuts to easily navigate or bring to the forefront whatever they need in Intellij (the JB product I use) If you are clicking through menus all day or are otherwise negatively affected to such a degree by a visual change like this, you are an amateur So really, JetBrains is bringing consumer-grade UI practices to the world of... amateurs This world for amateurs exists exists, as a crutch, within the larger world of the professional product. However, the world of professional usage of Intellij remains essentially unchanged (granted, the new icons and extra negative space are annoying, they just are not significant) TLDR: git gud, use a keyboard
  • pjmlp 4y ago
    Ah, developers on Microsoft and Apple ecosystes are amateurs, got it!
  • TheCapeGreek 4y ago
    You don't even need to learn all the shortcuts - I cleared my PHPStorm UI long ago. If I need something in a menu, I open the Actions search menu and start typing. If I need to look into code, double tap shift for the All search menu and go ham. Sprinkle in one or two for e.g. git branches and you get most of the speed you need. I don't need to look at a splatter of information on my screen - I need code and a select few other pieces.
• piokoch 4y ago
  This looks so bad. Luckily I relay mostly on shortcut keys. I hope animations, if they indeed add them (wtf?), could be turned off.
• wolpoli 4y ago
  Looking at the screenshot, I noticed that JetBrains has started using an underline to denote selected tab. Could someone explain the reason for this, instead of say, drawing the shape of the tab in the background?
• TheCapeGreek 4y ago
  Am I the only one who has a mostly clear IDE? Stock Jetbrains IDEs are way too cluttered. You can replace the entire menu bar and a few other things with learning the shortcut to search Actions and the omni search shortcut for code & more. So long as those are retained in the new UI, I don't see the issue here. Tangent: This to me is the same as the obsession with multiple monitors. You don't need it. Virtual desktops/workspaces do the same job in less physical space and let you actually organise your software.
  • toxicFork 4y ago
    Tangent: I am traveling at the moment and I miss my second monitor a lot. It's like saying you don't need toilets when you can dig a hole in the ground and use leaves to wipe instead of toilet paper.
    • TheCapeGreek 4y ago
      You've not optimised your workflow for your environment, but instead it's the fault of the tools given to you for being too primitive? Come on.
      • toxicFork 4y ago
        I have optimised my workflow, I am still productive, but the second monitor still brings me joys that nothing else can.
      • adl 4y ago
        Virtual Desktops are not a substitute to multiple monitors. With multiple monitors you can have several full screen windows open at the same time. Like coding in your main screen and seeing documentation/web browser in the other.
        • TheCapeGreek 4y ago
          Contrary to popular belief, you cannot physically look at two screens at the same time.
• philliphaydon 4y ago
  I absolutely love the new UI. The only thing I want to change is reduce the font sizes by 1 or 2 sizes then it would be perfect for me.
  • adl 4y ago
    You can change the UI font size in: Preferences -> Appearance & Behavior -> Appearance -> Use Custom Font | Size
    • philliphaydon 4y ago
      That doesn't actually work tho, it doesn't scale the UI. It just reduces the font-size :(
• ergonaught 4y ago
  Sorry, it’s all my fault. I’ve resisted using their software for years, despite the praise, but I recently decided I would become a customer and switch to their software. Unfortunately this means they are now obligated by whatever has gone wrong with the world of software the past few years to ruin anything that was good about it.
• YeBanKo 4y ago
  I think this is exactly the case for "if it works, don't touch it" IntelliJ has few shortcomings with window and tabs management, maybe better address those? I wouldn't mind subtle font improvements or some color schemes, that may reduce eye fatigue. But changing how things typically look if gonna hurt for me. Unfortunately, I don't think there other IDE that come close to Jetbrains, esp for java/scala dev.
• iLoveOncall 4y ago
  I use Jetbrains IDEs every day and from the screenshot I can barely spot a difference. Everyone will be okay. This trend of crying at every pixel change is honestly laughable. Also you can install themes on Jetbrains' IDEs.
  • MockObject 4y ago
    > I use Jetbrains IDEs every day and from the screenshot I can barely spot a difference. Everyone will be okay. Except for the terminal window, it looks like an entirely different IDE.
• Semaphor 4y ago
  I’m a bit between tables. On the one hand, I prefer the look of the new UI. It looks nice, yet I can clearly find things. But on the other hand, it puts a bunch of things I regularly use into nested submenus for seemingly no reason (the top bar where they used to be is now mostly empty). Caveat: I only used it for a short time, as neither Webstorm nor Rider work properly with the current EAP + new UI.
• pragnesh 4y ago
  also it seems intellij community edition is going away.
• MrDresden 4y ago
  Frankly I think this is a non issue for any serious professional. A proficient user will have learned the keyboard commands for actions and navigation and rarely if ever use the visual elements. This holds for any tool. Those who have yet to take this step, but are unhappy that the UI update is coming, should take this opportunity to step up their professionalism and master the tools of their trade. It will be well worth the investment. Negative space is perhaps the one thing I might worry about, since not all devices come with giant or high resolution screens. Otherwise I welcome the update, and understand that Jetbrains need to continue attracting new users, who are used to different UI then those of us who are older.
• 0x37 4y ago
  I really like the new UI (and all the other similar modern UIs) and I just can't pretend like I dont. I'm a very visual and a design oriented person and I want my tools to look good. If I'm going to spend countless hours using a product/tool I want to enjoy it's looks as well. Too many tools in my opinion are designed by people who want to maximize productivity with very utilitarian and practical user interfaces (which is great!) but don't seem to have enough care for making something that looks beautiful at the same time.
  • noir_lord 4y ago
    I was in the private beta for it, I went into it neutral and came out of it really liking it, all the keybinds remain the same and I already had turned off quite a lot of the old UI so for me it felt like what I already had but more refined. As with all things design, it's open to a large degree of subjectivity.
  • ldng 4y ago
    Beautiful on top of productive and utilitarian : yes. Beautiful instead of productive and utilitarian : absolutely NOT.
• akuji1993 4y ago
  This is like the definition of "old man yells at cloud".
• omar_alt 4y ago
  This is why it is important to not depend on a single commercial IDE to do all your work. Datagrip has been my go to for sql but would be willing to switch back to dbeaver if I had to. I also use Pycharm when a client has me working with Terraform alongside python repos. However the ide sugar for Terraform isn’t that beneficial and I often feel it would be better if I just went back to vim with a few tweaks for .tf files
• mcluck 4y ago
  I'm so surprised at the vitriolic response people are having to the change. I spent many of my formative years writing in Eclipse and was an early adopter of WebStorm. I'm no stranger to the IntelliJ style interface. But it has always been a huge impediment for me. It feels clunky, loud, disorganized. Like a desktop with random papers spread out everywhere. And like someone who has one of these desks, I'm sure the people who are upset know exactly where the stapler that they buried 3 months ago is but for me it's just a mess. This new change looks fantastic and might make me not feel so slow working with IntelliJ products.
• mi_lk 4y ago
  if you want to try it out, found an article on enabling the new UI: https://agdl.dev/posts/new-ui-jetbrains-ide https://agdl.dev/posts/new-ui-jetbrains-ide
• Jack_rando_fang 4y ago
  I think I can get used to both the new UI and the old one, as personal preference doesn't really matter that much. That being said, I really agree with the text that the design to be chosen should be based on A/B testing and whether the design improvement leads to an improvement in productivity.
• joshxyz 4y ago
  it looks like vscode, yall gonna love it haha
• jillesvangurp 4y ago
  Interesting timing given that they are half way done getting their own extensions to Jetpack Compose out. They have compose desktop and compose web now. Unfortunately, they seem to not have a compose IOS (which would make it a nice alternative to Flutter). And compose desktop still has a runtime dependency on the jvm even though the underlying graphics library is based on Skia, which is also used by Chrome. Given that Jetbrains has native compilers for Kotlin, this is a bit odd and maybe something they are looking to address over time. So, this makes me wonder about the timing for this and the technical architecture. Are they eating their own dogfood here? Or is this a separate thing?
• thund 4y ago
  Solution: make UI 100% theme-able. Icons, buttons, paddings, borders, fonts, backgrounds, everything as a customizable theme. The community will do the rest.
  • alpaca128 4y ago
    I frequently wish more programs would implement a UI as flexible as the one in Firefox, where you can just drag buttons around, add extra large dedicated buttons for zoom, remove buttons you don't need etc. Even more flexibility would be cool as well in more specialized software, but I think FF does enough while not overwhelming the user with possibilities.
  • oblio 4y ago
    Well: https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2022/06/addressing-the-new-ui-comments/ https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2022/06/addressing-the-new-u... > The new UI will remain customizable. It is, and will be, possible to change many aspects of the look and feel, such as icons, colors, font sizes, and spacing between controls through theme plugins. We’ll add options as needed to accommodate user preferences, like the ability to customize the toolbar.
    • thund 4y ago
      We’ll see what “many aspects” means
• SebastianKra 4y ago
  > - Rounding of corners. Religion at this point > - Homogenization. JetBrains wants to be like VSCode > - Animations. Haven't seen them but it will be filled Seriously, HN? This is the quality that you reward with hundreds of points? Unlike the author, I happen to have used this UI for the past five months and it solves many of my longstanding gripes with IntelliJ: - Gutters are now much better at highlighting local changes, while also being less visually obtrusive. - The shaded tool window background nicely separates them from the editor - Showing the git branch next to the title makes it so much easier to understand where I am, when I work with multiple projects and branches. - Breadcrumbs in the Statusbar save some space and look much cleaner --- Also, many of the complaints that I've seen in this thread are either wrong or exaggerated: - "Monochrome icons" - Only the toolbar icons are monochrome, everything else still uses coloured icons. - "The toolbar has less icons now" - It's customisable, you can put whatever you want in there. Yes, with colourful icons. - "More Whitespace" - The vertical space from the top of the screen to the editor is the exact same. The Project view actually looses some vertical space, but only because the font size is bigger (Which you can change obviously). The spacing between the list items is the same according to a designer on Slack. - "This is just some incompetent designer pushing their agenda on us, breaking my workflow because something something trends" - go touch grass. And finally, just to be clear: no, there are no animations - everything is instant.
  • matsemann 4y ago
    Personally I'm not "rewarding the post with hundred of points", but I've upvoted because I share the sentiment and want JetBrains to really consider each change they make: Is it for change's sake, or because it's actually better?
    • mcluck 4y ago
      What makes you think that they haven't already considered it? It's rather offensive to assume that a group of UX professionals decided to take on a massive overhaul just for fun. Given UX has never been a major priority at JetBrains, it implies that they decided it was valuable enough to spend the time and money on this. I just can't imagine this was done on a whim
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• neximo64 4y ago
  I honestly prefer the new UI. To hell with the old one. Why cant someone who prefers no change just use the old one and do no updates.
• claudiug 4y ago
  I honestly prefer the new UI.
• egberts1 4y ago
  Clion still hasnt got its Makefile auto-regen working yet. Sometime makes a project unuseable until Makefile is deleted and recreated from Makefile.am Why are JetBrain engineers re-working on what was a pretty good UI and not actually working on broken internal things?
• andrewstuart 4y ago
  100% agree. Now I’m scared …. Is JetBrains changing the Pycharm UI? Why? For fashion? Please no, this is the tool I use every day all day. JetBrains if you’re listening… don’t fuck up the UI. I do not want a redesign. I do not want your IDE to be like VSCode. It’s a GOOD thing that JetBrains does not look and feel like VSCode. I hope you are listening to your users. I pay money for Pycharm … don’t change it.
• alpaca128 4y ago
  I like rounded buttons. I prefer a bit of empty space over having a cluttered UI filled with buttons I'll never use. I like animations. The problems with such UI overhauls is usually that the changes overshoot the target by a mile and the designers seem to focus more on visual design than usability. Animations are almost always too long, because their purpose - for example signalling that it has registered the input - is forgotten. At this point at least web apps should just offer options to completely configure the UI layout with a JSON or HTML file and CSS.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• jenscow 4y ago
  I've actually used the new UI, on Rider and WebStorm on Linux. It's not bad, and majority of changes make it more usable. When I go back to an older install, I prefer the new UI. - Increased margins/padding: At first, I thought it was a waste of space - but things are now easier to click on. I realised this when loading an older version on another machine. I'd still like to be able to tweak this - the document tabs are too padded. - The main menu was hidden inside a hamburger menu. This was nasty - fortunately there's a "Show main menu in toolbar" option. This really should be on by default for non-mac. - I wasn't keen on the darker colour scheme, I switched back to the old dark - it took less than a minute to learn I actually prefer the new one. - Can only have 4 docked tool windows open at once (2 side, 2 bottom). - Toolbars are easier to customise, but I wish I could combine the navigation bar into it, as I only have a few buttons on the right. - The bright blue "run/debug" toolbar is distracting - I've not noticed any removal of colour from the menu icons, and there are no animations Overall, there isn't much to be upset about - took me minutes to get used to, no nowhere near as bad as the Visual Studio 2013 UI refresh.
  • noizz 4y ago
    Can you split vertical panels? Like project files on top half and terminal on the other half? I haven't found this option on early previews and haven't had a chance to play with it again.
    • jenscow 4y ago
      No. Only 1 left side, 1 right side, 1 or 2 bottom. No splitting/combining/tabbing. You can still have them floating, then whatever layout you want - but it's not the same. This is the worst "improvement", by far.
• girafffe_i 4y ago
  The most useful thing that kept me using JetBrains was the key-mapping homogeneity between JetBrains, MacOS, and Chrome (e.g. the same key-mappings are used to go back, forward in history, through tabs, to close a tab, ...) Now I'm finding the key mappings (ex: Multi-line select) and functionalities (setting up your workspace a module) are drifting across the JetBrains products. Attention is needed with these UIs to prevent drift and preserve homogeneity across applications.
• sirwhinesalot 4y ago
  I've been looking for a reason to leave the comfort of JetBrains tools for VSCode, and this might be it. I don't have a particularly strong opinion about the new UI, other than that it looks way too much like VSCode and way too little like the current one. The main reason I use JetBrains stuff is that I'm familiar with the interface, it's messy but I know where to find all I need. VSCode is unusable without writing json config files and dropping into a terminal. I always wonder why the keyboard jockeys are using IDEs at all instead of Vim. Why even use the Vim plugin instead of Vim? If optimal keyboard usage is your goal, Vim is all you need and want, it is the king. Me? I like being able to open the IDE preferences and see the configurations for all the testing, virtual environment, or whatever crap I need to have set up to do my work. Typing text is easy, dealing with bullshit configs is the annoying part. They've come into my messy table and threw all the papers into the ground. If I need to sort them all again I might as well not pay them for the privilege.
  • jen20 4y ago
    > I've been looking for a reason If you’re looking for a reason, you’d have found one regardless of anything else.
    • sirwhinesalot 4y ago
      Ridiculous notion. I'm paying for their software for a reason. If they're winning against free it's because their offering is worthwhile. Of course I'd rather use the free alternative that nearly every language provides official support for. It's the job of JetBrains, who are selling a competition paid product, to make it worthwhile for me to keep paying. As the value of their product decreases, and the quality of the free offering increases, at some point a small increase in productivity is not worth the added cost. It has to be sufficiently better.
• stack_framer 4y ago
  I've been happily paying for my own WebStorm license for 7 years—using it at home and at work. In the middle of that, I tried VS Code for a whole year at a new job, to really see how it compared (my new team was using it). It wasn't better in any way. In fact, most days I just missed WebStorm, but I soldiered on to see if I could find anything that was truly an improvement. At the end of my self-imposed, one-year trial, I concluded that VS Code had just one "advantage": it was free. Its barrier to entry was zero, from a pricing perspective. But since I had really given VS Code a fair shake, I gladly went back to WebStorm at work. Fast forward to this year, when I ran head on into a serious WebStorm performance problem: type checking a very large TypeScript code base. The WebStorm logs show that the TypeScript language server is crashing, and I filed a bug with JetBrains many months ago, but zero progress. VS Code, on the other hand, has no problem type checking this huge code base—it happens near instantly. For months I have now had WebStorm open for editing, and VS Code open for type checking, which is ridiculous, and I'd be embarrassed if my team knew I was doing this. It pains me greatly to say it, but perhaps the time has come to cancel my WebStorm license and just switch to VS Code. I mean, why not, if JetBrains is just set on copying VS Code anyway? I'll take better performance with a worse UI, and it seems like that's precisely what VS Code can give me at this point. How sad.
• rychco 4y ago
  I switched on the new UI yesterday and really enjoy it, personally.
• lucideer 4y ago
  Many have pointed out that the author is jumping to conclusions, which seems to be true from the (lack of) content in the article. So much of it is obviously wrong or lazily (not) researched. Some excerpts: > Haven't seen them but it will be [...]. The whole interface is going to [...]. Mark my words Oh really? Sounds like you've spent time using it and forming and informed & balanced evidence-driven opinion alright. > Rounding of corners. Religion at this point. Homogenization. JetBrains wants to be like VSCode Author has never used VSCode - not a rounded corner in sight. But... I have seen a few commenters here on HN that seem more informed than the author and do prefer the old UI. If you're in that category, great. But I wonder are you in a niche minority. I'm a VSCode user but need to use IntelliJ & PyCharm in work as I support some custom IDE plugins & integrations. I hate the UI. I've tried switching to it wholesale on multiple occasions (company covers licences so no cost difference to me) but got quickly frustrated with the experience - especially that the discoverable (mouseclick) UI is always so many more clicks compared to workflows in other apps & that needs to be down for new users during the keyboard/command learning curve. That's a subjective opinion on my part as a VSCode user, but I get the impression that it's shared by a lot of long-time (& probably now former-) JetBrains users. If they're bleeding users to VSCode, it stands to reason that the userbase that state behind are going to be the subset that prefer the old UI. So pushback is understandable.
• the__alchemist 4y ago
  My JB Elephant-in-the-room is the awful performance. I'm complaining instead of having switched, since I haven't found anything and powerful for multi-file projects in Rust, and Python. I find myself, more and more, opening files in Sublime and managing the files manually when PyCharm+Rust Plugin is behaving especially badly. Restarting PyCharm often helps, short-term.
  • ColonelPhantom 4y ago
    For Rust, any LSP-supporting editor with rust-analyzer should be giving a great experience. Not sure what you mean by "multi-file" projects, but RA handles a normal crate with multiple modules perfectly fine.
• RunSet 4y ago
  JetBrains' privacy policy is so open-ended I am surprised their IDEs are permitted in any environment with software that justifies an IDE. It amounts to "Here are just some examples of the parties we might share your information with / reasons we might share your information but don't consider this a definitive list." Also their autocomplete sucks. As in always inserts the wrong thing in the wrong place.
• drewpc 4y ago
  I see your points and understand the frustration. The minor changes over the years haven't bothered me too much. What really messed with me was when the commit pop-up (with diffs) was changed to a tab, nestled in the same space as my files. Nooooooooo! I want the pop-up. I want to know that this is different from what I was doing before.
  • adl 4y ago
    You can change it back. Go to Preferences -> Version Control -> Commit -> Use non-modal commit interface.
• kyriakos 4y ago
  I am using the new UI and its actually a great upgrade imo. I don't think it took more than an hour to become as familiar and productive as before and its actually much cleaner with more space for code.
• einpoklum 4y ago
  This reminds me of the discussions we're having over at LibreOffice, with some people wanting to switch the default interface to MS-Office style tabs. Except there, we're trying to get people to switch _from_ closed-source commercial software.
• tekchip 4y ago
  This absolutely cracks me up. Developers reacting like every user who has the perfectly functional UI/UX pulled out from under them. Shoe on the other foot as it were. Perhaps there's a lesson here for developers of software, their management, and/or companies who take part in this UI/UX churn for churns sake. The problem here is that statistics, and feedback, doesn't inform about the negative. All the users out there who are happily using your software in its current state and are perfectly happy with it but can't be assed to take the time to fill out your survey. As the saying goes "you can't improve what you don't measure." This should have continued something like "so be sure to consider what you can't measure". You can't force everyone to take your survey. Sure in part that puts the blame on the users who don't bother to fill out the survey. But that shouldn't also give the right to ignore them and what they might want. Perhaps a non-vote should be counted as a vote for no change instead of simply being ignored. It's pretty well known that the squeaky wheel gets the grease but that shouldn't mean the entire UI should be slathered in the grease the squeaky wheel wants but no one else asked for.
• ryandrake 4y ago
  Software companies have trained me to not update my software. By now, when an update for an application or OS is available, I assume the new version is worse, and am usually right. Either I'm going to lose some functionality that I relied on, the UX is going to get shuffled around on me, or it's just going to get bigger and slower on my old machine. Instead of doing automatic updates, I delay updating until the company forces me to choose between updating and not using the software--and only then do I make the hard choice. I wish that every software would provide security updates on a separate track from the usual "UX rewrite" and "Feature cram" downgrades. That way, I can stay on the oldest version (the one that works the best), yet get critical security updates so I can use it safely. Web software, too! Reddit is the obvious example, but everywhere they're changing for the sake of change and usually making it worse. For example, Vanguard (the brokerage) recently did a site-wide update. They basically removed lots of critical functionality (including the only thing I actually visit their web site to do regularly) and replaced it with whitespace and fluff. For a while, they let you remain on the old site. Then they made it more difficult to find the link to the old site. Finally I got an E-mail saying that they'd charge my account a fee unless I "migrated" my account to the new site. Talk about end-user hostility. Now I just call them on the phone to do my rollovers, likely costing them more money. Good job, morons.
• deeblering4 4y ago
  Mess with the UI all you want, just give the users the ability to use the one they are used to, or opt-in to the updates. Bonus for supporting customizable profiles and presets
• norwalkbear 4y ago
  If rider gets this new UI, then jetbrains is dead to me
• kolanos 4y ago
  IntelliJ is an accessibility disaster on Mac OS. If JetBrains can fix that, I may actually use their products.
• mbfg 4y ago
  https://search.maven.org/ https://search.maven.org/ is doing the same thing. The new interface is much prettier, full of padding and space, and so much more unusable.
• jasonjmcghee 4y ago
  I'm surprised at how strong the views are about this. I interact with jetbrains primarily through "Shift+Shift" and start typing the action I want. The UI is unnecessarily cluttered, once you get used to using the command palette.
• stolsvik 4y ago
  Monochrome icons are ignoring millions of years of honing the human vision system. I find it the perfect example of utter failure of UI and UX design.