8 ms·

This is a product that I actually _would_ pay for as an individual. It's reasonably priced and worth the increase in efficiency and better experience. Plus thei

This is a product that I actually _would_ pay for as an individual. It's reasonably priced and worth the increase in efficiency and better experience. Plus their pricing is fair and flexible.

javajosh 4y ago
Yes, it seems fair to me to spend real money on Jetbrain's tools, if you like them. It is strange how reluctant programmers are to spend on tools even though they are, as a rule, quite willing to let themselves be paid handsomely for their services. Yet graphic designers pay for Adobe's tools. Who can read this riddle?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- TheGeminon 4y ago
  I think it’s because the free and OSS tools are of such a high quality for developers. There is a much bigger chasm between GIMP and Photoshop than there is between VS Code (with plugins) and JetBrains. It’s hard for many to get over the fact that JetBrains is infinitely more expensive than VS code in dollar terms.
  - oorza 4y ago
    > There is a much bigger chasm between GIMP and Photoshop than there is between VS Code (with plugins) and JetBrains. I don't believe this to be true. I think the difference is graphic designers tend to use much more of their toolings' functions, whereas almost every day I'm surprised someone I work with doesn't even know some IDE feature was possible, let alone how to use it. Hell, almost every frontend developer I've ever seen use either VSCode or WebStorm orchestrates everything from the built-in terminal and is baffled when they never see me use one - because it's all configured via run configurations, and that's a _basic_ feature.
    - theamk 4y ago
      That makes sense though.. Terminal commands are easy to put into team wiki or record in personal notes or put into your CI config. There is a command history, it is easy to chain commands, etc.. Unless using IDE's native tooling is making you much more productive (say its debugging does not work without it) it is better to avoid it if possible.
      - oorza 4y ago
        IDE's native tooling makes you more productive because you set it up and never interact with it. If you need to manually do stuff, or do it all the time, you can slap it behind a keybinding. My cmd+F6 to do everything that needs to be done to get the iOS app built and debugging inside a simulator is obviously going to be more productive than having to jump into the terminal every time. Ditto for the run configuration (also cmd+F6 in a different project) that spins up docker and all that blah blah to get the API server running. This is what I'm talking about, for what it's worth, a programmer doesn't immediately see the utility in the tool and doesn't use it, and that's the story for 99% of the things an IDE does. It's always faster to do it yourself once, or twice, especially considering setup time and learning curve, so people don't make use of the tools. I see people using grep instead of their IDE search because they cbf to figure out how to do it in the IDE! It's like we're carpenters who hate power tools.
      - vladvasiliu 4y ago
        > Unless using IDE's native tooling is making you much more productive (say its debugging does not work without it) it is better to avoid it if possible. I have a friend who works as a dev for a decently sized software editor, so he's seen his fair share of people interacting with the tools. They work mainly with Java and the company pays for Intellij for everyone. He's often complaining about how people never try to learn the IDE and always do things manually. They usually don't really know what they're doing in the terminal, either (they mostly use Windows, so the terminal is rarely second nature). But whenever he shows them a few nicer features, typically around refactoring and such, they're always blown away and never look back. He has, of course, interacted with his fair share of graybeards who only use vim, but those people don't usually take ages to accomplish simple tasks.
- capitalsigma 4y ago
  Because developers want to be able to hack on their own tools: fix bugs, add features, whatever. Graphics designers do not have the skills to hack on their own tools, so there isn't a huge population of them sitting around going "damn, I wish I had feature X -- I know, I'll build my own editor and open source it!"
  - PraetorianGourd 4y ago
    Some do. Probably over-represented on HN. Others want to work their hours and spend the rest of their time with non-technical hobbies, or with family, or literally anything else. If that isn’t you, no big deal. But we should not paint all developers with the same brush.
    - capitalsigma 4y ago
      Enough developers want to hack on their own tools that the market is smaller than you would naively expect, counting the number of developers and how many tools they each use. It's a bit like asking "how come we're having so much trouble selling our extended warranty to professional mechanics, even though professional drivers buy extended warranties all the time?"
      - PraetorianGourd 4y ago
        The real reason is that there are free alternatives. For many people, “free and open source” is the same as just “free”. Again, I can fix most things on my car. I can afford the tools needed. But I don’t want to because opportunity cost. One thing I have always found weird is the whole, “hey can you look at my computer? It is all slow” is considered okay to ask anyone in IT, but it (at least in the circles I was raised) inappropriate to ask a mechanic in the family to work on your car, the accountant to do your taxes, the plumber to replace your toilet. And even with mechanics, some like to work on specific cars as a hobby, much like an engineer might want to play around with ML and work on a CRUD app for pay.
        4y ago
- nikkwong 4y ago
  > if you like them. Important caveat here. My only exposure to JetBrains had been through Intellij which was thoroughly unpleasant around 2012-2013. That impression has left me forever sour towards them. Surprised to hear people say that it could be a step up from VSCode. It looks like "Fleet" is their VSCode competitor? I'm not sure if the homepage does a good job at communicating how this improves over of VSCode. First of all VSCode has an enormous ecosystem of tools which seems hard to replicate. In terms of advertised features for Fleet, it seems like the one most highlighted on the page is multiplayer, which would possibly enable others watching me code live? Sounds nerve-wracking. Although I could imagine some helpful scenarios when pair-programming or something. Other items that are advertised don't really encourage me to want to make the leap, especially as something I have to pay for. It sounds like they could host your code, or something like that, which could be nice. An annoying part of my workflow is that I work on the same codebase between multiple machines and every time I hop between machines I have to commit the changes to a private repository that is separate from my team's repository. It seems like it would be somewhat straight-foward to have the same code shared between all machines. Other than that I would be interested to hear on how any Jetbrains products would improve productivity.
  - acchow 4y ago
    Strange. In my experience, IntelliJ from 2012 is a superior experience to VSCode today.
    - realusername 4y ago
      To each their own, I would still continue to use VSCode even if IntelliJ's current version was free. Even Jetbrain themselves realised this since they are creating a VSCode clone called Fleet.
    - nikkwong 4y ago
      Granted; I was very junior then--and I think my issues may have been mostly related to the finnicky nature of java tooling and dependencies rather than the IDE itself.
    - happymellon 4y ago
- Firmwarrior 4y ago
  I donate to the FSF and subscribe to iTerm2's patreon, FWIW. I have to admit, though, I think the world would be a much more drab and less productive place if open source were completely dominant. We'd all be chiding each other to donate more and pitch in more, while barely scraping by in comparison to the vast wealth sloshing around today. Maybe it would be a BETTER world if it weren't all fueled by addictive mobile games, privacy invasive advertising, etc. But we'd be a lot less rich
- iopq 4y ago
  Because I'm always disappointed with paid proprietary software eventually. Despite some shortcomings, I used Windows 7. Anything after that had a confusing interface with two settings panels, some kind of an attempt to bring a tablet interface to desktop, loss of control over my computer. After installing NixOS, I never actually boot into Windows 10 anymore. Naturally, I never use MS Office or Photoshop anymore. It would feel weird to buy some proprietary software, even if it is good. Why not contribute to an open source effort?
- brabel 4y ago
  I also pay for JB tools. But that's because it's well beyond me or other open source developers to make a product that's competitive with it, and the competition is well behind (VS Code and Eclipse are good, but once you learn IntelliJ more advanced stuff, you feel like a programming God - something worth paying for ;) ). An IDE is insanely complex nowadays. I am not sure what Kite had in mind, but to me, what they were proposing would be "just" an IntelliJ Plugin. And I don't pay, and can't see myself paying, for any plugin.
- matkoniecz 4y ago
  > It is strange how reluctant programmers are to spend on tools even though they are, as a rule, quite willing to let themselves be paid handsomely for their services. Ability to find someone willing to pay XYZ for foobar does not imply that I am willing to pay the same amount of money for something similar. In fact, by doing this exact transactions it means that I find such transaction advantageous for me. Also, I had enough stories of lock-in and losing access to proprietary systems that I prefer vastly inferior open source. Also, I am not aware of paid systems worth paying for. I use primarily Linux (Lubuntu), git, Codium, Python, Kotlin, pgsql, Android Studio, LibreOffice, Firefox, uBlock Origin, Leechblock, sqlite. For what I can pay that makes it worth it? For contributing back, I prefer working on code over donations (due to geoeconomical situation and ability too direct my effort precisely where I care about things over donations often being wasted)
- H1Supreme 4y ago
  Designers have to spend money on their tools. There's no other option. Developer's don't. Plus, developers can make their own tools if they need to.
- adql 4y ago
  Graphics designers don't have much choice because even if they decide they are entirely fine with free program, the graphics design world runs on Adobe file formats. Not the case for programming
- eadmund 4y ago
  I am glad to pay for software, but I want it to be free as in freedom: I insist on being able to modify, fix, extend and share it. So all of my tools I rely on are AGPL, GPL or BSD-licensed.

This is a product that I actually _would_ pay for as an individual. It's reasonably priced and worth the increase in efficiency and better experience. Plus their pricing is fair and flexible.

javajosh 4y ago

Yes, it seems fair to me to spend real money on Jetbrain's tools, if you like them. It is strange how reluctant programmers are to spend on tools even though they are, as a rule, quite willing to let themselves be paid handsomely for their services. Yet graphic designers pay for Adobe's tools. Who can read this riddle?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
TheGeminon 4y ago
I think it’s because the free and OSS tools are of such a high quality for developers. There is a much bigger chasm between GIMP and Photoshop than there is between VS Code (with plugins) and JetBrains. It’s hard for many to get over the fact that JetBrains is infinitely more expensive than VS code in dollar terms.
- oorza 4y ago
  > There is a much bigger chasm between GIMP and Photoshop than there is between VS Code (with plugins) and JetBrains. I don't believe this to be true. I think the difference is graphic designers tend to use much more of their toolings' functions, whereas almost every day I'm surprised someone I work with doesn't even know some IDE feature was possible, let alone how to use it. Hell, almost every frontend developer I've ever seen use either VSCode or WebStorm orchestrates everything from the built-in terminal and is baffled when they never see me use one - because it's all configured via run configurations, and that's a _basic_ feature.
  - theamk 4y ago
    That makes sense though.. Terminal commands are easy to put into team wiki or record in personal notes or put into your CI config. There is a command history, it is easy to chain commands, etc.. Unless using IDE's native tooling is making you much more productive (say its debugging does not work without it) it is better to avoid it if possible.
    - oorza 4y ago
      IDE's native tooling makes you more productive because you set it up and never interact with it. If you need to manually do stuff, or do it all the time, you can slap it behind a keybinding. My cmd+F6 to do everything that needs to be done to get the iOS app built and debugging inside a simulator is obviously going to be more productive than having to jump into the terminal every time. Ditto for the run configuration (also cmd+F6 in a different project) that spins up docker and all that blah blah to get the API server running. This is what I'm talking about, for what it's worth, a programmer doesn't immediately see the utility in the tool and doesn't use it, and that's the story for 99% of the things an IDE does. It's always faster to do it yourself once, or twice, especially considering setup time and learning curve, so people don't make use of the tools. I see people using grep instead of their IDE search because they cbf to figure out how to do it in the IDE! It's like we're carpenters who hate power tools.
    - vladvasiliu 4y ago
      > Unless using IDE's native tooling is making you much more productive (say its debugging does not work without it) it is better to avoid it if possible. I have a friend who works as a dev for a decently sized software editor, so he's seen his fair share of people interacting with the tools. They work mainly with Java and the company pays for Intellij for everyone. He's often complaining about how people never try to learn the IDE and always do things manually. They usually don't really know what they're doing in the terminal, either (they mostly use Windows, so the terminal is rarely second nature). But whenever he shows them a few nicer features, typically around refactoring and such, they're always blown away and never look back. He has, of course, interacted with his fair share of graybeards who only use vim, but those people don't usually take ages to accomplish simple tasks.
capitalsigma 4y ago
Because developers want to be able to hack on their own tools: fix bugs, add features, whatever. Graphics designers do not have the skills to hack on their own tools, so there isn't a huge population of them sitting around going "damn, I wish I had feature X -- I know, I'll build my own editor and open source it!"
- PraetorianGourd 4y ago
  Some do. Probably over-represented on HN. Others want to work their hours and spend the rest of their time with non-technical hobbies, or with family, or literally anything else. If that isn’t you, no big deal. But we should not paint all developers with the same brush.
  - capitalsigma 4y ago
    Enough developers want to hack on their own tools that the market is smaller than you would naively expect, counting the number of developers and how many tools they each use. It's a bit like asking "how come we're having so much trouble selling our extended warranty to professional mechanics, even though professional drivers buy extended warranties all the time?"
    - PraetorianGourd 4y ago
      The real reason is that there are free alternatives. For many people, “free and open source” is the same as just “free”. Again, I can fix most things on my car. I can afford the tools needed. But I don’t want to because opportunity cost. One thing I have always found weird is the whole, “hey can you look at my computer? It is all slow” is considered okay to ask anyone in IT, but it (at least in the circles I was raised) inappropriate to ask a mechanic in the family to work on your car, the accountant to do your taxes, the plumber to replace your toilet. And even with mechanics, some like to work on specific cars as a hobby, much like an engineer might want to play around with ML and work on a CRUD app for pay.
      - 4y ago
nikkwong 4y ago
> if you like them. Important caveat here. My only exposure to JetBrains had been through Intellij which was thoroughly unpleasant around 2012-2013. That impression has left me forever sour towards them. Surprised to hear people say that it could be a step up from VSCode. It looks like "Fleet" is their VSCode competitor? I'm not sure if the homepage does a good job at communicating how this improves over of VSCode. First of all VSCode has an enormous ecosystem of tools which seems hard to replicate. In terms of advertised features for Fleet, it seems like the one most highlighted on the page is multiplayer, which would possibly enable others watching me code live? Sounds nerve-wracking. Although I could imagine some helpful scenarios when pair-programming or something. Other items that are advertised don't really encourage me to want to make the leap, especially as something I have to pay for. It sounds like they could host your code, or something like that, which could be nice. An annoying part of my workflow is that I work on the same codebase between multiple machines and every time I hop between machines I have to commit the changes to a private repository that is separate from my team's repository. It seems like it would be somewhat straight-foward to have the same code shared between all machines. Other than that I would be interested to hear on how any Jetbrains products would improve productivity.
- acchow 4y ago
  Strange. In my experience, IntelliJ from 2012 is a superior experience to VSCode today.
  - realusername 4y ago
    To each their own, I would still continue to use VSCode even if IntelliJ's current version was free. Even Jetbrain themselves realised this since they are creating a VSCode clone called Fleet.
  - nikkwong 4y ago
    Granted; I was very junior then--and I think my issues may have been mostly related to the finnicky nature of java tooling and dependencies rather than the IDE itself.
  - happymellon 4y ago
Firmwarrior 4y ago
I donate to the FSF and subscribe to iTerm2's patreon, FWIW. I have to admit, though, I think the world would be a much more drab and less productive place if open source were completely dominant. We'd all be chiding each other to donate more and pitch in more, while barely scraping by in comparison to the vast wealth sloshing around today. Maybe it would be a BETTER world if it weren't all fueled by addictive mobile games, privacy invasive advertising, etc. But we'd be a lot less rich
iopq 4y ago
Because I'm always disappointed with paid proprietary software eventually. Despite some shortcomings, I used Windows 7. Anything after that had a confusing interface with two settings panels, some kind of an attempt to bring a tablet interface to desktop, loss of control over my computer. After installing NixOS, I never actually boot into Windows 10 anymore. Naturally, I never use MS Office or Photoshop anymore. It would feel weird to buy some proprietary software, even if it is good. Why not contribute to an open source effort?
brabel 4y ago
I also pay for JB tools. But that's because it's well beyond me or other open source developers to make a product that's competitive with it, and the competition is well behind (VS Code and Eclipse are good, but once you learn IntelliJ more advanced stuff, you feel like a programming God - something worth paying for ;) ). An IDE is insanely complex nowadays. I am not sure what Kite had in mind, but to me, what they were proposing would be "just" an IntelliJ Plugin. And I don't pay, and can't see myself paying, for any plugin.
matkoniecz 4y ago
> It is strange how reluctant programmers are to spend on tools even though they are, as a rule, quite willing to let themselves be paid handsomely for their services. Ability to find someone willing to pay XYZ for foobar does not imply that I am willing to pay the same amount of money for something similar. In fact, by doing this exact transactions it means that I find such transaction advantageous for me. Also, I had enough stories of lock-in and losing access to proprietary systems that I prefer vastly inferior open source. Also, I am not aware of paid systems worth paying for. I use primarily Linux (Lubuntu), git, Codium, Python, Kotlin, pgsql, Android Studio, LibreOffice, Firefox, uBlock Origin, Leechblock, sqlite. For what I can pay that makes it worth it? For contributing back, I prefer working on code over donations (due to geoeconomical situation and ability too direct my effort precisely where I care about things over donations often being wasted)
H1Supreme 4y ago
Designers have to spend money on their tools. There's no other option. Developer's don't. Plus, developers can make their own tools if they need to.
adql 4y ago
Graphics designers don't have much choice because even if they decide they are entirely fine with free program, the graphics design world runs on Adobe file formats. Not the case for programming
eadmund 4y ago
I am glad to pay for software, but I want it to be free as in freedom: I insist on being able to modify, fix, extend and share it. So all of my tools I rely on are AGPL, GPL or BSD-licensed.