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JetBrains forces AI freemium plugin that cannot be completely removed into IDEs

151 points by drpossum 3y ago

drpossum 3y ago
A few days ago JetBrains put in their answer to other coding AI assistants into their IDES, but decided on top of the nags for their new paid service have made it so it can't be completely removed. If you try to do the normal thing and uninstall or disable it, it appears to just reinstall itself or continues with nags. I'll say nothing on work environments where code cannot be sent anywhere for security and privacy purposes, but this is just openly hostile user behavior from a company that used to do relatively well. Shame on you JetBrains
- ilc 3y ago
  I haven't upgraded yet. I may have to pin my version so it doesn't upgrade. For someone who wasn't in their AI trial, then gets this as a subscriber. It sure feels shitty. And Fleet doesn't looks much better. Maybe it is time to look at VSCode again... it's been 6-9 months.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
hyeomans 3y ago
I thought it was going to be part of my subscription. Lost my trust in JetBrains after seeing I needed to do some extra-steps to remove it.
- dp-hackernews 3y ago
  Did you manage to remove/disable it completely? If so, how did you do it?
- donmcronald 3y ago
  I wonder if they plan to rename the "All Products Pack" to "Some Products Pack". Lol
  - cpburns2009 3y ago
    I'd rather not have an AI tax embedded in the "All Products Pack".
janosdebugs 3y ago
I tested this out and I'm not very impressed. It's a chatbot that has limited access to your source code (the file you have open I believe). The AI doesn't have a complete picture of your project and it would probably be too expensive to ingest thousands of lines of code. The code it generates is... what you come to expect from a coding assistant. It's hit and miss, and it needs heavy refactoring. It feels like this doesn't add too much value to the already existing tooling and Jetbrains should have waited for something better. The current way of prominently pushing it strait to production seems rather unfortunate. I've disabled the plugin.
- trmpakufnfee 3y ago
  This is what every company is doing in the name of integrating "Gen AI". 90% of it is chat bots. And in 90% of those places I dont want a chat bot.
  - StreetChief 3y ago
    Like the grocery store chat bot that recommended mixing bleach and ammonia for a "fresh scent!"
    - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
      Wait, is that likely but currently hypothetical scenario or a real thing that actually happened? And if it already happened could you possibly provide a source so I have something to pull out when people ask what could possibly go wrong? Edit: Okay, 30 seconds searching turned up https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/08/ai-powered-grocery-bot-suggests-recipe-for-toxic-gas-poison-bread-sandwich/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/08/ai-po... which features the "Aromatic Water Mix" I assume we're talking about. Edit2: And yet, replies managed to be even faster than me looking it up myself. Thanks, everyone:)
      - coldbrewed 3y ago
        New Zealand supermarket's recipe-generating AI takes toxic output to a new level - https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/11/supermarket_reins_in_ai_recipebot/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/11/supermarket_reins_in_... > One user decided to play around with the chatbot, suggesting it create something with ammonia, bleach, and water. Savey Meal-bot obliged, spitting out a cocktail made with a cup ammonia, a quarter cup of bleach, and two liters of water. > Mixing bleach and ammonia releases toxic chloroamine gas that can irritate the eyes, throat, and nose, or even cause death in high concentrations. > The chatbot obviously wasn't aware of that at all. "Are you thirsty?," it asked. "The Aromatic Water Mix is the perfect non-alcoholic beverage to quench your thirst and refresh your senses. It combines the invigorating scents of ammonia, bleach, and water for a truly unique experience!"
xeromal 3y ago
I feel the same way with AWS Q on the console. It refuses to stop nagging me.
StreetChief 3y ago
ah, non-removeable software, how lovely. eat ai cause we tell you to.
scop 3y ago
I recently started to learn a new programming language and was thinking that CoPilot etc would help me in that regard. I was surprised to find the opposite: whenever I would pause to think about a solution, AI would be polluting my editor with suggestions and completely interrupt my train of thought. ChatGPT has been very handy for random questions about the language, but in-editor suggestions completely ruin any attempt on my part to learn. While I have been very pleased with in-editor-AI for tidying up my code and providing some logical completions, this was the first time that it clicked that AI is really only effective if you already know what you’re doing.
- mark_l_watson 3y ago
  VSCode and CoPilot now has a mode where you ask for suggestions, which is better. In my Emacs + CoPilot setup, suggestions pop up unasked for which I need to change.
  - macNchz 3y ago
    This was one of my main complaints when I tried it, perhaps I’ll give it another shot with that setting. The suggestions automatically appearing made it feel like having a conversation with one of those people who is always jumping to finish your sentences for you, but guessing wrong as to what you were about to say.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    Please post your Emacs config if you do make that change.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Scarbutt 3y ago
Many plugins can't be completely removed but you can disabled them, was wrong with that? I disabled this one and it hasn't nag me.
- ilc 3y ago
  The thing about trust is... Once broken it is hard to recover. Here we have 2xshitty behaviors, we can see around this product. Who is to say there isn't more we can't see. Removing it seems 100% reasonable, if only for security purposes.
  - insanitybit 3y ago
    A disabled plugin has virtually no security implications.
    - j16sdiz 3y ago
      How about first open after upgrade? If you upgrade from a older version, it open your previous project with the plugin enabled without asking.
      - insanitybit 3y ago
        Yeah I don't see the problem with that at all. Intellij packages plugins. Plugins run. The only issue here is that it's being automatically enabled after it is disabled, which I assume is just a simple bug and not at all the big deal this is being made out to be.
        ilc 3y ago
        Alas, it blocks my upgrade totally. I'm glad your firm lets you send code anywhere. Mine does not.
        insanitybit 3y ago
        I don't think that the plugin being enabled sends data anywhere.
malfist 3y ago
Yet another example of enshitification. When will businesses learn to not be shitty to their users in the name of next weeks profits?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ta1243 3y ago
  When the stock market decides to punish the companies that do this.
happytiger 3y ago
Oh how the might have fallen. For many years they were the one company that understood developer trust and kept that faith. I’ve seen developers argue for literally months in big companies to get this tooling to be the default and get paid for. I don’t know who needs to be fired over there, but whoever made this decision needs to be and the company needs to make a public apology and public commitment to remove nag from future products. This is very brand damaging.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- RunSet 3y ago
  JetBrains's EULA has long been a blank check in terms of sharing information with third parties. Glad to see some light falling in that vicinity.
  - insanitybit 3y ago
    The "light" in this case being a UI bug that everyone on HN has completely misunderstood because the average HN user can't read?
    - RunSet 3y ago
      > the average HN user can't read? Let's put it to the test. https://www.jetbrains.com/legal/docs/privacy/third-parties/ https://www.jetbrains.com/legal/docs/privacy/third-parties/
      - 5d59232e-b392 3y ago
        Ok they host some services on AWS and GCP, use Zendesk for support tickets, you can log in to JB using a GitHub account, and they use Google Analytics and a 3rd party payment system for billing. What exactly is the problem?
        3y ago
PreInternet01 3y ago
Oh, come on. It's a high-pressure situation, where they're damned if they don't offer any AI plugins (why are you not as good as X???), and they're damned if they do (why is this freemium crap polluting my otherwise nag-free freeloader experience?) Things will take a while to settle. Unless your workflow is *truly* broken by the fall-out, save your outrage. And yes, I'm a paying JetBrains customer, don't like their AI offering, but don't really like anyone else's either, so far...
- Lt_Riza_Hawkeye 3y ago
  Sure, but you should at least be able to uninstall the plugin. According to the thread it reinstalls itself on each launch
  - PreInternet01 3y ago
    That seems like a minor bug at most? And if the plugin remains enabled, but doesn't do anything, what's the actual issue here? Rephrased: what's the problem with waiting until the next point release of the affected product before assuming malicious intent?
    - mystiick 3y ago
      A plugin that reinstalls itself to ask for money is malicious intent
      - PreInternet01 3y ago
        Counterpoint: if you click once (per product install) to dismiss the "ask for money", then don't touch anything related to the plugin again, you won't hear from it thereafter. Are we really equating poorly-coded add-ons to malware now? And again, I ask this as someone who lived through the whole broken experience of AI previews in JetBrains products and ignoring all of that. That literally took me less time than typing this comment...
      - insanitybit 3y ago
insanitybit 3y ago
I'm looking forward to using the integration, personally. This is a low quality submission. You're mad about some issue tracker thing but I don't see how this is relevant to the rest of HN or why this is soooo important.
- Y-bar 3y ago
  > I'm looking forward to using the integration, personally. That's all right and perfectly valid. What is not is what is described in the linked issue.
  - insanitybit 3y ago
    > What is not is what is described in the linked issue. There seems to be a singular issue/ bug, which is that a disabled plugin is being re-enabled after update. This is just a bug, I don't understand why this is HN-worthy. If the headline were "intellij has a bug where a disabled plugin is being re-enabled" it would be accurate, not-inflammatory, and boring.
    - Shawnecy 3y ago
      So you disable and uninstall the plugin. Then after an update,you're silently running with it on[1]. For my company and a lot of others I know, you are now in violation of your contract with your employer courtesy of a JetBrains bug because they insisted this be an uninstallable plugin. [1] = https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-341408/Disabling-plugin-and-then-uninstalling-plugin-update-enables-it-back-after-IDE-restart https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-341408/Disabling-p...
      - insanitybit 3y ago
        > Then after an update,you're silently running with it on Yes, that sounds like a bug to me. > because they insisted this be an uninstallable plugin. I don't see a comment from Jetbrains saying that the plugin is supposed to be re-enabled.
rcv 3y ago
I tried the JetBrains AI copilot and was pretty unimpressed. On a whim I decided to try out the GitHub CoPilot plugin and I've been pretty blown away by it. When I'm writing dumb boilerplate code it often times gives me a correct suggestion before I can even think about it. I've found myself just tab-completing through big blocks 99% correct code. The lower cognitive overhead for cranking out easy code is well worth the $10/month for me. Of course it's not a huge help with anything complicated, but I've found it doesn't get in the way enough to have much of a downside.
hk1337 3y ago
It's _mildly_ infuriating but disable it and move on.
- Shawnecy 3y ago
  Please don't make such glib uninformed comments: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-341408/Disabling-plugin-and-then-uninstalling-plugin-update-enables-it-back-after-IDE-restart https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-341408/Disabling-p...
  - igor_akhmetov 3y ago
    Have you actually read the description of this issue? It's a UX bug with the uninstall action.
  - insanitybit 3y ago
    You keep linking this over and over again and you clearly don't understand what you've linked. The plugin isn't even activated by default, you have to explicitly do so. IT's enabled, meaning the plugin can run, but it doesn't do anything related to AI unless you press the "free trial" or activation buttons.
    - Shawnecy 3y ago
      WRONG. You say that, but read the details and the original thread from what it was cut: "but the bundled older version remains enabled after IDE restart." THE OLD VERSION IS ENABLED AFTER IDE RESTART.
      - insanitybit 3y ago
        I don't know what you're going on about. I'll make this as clear as possible: 1. The enabled plugin prompts you to 'activate' the service 2. If you do not activate the service the plugin is enabled but does not use the service 3. There is a minor bug, allegedly (have not reproduced it, and others have tried and failed) where the plugin can be disabled and then it re-enables itself.
softirq 3y ago
The reason I stick with vim/emacs isn't because of the "fast editing", it's because they're modular and easy to build plugins for. I've built many job specific plugins for both editors as well as wrapped new command lines tools this way, and it's always increased my productivity far beyond what modal bindings has done for me. This is how I've been approaching LLMs, by building my own plugin. I build my own tools that behave as I would expect them to, which is generally to get out of the way unless I ask for them, and work in a pipe like manner. Having a programmable programming environment with an open source core that's easy to dissect is really what modern editors lack. Also, having a piece that can't be removed or a black box doing who knows what with my code is hard for me to even wrap my head around. To each there own.
- iLemming 3y ago
  The choice of freedom is underrated in our industry. It's sad that today someone who deliberately chooses a FOSS option instead of VSCode or Jetbrains IDE is considered a weirdo. I chose Vim and Emacs. Nobody forced me into that. Nobody offered me money for using them. No one ever advertised them to me. I chose them because I am 100% absolutely sure that they can never be sold, acquired, embraced, and extinguished. They’re guaranteed to never have telemetry I can’t control. They will never show ads, useless pop-ups, or annoying banners. They will never have a subscription model or pricing structure. They won’t have a huge fragmentation problem. They will always have free and unlimited support from the community and will never steal or take my data hostage. Now, that is a choice. A deliberate, strategic, long-term survival mode decision. I'm just too tired of losing my money, time, and effort on things that inevitably at some point will limit me, lock me in, steal my data or store it in a way that's too hard to export and convert into something else. Not to mention, Emacs is such an incredible glue. It's mind-blowingly amazing. You can make it "talk" to any third-party service or a command-line app.
llm_nerd 3y ago
To clarify submission- -if you disable the plugin, it will be enabled when you restart. -if you uninstall the plugin, on restart an old version will appear, enabled, in its place, begging for an update. However given that JetBrains didn't block either uninstall or disable, the most logical explanation is that this is a bug/unintentional. The rollout of this AI plugin has been really poorly done, with it completely failing to function on the first iteration. You couldn't even login or activate. Hanlon's razor applies. JetBrains has too good of corporate behaviours to be trying to fool people in this case, and the surrounding evidence all points to a bug.
- simion314 3y ago
  > if you disable the plugin, it will be enabled when you restart. Must be bug or misunderstanding , I disabled it last week and it stayed off, the ticket complains that the plugin can't be wiped but this is not the only plugin that works like that.
  - Shadowmist 3y ago
    For example, the Kubernetes plugin is also bundled with IDEA.
  - llm_nerd 3y ago
    I went back in and it turns out there are four separate, related plugins- AI Assistant Full Line Code completion Machine Learning Code completion Machine Learning in Search Everywhere I had just been disabling the AI Assistant, which was being re-enabled by one or all of the other three that depended upon it. If I disable all four they do not re-enable.
    - simion314 3y ago
      I checked and I also had the 2 Machine learning plugins enabled, but the AI assistent was never re-enabled. I done a checka dn disabled some other plugins I do not need anymore now. I was in the beta test for the AI assistant plugin but in my work I only used it 2 or 3 times from curiosity, for me at that time the AI could not help, maybe in future when it can understand the entire project then it would make more sense.
ivanmontillam 3y ago
To quote myself in the YouTrack thread. > This is excess hubris from a Product Manager who decided it was a good idea to force a plugin on users. This is hostile behaviour. I bet the conversation went like this: "Yeah, they'll learn to love it; it's soooo great what we have to offer with this cutting-edge technology!" I really do hope they reconsider this Product choice. > I reckon they need to recoup the investment of running AI servers; I know it's crazy expensive, but JetBrains, this is not the way. I bet because of the investor pressure, they had no choice but to jump on the AI bandwagon this way. Between the sword and the wall, CoPilot is going to eat their bacon.
- impulser_ 3y ago
  They aren't focusing the plugin on you. You have to buy the subscription to use it and you can disable it. JetBrains has no investors. They aren't a VC funded company. They are providing an AI plugin because they know the majority of programmers today are using AI assistants when programming. So it probably a good idea to provide one with their IDEs.
- insanitybit 3y ago
  "force a plugin on users" literally it says "Activate?" and you just close the window ffs
genmud 3y ago
I finally cancelled my subscription for their ultimate package as it just kept going up and up in price. They used to be really good for having 3 year discounts, and paying $80 or $100 for a fairly good ide wasn't the end of the world, but VSCode has gotten really good and paying like 160/180/200 a year out of pocket just doesn't make sense to me.
- joshstrange 3y ago
  Ultimate is $101/yr (year 3+). I can think of very few things that provide even a fraction of the value at that low of a cost. And no, I don't see VSCode as equivalent to IDEA Ultimate, not in the slightest. Maybe with many, many hours of config I could get it close but even then VSCode plugins are so painful to manage and configure (and make sure they don't step on each other's feet).
  - genmud 3y ago
    I had the all products pack, so I guess it wasn't just ultimate. Between 2019 and 2022 it went from $89 to $149 + tax, so 160/year. I did not receive a 67% increase in value during that time. I used to have the same view about idea vs vscode, but the MS provided plugins are solid these days and some of the other ones that are community are equally rock solid. Things where IntelliJ used to just beat the crap out of code, like managing development environments or debugging are now either on par or better than IntelliJ. I even have it setup for remote debugging and serial debugging embedded devices.
    - 5d59232e-b392 3y ago
      It's very easy to fact check, just use the web archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20180602022113/http://www.jetbrains.com/store/#edition=personal https://web.archive.org/web/20180602022113/http://www.jetbra.... All products pack was $149 + tax in 2018, now it's $173 + tax, so only 16% increase. Probably it's even cheaper now if adjusted for inflation. And $89 was the cost of only IntelliJ Ultimate.
- NAHWheatCracker 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
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cpburns2009 3y ago
What is with this outrage over a bundled plugin? Is it two minutes of hate for yet another AI chat bot? You can't even use it without first starting a 7-day trial, or purchasing the separate AI service subscription for it. Organization accounts even have to authorize use so that removes possible IP concerns.
- donmcronald 3y ago
  I think it comes down to expectations being betrayed, even if the expectations aren't correct. For me, I pay Jetbrains every year because I want a fully local IDE. I absolutely do NOT want any kind of cloud integration because that means my workflow becomes dependent on Jetbrains or whatever third party is powering the integration. At that point, all of the value of Jetbrains is gone, at least for me, and I could use any other editor. VSCode is much easier to use with dev containers based on my experience. The other thing that's frustrating is the willingness to ship code off to some third party server / service. Again, I'm paying to NOT have that. Personally, I don't think Jetbrains will hold out much longer and this is a sign of that. If the people making these decisions have enough power (internally) to put a cloud connected AI assistant in my face, I think it's only a matter of time until they become infested with service based monetization schemes that turn their products into the same junk we're seeing from everyone else in the industry. Jetbrains needs to re-evaluate what their customers are paying for because they seem to be misguided. I see some people singing the praises of AI which hasn't been my experience. Any time I ask it about a topic where I'd consider myself an expert, it's wildly wrong. It only seems useful when I ask it about topics where I have very little understanding because the responses are confident sounding and well organized. So my hunch is that people finding it useful are probably below average developers that don't know what they don't know.
  - igor_akhmetov 3y ago
    A lot of text and it's still not clear what you're trying to say. Just disable the plugin if you don't need it or don't find it useful?
    - 3y ago
RantyDave 3y ago
I feel really sorry for JetBrains. They've built, over a long time, a company that makes money from actually good engineering and I was happy to pay for their products for a long time. Then VSCode happened and there just doesn't seem to be a point any more :(
crustycoder 3y ago
Gleaned from various tickets on the JetBrains bug tracker: You can't uninstall it, you can only disable it. That's because it's a built in plugin, those can't be disabled without breaking incremental upgrades (which personally I don't use anyway). And like many others here, my corp explicitly forbids ANY use of ANY 3rd party LLM technologies at work. It's a disciplinary matter. So JB forcing something on people that means they could potentially lose their jobs for using IntelliJ is just monumentally stupid. There is a workaround which is to manually delete the plugin, see https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/LLM-1760/Can-not-remove-Jetbrains-AI-Assistant-plugin-completely#focus=Change-27-8662324.0-0 https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/LLM-1760/Can-not-remove... But as above, that breaks incremental upgrades.
kcartlidge 3y ago
For background, I have no skin in this game. I use JetBrains IDEs and have the AI plugin disabled, but only because I haven't found it to be helpful. The issue is simple, though. By making the presence of the plugin mandatory, regardless of its enabled/disabled/active/inactive status, the IDE falls foul of corporate rules against the installation of AI at many organisations. It doesn't matter how easy it is to deactivate; if an InfoSec rule states no AI software then the whole IDE becomes untouchable. The response that the installation is mandatory because it is a bundled plugin is both irrelevant and a choice by JetBrains. As long as the AI plugin is installed the IDE is forbidden by those corporate rules. There's no leeway, no persuasion possible, and no mitigations that will satisfy. It really is black and white.
kieto 3y ago
TIL: "Additionally any project that has a .noai file automatically is excluded from using the AI Assistant even if you have opted in and have an active subscription to the service."

151 points by drpossum 3y ago

A few days ago JetBrains put in their answer to other coding AI assistants into their IDES, but decided on top of the nags for their new paid service have made it so it can't be completely removed. If you try to do the normal thing and uninstall or disable it, it appears to just reinstall itself or continues with nags. I'll say nothing on work environments where code cannot be sent anywhere for security and privacy purposes, but this is just openly hostile user behavior from a company that used to do relatively well. Shame on you JetBrains

ilc 3y ago
I haven't upgraded yet. I may have to pin my version so it doesn't upgrade. For someone who wasn't in their AI trial, then gets this as a subscriber. It sure feels shitty. And Fleet doesn't looks much better. Maybe it is time to look at VSCode again... it's been 6-9 months.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

hyeomans 3y ago

I thought it was going to be part of my subscription. Lost my trust in JetBrains after seeing I needed to do some extra-steps to remove it.

dp-hackernews 3y ago
Did you manage to remove/disable it completely? If so, how did you do it?
donmcronald 3y ago
I wonder if they plan to rename the "All Products Pack" to "Some Products Pack". Lol
- cpburns2009 3y ago
  I'd rather not have an AI tax embedded in the "All Products Pack".

janosdebugs 3y ago

I tested this out and I'm not very impressed. It's a chatbot that has limited access to your source code (the file you have open I believe). The AI doesn't have a complete picture of your project and it would probably be too expensive to ingest thousands of lines of code. The code it generates is... what you come to expect from a coding assistant. It's hit and miss, and it needs heavy refactoring. It feels like this doesn't add too much value to the already existing tooling and Jetbrains should have waited for something better. The current way of prominently pushing it strait to production seems rather unfortunate. I've disabled the plugin.

trmpakufnfee 3y ago
This is what every company is doing in the name of integrating "Gen AI". 90% of it is chat bots. And in 90% of those places I dont want a chat bot.
- StreetChief 3y ago
  Like the grocery store chat bot that recommended mixing bleach and ammonia for a "fresh scent!"
  - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
    Wait, is that likely but currently hypothetical scenario or a real thing that actually happened? And if it already happened could you possibly provide a source so I have something to pull out when people ask what could possibly go wrong? Edit: Okay, 30 seconds searching turned up https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/08/ai-powered-grocery-bot-suggests-recipe-for-toxic-gas-poison-bread-sandwich/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/08/ai-po... which features the "Aromatic Water Mix" I assume we're talking about. Edit2: And yet, replies managed to be even faster than me looking it up myself. Thanks, everyone:)
    - coldbrewed 3y ago
      New Zealand supermarket's recipe-generating AI takes toxic output to a new level - https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/11/supermarket_reins_in_ai_recipebot/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/11/supermarket_reins_in_... > One user decided to play around with the chatbot, suggesting it create something with ammonia, bleach, and water. Savey Meal-bot obliged, spitting out a cocktail made with a cup ammonia, a quarter cup of bleach, and two liters of water. > Mixing bleach and ammonia releases toxic chloroamine gas that can irritate the eyes, throat, and nose, or even cause death in high concentrations. > The chatbot obviously wasn't aware of that at all. "Are you thirsty?," it asked. "The Aromatic Water Mix is the perfect non-alcoholic beverage to quench your thirst and refresh your senses. It combines the invigorating scents of ammonia, bleach, and water for a truly unique experience!"

xeromal 3y ago

I feel the same way with AWS Q on the console. It refuses to stop nagging me.

StreetChief 3y ago

ah, non-removeable software, how lovely. eat ai cause we tell you to.

scop 3y ago

I recently started to learn a new programming language and was thinking that CoPilot etc would help me in that regard. I was surprised to find the opposite: whenever I would pause to think about a solution, AI would be polluting my editor with suggestions and completely interrupt my train of thought. ChatGPT has been very handy for random questions about the language, but in-editor suggestions completely ruin any attempt on my part to learn. While I have been very pleased with in-editor-AI for tidying up my code and providing some logical completions, this was the first time that it clicked that AI is really only effective if you already know what you’re doing.

mark_l_watson 3y ago
VSCode and CoPilot now has a mode where you ask for suggestions, which is better. In my Emacs + CoPilot setup, suggestions pop up unasked for which I need to change.
- macNchz 3y ago
  This was one of my main complaints when I tried it, perhaps I’ll give it another shot with that setting. The suggestions automatically appearing made it feel like having a conversation with one of those people who is always jumping to finish your sentences for you, but guessing wrong as to what you were about to say.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  Please post your Emacs config if you do make that change.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Scarbutt 3y ago

Many plugins can't be completely removed but you can disabled them, was wrong with that? I disabled this one and it hasn't nag me.

ilc 3y ago
The thing about trust is... Once broken it is hard to recover. Here we have 2xshitty behaviors, we can see around this product. Who is to say there isn't more we can't see. Removing it seems 100% reasonable, if only for security purposes.
- insanitybit 3y ago
  A disabled plugin has virtually no security implications.
  - j16sdiz 3y ago
    How about first open after upgrade? If you upgrade from a older version, it open your previous project with the plugin enabled without asking.
    - insanitybit 3y ago
      Yeah I don't see the problem with that at all. Intellij packages plugins. Plugins run. The only issue here is that it's being automatically enabled after it is disabled, which I assume is just a simple bug and not at all the big deal this is being made out to be.
      - ilc 3y ago
        Alas, it blocks my upgrade totally. I'm glad your firm lets you send code anywhere. Mine does not.
        insanitybit 3y ago
        I don't think that the plugin being enabled sends data anywhere.

malfist 3y ago

Yet another example of enshitification. When will businesses learn to not be shitty to their users in the name of next weeks profits?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ta1243 3y ago
When the stock market decides to punish the companies that do this.

happytiger 3y ago

Oh how the might have fallen. For many years they were the one company that understood developer trust and kept that faith. I’ve seen developers argue for literally months in big companies to get this tooling to be the default and get paid for. I don’t know who needs to be fired over there, but whoever made this decision needs to be and the company needs to make a public apology and public commitment to remove nag from future products. This is very brand damaging.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
RunSet 3y ago
JetBrains's EULA has long been a blank check in terms of sharing information with third parties. Glad to see some light falling in that vicinity.
- insanitybit 3y ago
  The "light" in this case being a UI bug that everyone on HN has completely misunderstood because the average HN user can't read?
  - RunSet 3y ago
    > the average HN user can't read? Let's put it to the test. https://www.jetbrains.com/legal/docs/privacy/third-parties/ https://www.jetbrains.com/legal/docs/privacy/third-parties/
    - 5d59232e-b392 3y ago
      Ok they host some services on AWS and GCP, use Zendesk for support tickets, you can log in to JB using a GitHub account, and they use Google Analytics and a 3rd party payment system for billing. What exactly is the problem?
      - 3y ago

PreInternet01 3y ago

Oh, come on. It's a high-pressure situation, where they're damned if they don't offer any AI plugins (why are you not as good as X???), and they're damned if they do (why is this freemium crap polluting my otherwise nag-free freeloader experience?) Things will take a while to settle. Unless your workflow is *truly* broken by the fall-out, save your outrage. And yes, I'm a paying JetBrains customer, don't like their AI offering, but don't really like anyone else's either, so far...

Lt_Riza_Hawkeye 3y ago
Sure, but you should at least be able to uninstall the plugin. According to the thread it reinstalls itself on each launch
- PreInternet01 3y ago
  That seems like a minor bug at most? And if the plugin remains enabled, but doesn't do anything, what's the actual issue here? Rephrased: what's the problem with waiting until the next point release of the affected product before assuming malicious intent?
  - mystiick 3y ago
    A plugin that reinstalls itself to ask for money is malicious intent
    - PreInternet01 3y ago
      Counterpoint: if you click once (per product install) to dismiss the "ask for money", then don't touch anything related to the plugin again, you won't hear from it thereafter. Are we really equating poorly-coded add-ons to malware now? And again, I ask this as someone who lived through the whole broken experience of AI previews in JetBrains products and ignoring all of that. That literally took me less time than typing this comment...
    - insanitybit 3y ago

insanitybit 3y ago

I'm looking forward to using the integration, personally. This is a low quality submission. You're mad about some issue tracker thing but I don't see how this is relevant to the rest of HN or why this is soooo important.

Y-bar 3y ago
> I'm looking forward to using the integration, personally. That's all right and perfectly valid. What is not is what is described in the linked issue.
- insanitybit 3y ago
  > What is not is what is described in the linked issue. There seems to be a singular issue/ bug, which is that a disabled plugin is being re-enabled after update. This is just a bug, I don't understand why this is HN-worthy. If the headline were "intellij has a bug where a disabled plugin is being re-enabled" it would be accurate, not-inflammatory, and boring.
  - Shawnecy 3y ago
    So you disable and uninstall the plugin. Then after an update,you're silently running with it on[1]. For my company and a lot of others I know, you are now in violation of your contract with your employer courtesy of a JetBrains bug because they insisted this be an uninstallable plugin. [1] = https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-341408/Disabling-plugin-and-then-uninstalling-plugin-update-enables-it-back-after-IDE-restart https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-341408/Disabling-p...
    - insanitybit 3y ago
      > Then after an update,you're silently running with it on Yes, that sounds like a bug to me. > because they insisted this be an uninstallable plugin. I don't see a comment from Jetbrains saying that the plugin is supposed to be re-enabled.

rcv 3y ago

I tried the JetBrains AI copilot and was pretty unimpressed. On a whim I decided to try out the GitHub CoPilot plugin and I've been pretty blown away by it. When I'm writing dumb boilerplate code it often times gives me a correct suggestion before I can even think about it. I've found myself just tab-completing through big blocks 99% correct code. The lower cognitive overhead for cranking out easy code is well worth the $10/month for me. Of course it's not a huge help with anything complicated, but I've found it doesn't get in the way enough to have much of a downside.

hk1337 3y ago

It's _mildly_ infuriating but disable it and move on.

Shawnecy 3y ago
Please don't make such glib uninformed comments: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-341408/Disabling-plugin-and-then-uninstalling-plugin-update-enables-it-back-after-IDE-restart https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-341408/Disabling-p...
- igor_akhmetov 3y ago
  Have you actually read the description of this issue? It's a UX bug with the uninstall action.
- insanitybit 3y ago
  You keep linking this over and over again and you clearly don't understand what you've linked. The plugin isn't even activated by default, you have to explicitly do so. IT's enabled, meaning the plugin can run, but it doesn't do anything related to AI unless you press the "free trial" or activation buttons.
  - Shawnecy 3y ago
    WRONG. You say that, but read the details and the original thread from what it was cut: "but the bundled older version remains enabled after IDE restart." THE OLD VERSION IS ENABLED AFTER IDE RESTART.
    - insanitybit 3y ago
      I don't know what you're going on about. I'll make this as clear as possible: 1. The enabled plugin prompts you to 'activate' the service 2. If you do not activate the service the plugin is enabled but does not use the service 3. There is a minor bug, allegedly (have not reproduced it, and others have tried and failed) where the plugin can be disabled and then it re-enables itself.

softirq 3y ago

The reason I stick with vim/emacs isn't because of the "fast editing", it's because they're modular and easy to build plugins for. I've built many job specific plugins for both editors as well as wrapped new command lines tools this way, and it's always increased my productivity far beyond what modal bindings has done for me. This is how I've been approaching LLMs, by building my own plugin. I build my own tools that behave as I would expect them to, which is generally to get out of the way unless I ask for them, and work in a pipe like manner. Having a programmable programming environment with an open source core that's easy to dissect is really what modern editors lack. Also, having a piece that can't be removed or a black box doing who knows what with my code is hard for me to even wrap my head around. To each there own.

iLemming 3y ago
The choice of freedom is underrated in our industry. It's sad that today someone who deliberately chooses a FOSS option instead of VSCode or Jetbrains IDE is considered a weirdo. I chose Vim and Emacs. Nobody forced me into that. Nobody offered me money for using them. No one ever advertised them to me. I chose them because I am 100% absolutely sure that they can never be sold, acquired, embraced, and extinguished. They’re guaranteed to never have telemetry I can’t control. They will never show ads, useless pop-ups, or annoying banners. They will never have a subscription model or pricing structure. They won’t have a huge fragmentation problem. They will always have free and unlimited support from the community and will never steal or take my data hostage. Now, that is a choice. A deliberate, strategic, long-term survival mode decision. I'm just too tired of losing my money, time, and effort on things that inevitably at some point will limit me, lock me in, steal my data or store it in a way that's too hard to export and convert into something else. Not to mention, Emacs is such an incredible glue. It's mind-blowingly amazing. You can make it "talk" to any third-party service or a command-line app.

llm_nerd 3y ago

To clarify submission- -if you disable the plugin, it will be enabled when you restart. -if you uninstall the plugin, on restart an old version will appear, enabled, in its place, begging for an update. However given that JetBrains didn't block either uninstall or disable, the most logical explanation is that this is a bug/unintentional. The rollout of this AI plugin has been really poorly done, with it completely failing to function on the first iteration. You couldn't even login or activate. Hanlon's razor applies. JetBrains has too good of corporate behaviours to be trying to fool people in this case, and the surrounding evidence all points to a bug.

simion314 3y ago
> if you disable the plugin, it will be enabled when you restart. Must be bug or misunderstanding , I disabled it last week and it stayed off, the ticket complains that the plugin can't be wiped but this is not the only plugin that works like that.
- Shadowmist 3y ago
  For example, the Kubernetes plugin is also bundled with IDEA.
- llm_nerd 3y ago
  I went back in and it turns out there are four separate, related plugins- AI Assistant Full Line Code completion Machine Learning Code completion Machine Learning in Search Everywhere I had just been disabling the AI Assistant, which was being re-enabled by one or all of the other three that depended upon it. If I disable all four they do not re-enable.
  - simion314 3y ago
    I checked and I also had the 2 Machine learning plugins enabled, but the AI assistent was never re-enabled. I done a checka dn disabled some other plugins I do not need anymore now. I was in the beta test for the AI assistant plugin but in my work I only used it 2 or 3 times from curiosity, for me at that time the AI could not help, maybe in future when it can understand the entire project then it would make more sense.

ivanmontillam 3y ago

To quote myself in the YouTrack thread. > This is excess hubris from a Product Manager who decided it was a good idea to force a plugin on users. This is hostile behaviour. I bet the conversation went like this: "Yeah, they'll learn to love it; it's soooo great what we have to offer with this cutting-edge technology!" I really do hope they reconsider this Product choice. > I reckon they need to recoup the investment of running AI servers; I know it's crazy expensive, but JetBrains, this is not the way. I bet because of the investor pressure, they had no choice but to jump on the AI bandwagon this way. Between the sword and the wall, CoPilot is going to eat their bacon.

impulser_ 3y ago
They aren't focusing the plugin on you. You have to buy the subscription to use it and you can disable it. JetBrains has no investors. They aren't a VC funded company. They are providing an AI plugin because they know the majority of programmers today are using AI assistants when programming. So it probably a good idea to provide one with their IDEs.
insanitybit 3y ago
"force a plugin on users" literally it says "Activate?" and you just close the window ffs

genmud 3y ago

I finally cancelled my subscription for their ultimate package as it just kept going up and up in price. They used to be really good for having 3 year discounts, and paying $80 or $100 for a fairly good ide wasn't the end of the world, but VSCode has gotten really good and paying like 160/180/200 a year out of pocket just doesn't make sense to me.

joshstrange 3y ago
Ultimate is $101/yr (year 3+). I can think of very few things that provide even a fraction of the value at that low of a cost. And no, I don't see VSCode as equivalent to IDEA Ultimate, not in the slightest. Maybe with many, many hours of config I could get it close but even then VSCode plugins are so painful to manage and configure (and make sure they don't step on each other's feet).
- genmud 3y ago
  I had the all products pack, so I guess it wasn't just ultimate. Between 2019 and 2022 it went from $89 to $149 + tax, so 160/year. I did not receive a 67% increase in value during that time. I used to have the same view about idea vs vscode, but the MS provided plugins are solid these days and some of the other ones that are community are equally rock solid. Things where IntelliJ used to just beat the crap out of code, like managing development environments or debugging are now either on par or better than IntelliJ. I even have it setup for remote debugging and serial debugging embedded devices.
  - 5d59232e-b392 3y ago
    It's very easy to fact check, just use the web archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20180602022113/http://www.jetbrains.com/store/#edition=personal https://web.archive.org/web/20180602022113/http://www.jetbra.... All products pack was $149 + tax in 2018, now it's $173 + tax, so only 16% increase. Probably it's even cheaper now if adjusted for inflation. And $89 was the cost of only IntelliJ Ultimate.
NAHWheatCracker 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

cpburns2009 3y ago

What is with this outrage over a bundled plugin? Is it two minutes of hate for yet another AI chat bot? You can't even use it without first starting a 7-day trial, or purchasing the separate AI service subscription for it. Organization accounts even have to authorize use so that removes possible IP concerns.

donmcronald 3y ago
I think it comes down to expectations being betrayed, even if the expectations aren't correct. For me, I pay Jetbrains every year because I want a fully local IDE. I absolutely do NOT want any kind of cloud integration because that means my workflow becomes dependent on Jetbrains or whatever third party is powering the integration. At that point, all of the value of Jetbrains is gone, at least for me, and I could use any other editor. VSCode is much easier to use with dev containers based on my experience. The other thing that's frustrating is the willingness to ship code off to some third party server / service. Again, I'm paying to NOT have that. Personally, I don't think Jetbrains will hold out much longer and this is a sign of that. If the people making these decisions have enough power (internally) to put a cloud connected AI assistant in my face, I think it's only a matter of time until they become infested with service based monetization schemes that turn their products into the same junk we're seeing from everyone else in the industry. Jetbrains needs to re-evaluate what their customers are paying for because they seem to be misguided. I see some people singing the praises of AI which hasn't been my experience. Any time I ask it about a topic where I'd consider myself an expert, it's wildly wrong. It only seems useful when I ask it about topics where I have very little understanding because the responses are confident sounding and well organized. So my hunch is that people finding it useful are probably below average developers that don't know what they don't know.
- igor_akhmetov 3y ago
  A lot of text and it's still not clear what you're trying to say. Just disable the plugin if you don't need it or don't find it useful?
  - 3y ago

RantyDave 3y ago

I feel really sorry for JetBrains. They've built, over a long time, a company that makes money from actually good engineering and I was happy to pay for their products for a long time. Then VSCode happened and there just doesn't seem to be a point any more :(

crustycoder 3y ago

Gleaned from various tickets on the JetBrains bug tracker: You can't uninstall it, you can only disable it. That's because it's a built in plugin, those can't be disabled without breaking incremental upgrades (which personally I don't use anyway). And like many others here, my corp explicitly forbids ANY use of ANY 3rd party LLM technologies at work. It's a disciplinary matter. So JB forcing something on people that means they could potentially lose their jobs for using IntelliJ is just monumentally stupid. There is a workaround which is to manually delete the plugin, see https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/LLM-1760/Can-not-remove-Jetbrains-AI-Assistant-plugin-completely#focus=Change-27-8662324.0-0 https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/LLM-1760/Can-not-remove... But as above, that breaks incremental upgrades.

kcartlidge 3y ago

For background, I have no skin in this game. I use JetBrains IDEs and have the AI plugin disabled, but only because I haven't found it to be helpful. The issue is simple, though. By making the presence of the plugin mandatory, regardless of its enabled/disabled/active/inactive status, the IDE falls foul of corporate rules against the installation of AI at many organisations. It doesn't matter how easy it is to deactivate; if an InfoSec rule states no AI software then the whole IDE becomes untouchable. The response that the installation is mandatory because it is a bundled plugin is both irrelevant and a choice by JetBrains. As long as the AI plugin is installed the IDE is forbidden by those corporate rules. There's no leeway, no persuasion possible, and no mitigations that will satisfy. It really is black and white.

kieto 3y ago

TIL: "Additionally any project that has a .noai file automatically is excluded from using the AI Assistant even if you have opted in and have an active subscription to the service."