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JetBrains Fleet drops support for Kotlin Multiplatform

161 points by konradkissener 2y ago

konradkissener 2y ago
I'm happy to see JetBrains focussing on IntelliJ / Android Studio instead. I was really scratching my head when they announced a standalone KMP IDE based on Fleet just 4 months ago. [1] [1] https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2024/10/kotlin-multiplatform-development-roadmap-for-2025/#tooling https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2024/10/kotlin-multiplatfo...
- georgemcbay 2y ago
  Yeah I've been using KMP a lot for a hobby project app the last couple of months, already shipped on Android and iOS and will have a Windows Desktop version out soon as well. As someone who has been incredibly frustrated attempting to use multiplatform frameworks in the past and is used to them causing more problems than they solve, I've been very pleasantly surprised by KMP and Compose Multiplatform. ... but I never once used Fleet, I just do all the coding in Android Studio.
deleted 2y ago
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techwizrd 2y ago
This is definitely surprising given they announced a KMP standalone IDE only a few months ago. For now, Flutter still seems to make more sense than KMP while the KMP world is still maturing.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  I always thought a really good use of KMP would be in writing shared non-visual code, e.g. a library that interacts with your API(s) and any non-visual like that. Then paint a dumbish, platform-specific frontend over the top and link together.
  - seanalltogether 2y ago
    As someone who has to manage native ios and android apps I thought this would be the perfect solution as well. I wanted to write all my data models, api calls, sql cache and business logic as a separate library written with kmp, but what i didn't like was that the ios framework that was generated was a black box with just objc headers. If it generated full swift code that i could inspect for correctness and tweak if needed, I would have jumped on using it right away.
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      That's interesting - I can sort of see it both ways. Would applying unit tests to the exposed functions not have sufficed?
      - andrekandre 2y ago
        not the op, but had similar experience kmp exposes everything as obj-c meaning c headers and not very good type annotations (enums are int only so you cant have full checking on each switch, everything is obj-c reference semantics meaning multi-threading gets tricky, kotlin exceptions are not catchable from swift) so there are a lot of edge cases to write unit tests for (on the client side) which negates a lot point of using kmp, and thats in addition to all of the kotlin-isms that leak out...
        robertlagrant 2y ago
        Ah, right. Yeah, that is surprisingly bad! Why wouldn't they at least generate enums!
        andrekandre 2y ago
        > Why wouldn't they at least generate enums! they do but its going through objective-c which inherits c enums (which are basically integers) so when you use it from swift its like switching over an unbounded set so you always have to handle "default" cases leading to bugs compared to usage from android
- vips7L 2y ago
  Dart is an amazing and underrated language too. It compiles to native assembly, has pattern matching, async/await, and null safety. The only thing it's missing in my opinion is some form of checked errors, currently they only have unchecked exceptions.
  - geodel 2y ago
    > The only thing it's missing I think biggest thing it is missing is any kind of Google commitment on its long term usage.
  - tadfisher 2y ago
    The modern language landscape is backing away from checked exceptions. Funnily enough Kotlin eschewed them as well, converting checked to unchecked exceptions on the JVM.
    - vips7L 2y ago
      The modern language landscape has not backed away from checked errors. Rust is praised for its checked errors, countless posts on this forum praise Result<T> in multiple languages. Swift has checked errors and Kotlin is implementing them via union types in the near future. Checked errors, via results or exceptions have never been the problem. It has always been Java the language that hasn't provided the syntax sugar for handling checked errors effectively. There is no difference between: A doIt() throws B fun doIt(): Result<A, B> It all comes down to what the language lets you do once you encounter that error.
      - billllll 2y ago
        Is Rust praised for its checked errors? I've personally found it extremely verbose since there essentially is no possibility for unchecked errors. Also, external crates like "anyhow" are required if you don't want to account for literally every single possible error case. Really seems like a pedantic's dream but a burden to everyone else. Effective Java recommends checked exceptions only in the case where the caller may recover, but in practice you're usually just propagating the error to the caller in some form, so almost everything just becomes unchecked runtime exceptions.
wiseowise 2y ago
Good riddance. It is almost like the decision to build a "standalone KMP IDE" came from some Reddit thread with 5 upvotes. Android ecosystem is built around Android Studio, in what world millions of devs would suddenly switch from free (subsidized) Android Studio to a paid Fleet developed by a third party (third first third party?) is beyond me.
malkia 2y ago
I've been long user of JetBrains' products - and love them. I even use ReSharper in Visual Studio (which I still consider better IDE, but for Linux / Mac - JetBrains is my choice, and heck, sometimes even Rider/CLion/RustRover/GoLand on Windows too - especcially GoLand). But... but... I've always wanted (and willing to pay) a single IDE with any plugin that works in it - not just so many different versions... I'm a multiple programming language user - mostly C++, but also Python, Go, Rust, C#, etc.
- arwineap 2y ago
  In jetbrains paradigm you should install IDEA and install python plugin, go plugin, etc. You only have to do it once That should get you within 90%+ use cases
  - malkia 2y ago
    I think there was no C++ (ahem native) debugger in IDEA... but I'll check again, could be wrong really...
    - teh64 2y ago
      Sadly not, as Clion is not available as a plugin like almost all other IDEs: https://www.jetbrains.com/products/compare/?product=idea&product=clion https://www.jetbrains.com/products/compare/?product=idea&pro...
      - malkia 2y ago
        Thanks!!! I also saw your other post about C# - maybe one day JetBrains would change their mind! I'm trying latest IDEA (2025.1 EAP) and for the first time a bazel project that I have got parsed successfully (had to enable some old legacy flag though), so there is hope!
        LeFrosch 2y ago
        Did you use the google plugin or the new BSP based one by JetBrains?
hadrien01 2y ago
I still don't understand where Jetbrains is going with Fleet. Is it a platform to prototype ideas for their IDEs? Is their long-term goal to replace their IDEs with Fleet? Is it just a standalone product? So far, it seems like they're very slowly recreating their IDEs from scratch in Fleet while continuing development on the IntelliJ Platform and related IDEs, doing twice as much work for nothing.
- gf000 2y ago
  I believe they are heavily reusing the non-UI part of Intellij and the like, so it's not really 2x the development.
  - vips7L 2y ago
    Yeah I think they're just trying to get out of Swing by developing a new ui, Swing isn't that fun to develop.
    - tadfisher 2y ago
      Unfortunately they started building Fleet before Compose Multiplatform was ready, so now they support three UI technologies. Granted, Fleet uses the same rendering base as Compose (Skiko), but that's got to be a dead end ultimately.
  - ashu1461 2y ago
    Usually Intellij products are slow and fleet does not seem to be slow, so it is feels likely a lot of code was rewritten to make it fast.
    - sfn42 2y ago
      I don't think they're slow at all. Takes a while to index when opening a new project, then everything is snappy. My main reason for using JB is I loathe the shitty build your own ide experience of VSC. Everything is more difficult, whereas in JB everything just works.
    - 2y ago
codingwagie 2y ago
Personal opinion is that JetBrains products have gone down hill the last few years. Tons of memory leaks and performance issues. They are also way behind on the AI front, borderline obsolete in some areas. This is coming from someone who has used jetbrains daily for over a decade
- realityfactchex 2y ago
  What would you suggested instead of JetBrains tools for AI-assisted development? (I don't just want to hear what everyone says; I specifically I want to hear what JetBrains lovers think about this.) I was about to go all in on JetBrains becaue I can't stand VSCode, and about to transition from ChatGPT only to trying out in-IDE integrations... but if there's a better thing to try first... all ears.
  - surrTurr 2y ago
    JetBrains is WAY behind VS-Code and its forks (e.g. Cursor) in terms of AI features. Their own offering, "Jetbrains AI" absolutely SUCKS (just read the reviews, you'll see why). Third-party AI plugins are pretty basic. Most just offer inline completions and a chat sidebar. For example, GitHub Copilot for Intellij is a shell of itself: No agent capabilities, or even model switching (although that seems to be coming in a future update). Generally speaking, Jetbrains seems to have missed the AI code editor revolution, and are now trying to play catch-up. The problem is that their plugin API seems to offer less capabilities than VS-Code when it comes to implementing advanced AI features (think of cursor like features). This, combined with the fact that Intellij products are closed source and can't simply be forked by someone who requires additional capabilities, makes it hard for third parties to build advanced AI features. PS: I also tested their new "Agent" plugin called Junie (invite only beta). It's really basic (like 30% as good as cursors agent mode), but since it's still in invite only beta this should be taken with a grain of salt.
    - kuschku 2y ago
      > This, combined with the fact that Intellij products are closed source and can't simply be forked by someone who requires additional capabilities https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community is Apache 2.0 Only some of the language plugins are proprietary.
toprerules 2y ago
I'm a Vim user, but I occasionally try JetBrains/VSCode to see what I'm missing out on and RustRover, CLion, Goland etc. are by far the most sluggish pieces of software I've used. I am demonstrably slower on them than using Vim with my fuzzy finder, LSP, and AI integrations. I thought Fleet might add the "magic" to something more VSCode like, but I also don't understand the long term vision.
- the__alchemist 2y ago
  Concur. I find that RustRover and PyCharm are outstanding in terms of refactoring, introspection, and treating projects as unified. But they are so slow. Lately, even copy+pasting may take seconds or longer. This and other actions sometimes terminate with an error about being too complex. Can't I have both power, and responsiveness?
- smittywerben 2y ago
  IntelliJ IDEA is their real product. Once you've added a debugger, test runner, and decompiler then you're ready to program Java.
  - sfn42 2y ago
    Pretty sure IntelliJ comes with all those things? That's why I use JB products. I download them, start them up and that's it. I don't need any separate plugins, they just work perfectly out of the box.
    - k4rli 2y ago
      Also probably part of the reason why they're so bloated. IDEA with just a single mid-sized project can and will take 10GB+ memory (simple java+gradle for spring or android). Out of the box it has ~100 plugins installed, most of which are useless for most people. It does work well but it's often too much and uses even more memory than vscodium.
      - sfn42 2y ago
jakebasile 2y ago
> In the past year, we’ve also observed significant advances in terms of approaches to application development, an area that we at JetBrains are also heavily investing in. Just recently, we announced a new coding agent named Junie. That agent must not be very helpful if it causes even the company creating it to be able to support less products.
Apocryphon 2y ago
I am reminded of this comment made only two days ago about the deficiencies of the similar Kotlin Native project: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42989406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42989406
ashu1461 2y ago
I wish Jet brains would give AI features for free for some time, Github co pilot will be incompatible with fleet for some time and even with other legacy jetbrain IDEs like webstorm / pycharm it does not work very well. They always release features for vs code first and then webstorm follows.
- ternaryoperator 2y ago
  CoPilot has been working fairly well for me in GoLand. I don't know if Copilot has the same or more support in Goland than in Webstorm/Pycharm, so, if the latter, my observation might well be disjoint from yours. But so far, it's a moderately capable assistant. My biggest complaints with it have more to do with its responses than its fit with the IDE.
  - ashu1461 2y ago
    Have you tried co pilot with vs code ?
  - FrozenSynapse 2y ago
    Copilot in VS Code has model options, the new agent is available in VSC Insiders that will implement full features and show it's changes in a diff viewer. Jetbrain IDEs don't have the option to change models
    - gkedzierski 2y ago
      And their default model is pretty bad in JS/TS world. (but great in C#) Copilot works great for every language but the plugin integration into JetBrains IDEs is not as deep.
- TiredOfLife 2y ago
  Jetbrains ides have free local only full line completion
- jeroenhd 2y ago
  The CPU-based one-line AI generated code is available without a subscription. I'd love for Jetbrains to make a slightly-upgraded version that runs on the GPU instead, but the single-line suggestions work fine for me. I don't think it makes sense for something as compute intense as cloud LLM code generation to be made available for free. I do wish I'd have the ability to connect IntelliJ to a local LLM instance without having to bother with custom plugins or Ollama, though. They're supposedly working on a locally-hosted LLM integration, but that'll be locked behind a subscription as well.
jockm 2y ago
I just wish they would finaly fix KMP on Linux aarch64. It's been years now
- jockm 2y ago
  Correction I meant Kotlin Native, my bad
koakuma-chan 2y ago
I forgot Fleet existed.
krick 2y ago
Most comments here either praise IDEA-variants as "outstanding", or blame it for being "slow and complicated", both of which feel odd to me (especially the first one). I strongly prefer JetBrains products over anything else, so if it's possible to use PyCharm, I will use PyCharm instead of Vim/VSCode. Yet I cannot imagine calling it outstanding. Maybe, that's just my bad character overall, but I just am surprised why is it that all IDEs/code editors suck so much. About 5 years ago, when LSP appeared (introduced by VSCode IIRC), many people predicted that soon they will far surpass IDEA's (and the likes) autocompletion, etc. And honestly, I believed them. Why wouldn't it? It seems like a simple task, once you have generic LSP functionality, the rest should be "just details", like finding/making good data source for particular language/lib/etc. And all that JetBrains IDEs do, feels to me like a pretty simple stuff. Like all these refactoring options (pretty much the main reason why I prefer their IDEs over simpler editors, it feels like a natural extension of Vim keybindings: why should I do anything as simple as extracting a method manually?), it seems like a thing that should be easily scriptable once you have powerful code-editing API, so I feel annoyed by the fact they are pretty much "hard-coded" into IDE and I cannot easily add a couple of my own simple refactorings. BTW, they didn't really change over the last 5 years or so. Some bugs get fixed, static code analysis gets smarter and more specialized for a current version of some language, but nothing that would feel like real progress. It's hundreds of tiny distinct things, and it seems like that would progress much faster, if all these things were open-source plugins. As people predicted, when LSP came about. Yet apparently it doesn't, because as imperfect PyCharm is, VSCode cannot do even as much. So, basically, what distinguishes IDEA from anything else seem like super simple things, and it seems weird that for it it must compromise to use that clunky, configurable via UI (instead of neat JSON/TOML/whatever), memory-hungry IDE. And it still puzzles me. Of course, if it seems so simple, it's fair to ask why I didn't make my own yet. Well, yes, I didn't even look into it. But I just cannot understand, what's the hard problem that community struggles to solve, why all opensource or semi-opensource editors didn't leave clunky "traditioinal IDEs" far behind yet with regard to these core function, even though it seems those traditional IDEs haven't evolved for years?
- jeroenhd 2y ago
  > I cannot easily add a couple of my own simple refactorings While this isn't as powerful as the full plugin API, there is Edit > Find > Replace Structurally which can be used to write some pretty complex code alterations, and you can save/load templates to reuse them later. IMO Jetbrains IDEs are the best IDEs. That doesn't make them amazing or great or outstanding. They have their bugs, their resource leaks, and sometimes just plain weird design decisions, but they're ahead of the competition by a long shot for many programming languages. Other IDEs can match what Jetbrains has to offer, but you have to install and configure every feature yourself, while the Jetbrains stuff mostly comes with batteries included.
jillesvangurp 2y ago
Fleet was a strategy to counter vs code. As such it did not work that well. It's not feature complete enough to consider as an intellij alternative and a bit too different for vs code users to take serious. So, easy to see why they are pulling the plug on that. Vs Code of course is the wider ecosystem of plugin compatible editors based on the vs codium platform. This includes a lot of the recent AI editors, and several non vs codium based editors that can integrate the plugins (e.g. vi). The core issue is that Fleet is outside of that ecosystem and doesn't have the community or user adoption to get that fixed. It's a chicken egg problem that's hard to fix. It's being pulled two directions. On one hand you have existing intellij users who use that to do most of their development. And on the other hand you have people that are using vs code and depend on a lot of its plugins. Fleet is a bit of an empty room for both groups of users. None of my more serious projects load correctly in fleet. I've tried it a few times and it's just missing too much stuff for me to take it seriously. And I bet VS Code users would be equally unhappy. Fixing that would involve bringing over the majority of features from intellij and vs code, and recreating those in fleet. Which of course wasn't really happening given that it's being positioned as a closed source platform. IMHO keeping Fleet closed source was the mistake that doomed the whole effort from day 1. In short, they were on their own and not really able to pull that off. Google is understandably focusing on supporting intellij, which at least has an open source core. Providing an open source core for intellij in 2009 was the key enabler that allowed them to move from eclipse to intellij. Google embraded it in 2013. Some of the older people here might remember that Android Studio started out on the Eclipse platform. Eclipse support ended in 2015. Open source is what made that transition possible. Which of course raises the question what the whole point of a closed source Fleet was given that users, plugin developers, and major partners like Google are all focus on the open source ecosystem around intellij. And the rest of the ecosystem is vs code based. Answer: there is none. Hence this foregone conclusion.
brap 2y ago
>With Fleet you can collaborate on code in real time Genuine question - Does anyone actually do this? What for? I have been writing code for about 25 years and not once did I wish for someone else to start editing the same files I’m editing in real time. Yet, this seems like a huge selling point for some of these editors.
- solardev 2y ago
  It's helpful for mentoring or pair programming with another person. They can more clearly see the code as you change it, like Google Docs, rather than just watching a screenshare.
  - okr 2y ago
    "Code with me", is still a feature i use in IntelliJ. Never used fleet.
- SkyPuncher 2y ago
  It’s a nice bonus, but it’s certainly not a critical feature. In every instance, I’ve needed this I’ve already been on a Zoom call and can simply ask the other person to push their code.
- nobleach 2y ago
  I've used it a total of 2 times since I first saw the ability in Atom back in 2017. Once was more for the "this seems neat, let's try it" factor. The other was a legitimate, let's troubleshoot an issue while staring at the same massive screen together. It's not a bad feature, it just never stuck with my workflow - I typically hop on a Zoom call now days, someone shares their screen and pair program the old fashioned way (by yelling out stuff like one does when someone else is playing solitaire)
- VPenkov 2y ago
  I've been working for the same company for over 7 years and a lot of the shared code that other developers use is mine. Frequently I would guide other developers to implementing something and in doing so I'd guide them down to what files to open and how to integrate it. I find this process a lot more convenient over Zoom where I can annotate with a pencil. I use that to underline blocks of code. It's a bit like you have a mouse and I have a mouse on the same screen but in a nice way. In a workflow like that I sometimes want to write pseudo code and I would very much welcome a feature like that. Currently JetBrains has a "Code with me" plugin or something similar, but it's a bit laggy and struggles when fast typers meet. And a feature like that is good both when I take my laptop and sit next to you, and when we're on Zoom while talking.
lakomen 2y ago
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rhubarbtree 2y ago
Anyone wondering whether JetBrains IDEs are still worth it - absolute yes from me. VS code is a UX mess by comparison. Webstorm can be tricky to configure with Typescript but once it’s setup my goodness it’s good.
- bayindirh 2y ago
  Unfortunately many new developers don't believe in powerful "power" tools anymore. They like to connect many small tools for an inferior experience and they just scoff at bigger tools for being "too complicated". I use another big tool which is around 20 years old, and that can do everything and a ton more from a single screen at the same speed or faster, with greater integration. Yet people don't touch it because it's old, complex, looks ugly and its UI is too dense. Oh, I forgot, it also includes a learning curve, but the same people devote their lives to "rice" their Vim installations for months.
  - lpapez 2y ago
    In my case it is because I am wary of these tools breaking in a way which cannot be fixed, or services being suddenly revoked for external reasons. Example: now that I'm a solopreneur I use JetBrains DataGrip, and overall I am very pleased with it. But I couldn't have it on my previous two jobs. One of the jobs restricted my work computer to only allow MySQL Workbench (arbitrary Powershell scripts also were allowed, of course), and the other one didn't want to pay for a licence, no matter how much I pleaded. So before I had to make due with (admittedly) inferior tools because they were free and available as the lowest common denominator in the general workplace. Being comfortable with the tools affects a large part of my productivity, and I'm more productive with a crappy-but-familiar toolbox than I am with the unknown spaceship.
    - bayindirh 2y ago
      All of the tools I use are free software and actively maintained and updated, plus they have very nice logging, so I can diagnose what's happening. I only needed to read the logs because I was young and experimenting with the parts I shouldn't and broke the thing on purpose. However, you can just create a copy of the installation directory to back it up completely. Again, the tool I gave as an example has integrated configuration snapshots, and if something breaks I can revert to a config 2 seconds or 2 years before, including component versions installed at that time. To be honest, I probably used that feature at most two times in the last 20 years. Workplace restrictions something off-limits and I can't tell anything about. The people I gave examples are persons I know and they have no such restrictions in place.
andyjohnson0 2y ago
Actual title is "Kotlin Multiplatform Tooling – Shifting Gears".
- konradkissener 2y ago
  Yes, sorry for editorializing. Did it on purpose though because the original title really was burying the lede.
Decabytes 2y ago
I personally find value in having two editors. A light editor like Emacs for writing Markdown, git, quick scripts, and a JetBrains IDE for longer running projects, and debugging. I don't feel the need to wholly replace one with the other
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  Same here. I use SublimeText, or more recently, Zed, for quick-and-dirty stuff.
- John23832 2y ago
  Same. I basically run a Cursor/RustRover combo. I think the RR tooling is second to none.
- cwales95 2y ago
  I’m similar but have three main editors: Vim for super quick changes (I’d like to increase my proficiency with vim but not really done much to do so). Vscode for light text editing : coding which doesn’t require me to dig in to debug for a major length of time. Jetbrains IDE for real work / tinkering were I may need to debug / leverage breakpoints / have good autocomplete.
nvarsj 2y ago
After decades using Emacs and Idea, I have post traumatic configuration syndrome. So now I use VSCode and lazyvim/neovim. Which I can install anywhere in about 5 minutes and have a fully working environment with 0 effort and 1 breakage a year. It's great.
sjduk 2y ago
[dead]

I'm happy to see JetBrains focussing on IntelliJ / Android Studio instead. I was really scratching my head when they announced a standalone KMP IDE based on Fleet just 4 months ago. [1] [1] https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2024/10/kotlin-multiplatform-development-roadmap-for-2025/#tooling https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2024/10/kotlin-multiplatfo...

georgemcbay 2y ago
Yeah I've been using KMP a lot for a hobby project app the last couple of months, already shipped on Android and iOS and will have a Windows Desktop version out soon as well. As someone who has been incredibly frustrated attempting to use multiplatform frameworks in the past and is used to them causing more problems than they solve, I've been very pleasantly surprised by KMP and Compose Multiplatform. ... but I never once used Fleet, I just do all the coding in Android Studio.

deleted 2y ago

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techwizrd 2y ago

This is definitely surprising given they announced a KMP standalone IDE only a few months ago. For now, Flutter still seems to make more sense than KMP while the KMP world is still maturing.

robertlagrant 2y ago
I always thought a really good use of KMP would be in writing shared non-visual code, e.g. a library that interacts with your API(s) and any non-visual like that. Then paint a dumbish, platform-specific frontend over the top and link together.
- seanalltogether 2y ago
  As someone who has to manage native ios and android apps I thought this would be the perfect solution as well. I wanted to write all my data models, api calls, sql cache and business logic as a separate library written with kmp, but what i didn't like was that the ios framework that was generated was a black box with just objc headers. If it generated full swift code that i could inspect for correctness and tweak if needed, I would have jumped on using it right away.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    That's interesting - I can sort of see it both ways. Would applying unit tests to the exposed functions not have sufficed?
    - andrekandre 2y ago
      not the op, but had similar experience kmp exposes everything as obj-c meaning c headers and not very good type annotations (enums are int only so you cant have full checking on each switch, everything is obj-c reference semantics meaning multi-threading gets tricky, kotlin exceptions are not catchable from swift) so there are a lot of edge cases to write unit tests for (on the client side) which negates a lot point of using kmp, and thats in addition to all of the kotlin-isms that leak out...
      - robertlagrant 2y ago
        Ah, right. Yeah, that is surprisingly bad! Why wouldn't they at least generate enums!
        andrekandre 2y ago
        > Why wouldn't they at least generate enums! they do but its going through objective-c which inherits c enums (which are basically integers) so when you use it from swift its like switching over an unbounded set so you always have to handle "default" cases leading to bugs compared to usage from android
vips7L 2y ago
Dart is an amazing and underrated language too. It compiles to native assembly, has pattern matching, async/await, and null safety. The only thing it's missing in my opinion is some form of checked errors, currently they only have unchecked exceptions.
- geodel 2y ago
  > The only thing it's missing I think biggest thing it is missing is any kind of Google commitment on its long term usage.
- tadfisher 2y ago
  The modern language landscape is backing away from checked exceptions. Funnily enough Kotlin eschewed them as well, converting checked to unchecked exceptions on the JVM.
  - vips7L 2y ago
    The modern language landscape has not backed away from checked errors. Rust is praised for its checked errors, countless posts on this forum praise Result<T> in multiple languages. Swift has checked errors and Kotlin is implementing them via union types in the near future. Checked errors, via results or exceptions have never been the problem. It has always been Java the language that hasn't provided the syntax sugar for handling checked errors effectively. There is no difference between: A doIt() throws B fun doIt(): Result<A, B> It all comes down to what the language lets you do once you encounter that error.
    - billllll 2y ago
      Is Rust praised for its checked errors? I've personally found it extremely verbose since there essentially is no possibility for unchecked errors. Also, external crates like "anyhow" are required if you don't want to account for literally every single possible error case. Really seems like a pedantic's dream but a burden to everyone else. Effective Java recommends checked exceptions only in the case where the caller may recover, but in practice you're usually just propagating the error to the caller in some form, so almost everything just becomes unchecked runtime exceptions.

wiseowise 2y ago

Good riddance. It is almost like the decision to build a "standalone KMP IDE" came from some Reddit thread with 5 upvotes. Android ecosystem is built around Android Studio, in what world millions of devs would suddenly switch from free (subsidized) Android Studio to a paid Fleet developed by a third party (third first third party?) is beyond me.

malkia 2y ago

I've been long user of JetBrains' products - and love them. I even use ReSharper in Visual Studio (which I still consider better IDE, but for Linux / Mac - JetBrains is my choice, and heck, sometimes even Rider/CLion/RustRover/GoLand on Windows too - especcially GoLand). But... but... I've always wanted (and willing to pay) a single IDE with any plugin that works in it - not just so many different versions... I'm a multiple programming language user - mostly C++, but also Python, Go, Rust, C#, etc.

arwineap 2y ago
In jetbrains paradigm you should install IDEA and install python plugin, go plugin, etc. You only have to do it once That should get you within 90%+ use cases
- malkia 2y ago
  I think there was no C++ (ahem native) debugger in IDEA... but I'll check again, could be wrong really...
  - teh64 2y ago
    Sadly not, as Clion is not available as a plugin like almost all other IDEs: https://www.jetbrains.com/products/compare/?product=idea&product=clion https://www.jetbrains.com/products/compare/?product=idea&pro...
    - malkia 2y ago
      Thanks!!! I also saw your other post about C# - maybe one day JetBrains would change their mind! I'm trying latest IDEA (2025.1 EAP) and for the first time a bazel project that I have got parsed successfully (had to enable some old legacy flag though), so there is hope!
      - LeFrosch 2y ago
        Did you use the google plugin or the new BSP based one by JetBrains?

hadrien01 2y ago

I still don't understand where Jetbrains is going with Fleet. Is it a platform to prototype ideas for their IDEs? Is their long-term goal to replace their IDEs with Fleet? Is it just a standalone product? So far, it seems like they're very slowly recreating their IDEs from scratch in Fleet while continuing development on the IntelliJ Platform and related IDEs, doing twice as much work for nothing.

gf000 2y ago
I believe they are heavily reusing the non-UI part of Intellij and the like, so it's not really 2x the development.
- vips7L 2y ago
  Yeah I think they're just trying to get out of Swing by developing a new ui, Swing isn't that fun to develop.
  - tadfisher 2y ago
    Unfortunately they started building Fleet before Compose Multiplatform was ready, so now they support three UI technologies. Granted, Fleet uses the same rendering base as Compose (Skiko), but that's got to be a dead end ultimately.
- ashu1461 2y ago
  Usually Intellij products are slow and fleet does not seem to be slow, so it is feels likely a lot of code was rewritten to make it fast.
  - sfn42 2y ago
    I don't think they're slow at all. Takes a while to index when opening a new project, then everything is snappy. My main reason for using JB is I loathe the shitty build your own ide experience of VSC. Everything is more difficult, whereas in JB everything just works.
  - 2y ago

codingwagie 2y ago

Personal opinion is that JetBrains products have gone down hill the last few years. Tons of memory leaks and performance issues. They are also way behind on the AI front, borderline obsolete in some areas. This is coming from someone who has used jetbrains daily for over a decade

realityfactchex 2y ago
What would you suggested instead of JetBrains tools for AI-assisted development? (I don't just want to hear what everyone says; I specifically I want to hear what JetBrains lovers think about this.) I was about to go all in on JetBrains becaue I can't stand VSCode, and about to transition from ChatGPT only to trying out in-IDE integrations... but if there's a better thing to try first... all ears.
- surrTurr 2y ago
  JetBrains is WAY behind VS-Code and its forks (e.g. Cursor) in terms of AI features. Their own offering, "Jetbrains AI" absolutely SUCKS (just read the reviews, you'll see why). Third-party AI plugins are pretty basic. Most just offer inline completions and a chat sidebar. For example, GitHub Copilot for Intellij is a shell of itself: No agent capabilities, or even model switching (although that seems to be coming in a future update). Generally speaking, Jetbrains seems to have missed the AI code editor revolution, and are now trying to play catch-up. The problem is that their plugin API seems to offer less capabilities than VS-Code when it comes to implementing advanced AI features (think of cursor like features). This, combined with the fact that Intellij products are closed source and can't simply be forked by someone who requires additional capabilities, makes it hard for third parties to build advanced AI features. PS: I also tested their new "Agent" plugin called Junie (invite only beta). It's really basic (like 30% as good as cursors agent mode), but since it's still in invite only beta this should be taken with a grain of salt.
  - kuschku 2y ago
    > This, combined with the fact that Intellij products are closed source and can't simply be forked by someone who requires additional capabilities https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community is Apache 2.0 Only some of the language plugins are proprietary.

toprerules 2y ago

I'm a Vim user, but I occasionally try JetBrains/VSCode to see what I'm missing out on and RustRover, CLion, Goland etc. are by far the most sluggish pieces of software I've used. I am demonstrably slower on them than using Vim with my fuzzy finder, LSP, and AI integrations. I thought Fleet might add the "magic" to something more VSCode like, but I also don't understand the long term vision.

the__alchemist 2y ago
Concur. I find that RustRover and PyCharm are outstanding in terms of refactoring, introspection, and treating projects as unified. But they are so slow. Lately, even copy+pasting may take seconds or longer. This and other actions sometimes terminate with an error about being too complex. Can't I have both power, and responsiveness?
smittywerben 2y ago
IntelliJ IDEA is their real product. Once you've added a debugger, test runner, and decompiler then you're ready to program Java.
- sfn42 2y ago
  Pretty sure IntelliJ comes with all those things? That's why I use JB products. I download them, start them up and that's it. I don't need any separate plugins, they just work perfectly out of the box.
  - k4rli 2y ago
    Also probably part of the reason why they're so bloated. IDEA with just a single mid-sized project can and will take 10GB+ memory (simple java+gradle for spring or android). Out of the box it has ~100 plugins installed, most of which are useless for most people. It does work well but it's often too much and uses even more memory than vscodium.
    - sfn42 2y ago

jakebasile 2y ago

> In the past year, we’ve also observed significant advances in terms of approaches to application development, an area that we at JetBrains are also heavily investing in. Just recently, we announced a new coding agent named Junie. That agent must not be very helpful if it causes even the company creating it to be able to support less products.

Apocryphon 2y ago

I am reminded of this comment made only two days ago about the deficiencies of the similar Kotlin Native project: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42989406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42989406

ashu1461 2y ago

I wish Jet brains would give AI features for free for some time, Github co pilot will be incompatible with fleet for some time and even with other legacy jetbrain IDEs like webstorm / pycharm it does not work very well. They always release features for vs code first and then webstorm follows.

ternaryoperator 2y ago
CoPilot has been working fairly well for me in GoLand. I don't know if Copilot has the same or more support in Goland than in Webstorm/Pycharm, so, if the latter, my observation might well be disjoint from yours. But so far, it's a moderately capable assistant. My biggest complaints with it have more to do with its responses than its fit with the IDE.
- ashu1461 2y ago
  Have you tried co pilot with vs code ?
- FrozenSynapse 2y ago
  Copilot in VS Code has model options, the new agent is available in VSC Insiders that will implement full features and show it's changes in a diff viewer. Jetbrain IDEs don't have the option to change models
  - gkedzierski 2y ago
    And their default model is pretty bad in JS/TS world. (but great in C#) Copilot works great for every language but the plugin integration into JetBrains IDEs is not as deep.
TiredOfLife 2y ago
Jetbrains ides have free local only full line completion
jeroenhd 2y ago
The CPU-based one-line AI generated code is available without a subscription. I'd love for Jetbrains to make a slightly-upgraded version that runs on the GPU instead, but the single-line suggestions work fine for me. I don't think it makes sense for something as compute intense as cloud LLM code generation to be made available for free. I do wish I'd have the ability to connect IntelliJ to a local LLM instance without having to bother with custom plugins or Ollama, though. They're supposedly working on a locally-hosted LLM integration, but that'll be locked behind a subscription as well.

jockm 2y ago

I just wish they would finaly fix KMP on Linux aarch64. It's been years now

jockm 2y ago
Correction I meant Kotlin Native, my bad

koakuma-chan 2y ago

I forgot Fleet existed.

krick 2y ago

Most comments here either praise IDEA-variants as "outstanding", or blame it for being "slow and complicated", both of which feel odd to me (especially the first one). I strongly prefer JetBrains products over anything else, so if it's possible to use PyCharm, I will use PyCharm instead of Vim/VSCode. Yet I cannot imagine calling it outstanding. Maybe, that's just my bad character overall, but I just am surprised why is it that all IDEs/code editors suck so much. About 5 years ago, when LSP appeared (introduced by VSCode IIRC), many people predicted that soon they will far surpass IDEA's (and the likes) autocompletion, etc. And honestly, I believed them. Why wouldn't it? It seems like a simple task, once you have generic LSP functionality, the rest should be "just details", like finding/making good data source for particular language/lib/etc. And all that JetBrains IDEs do, feels to me like a pretty simple stuff. Like all these refactoring options (pretty much the main reason why I prefer their IDEs over simpler editors, it feels like a natural extension of Vim keybindings: why should I do anything as simple as extracting a method manually?), it seems like a thing that should be easily scriptable once you have powerful code-editing API, so I feel annoyed by the fact they are pretty much "hard-coded" into IDE and I cannot easily add a couple of my own simple refactorings. BTW, they didn't really change over the last 5 years or so. Some bugs get fixed, static code analysis gets smarter and more specialized for a current version of some language, but nothing that would feel like real progress. It's hundreds of tiny distinct things, and it seems like that would progress much faster, if all these things were open-source plugins. As people predicted, when LSP came about. Yet apparently it doesn't, because as imperfect PyCharm is, VSCode cannot do even as much. So, basically, what distinguishes IDEA from anything else seem like super simple things, and it seems weird that for it it must compromise to use that clunky, configurable via UI (instead of neat JSON/TOML/whatever), memory-hungry IDE. And it still puzzles me. Of course, if it seems so simple, it's fair to ask why I didn't make my own yet. Well, yes, I didn't even look into it. But I just cannot understand, what's the hard problem that community struggles to solve, why all opensource or semi-opensource editors didn't leave clunky "traditioinal IDEs" far behind yet with regard to these core function, even though it seems those traditional IDEs haven't evolved for years?

jeroenhd 2y ago
> I cannot easily add a couple of my own simple refactorings While this isn't as powerful as the full plugin API, there is Edit > Find > Replace Structurally which can be used to write some pretty complex code alterations, and you can save/load templates to reuse them later. IMO Jetbrains IDEs are the best IDEs. That doesn't make them amazing or great or outstanding. They have their bugs, their resource leaks, and sometimes just plain weird design decisions, but they're ahead of the competition by a long shot for many programming languages. Other IDEs can match what Jetbrains has to offer, but you have to install and configure every feature yourself, while the Jetbrains stuff mostly comes with batteries included.

jillesvangurp 2y ago

Fleet was a strategy to counter vs code. As such it did not work that well. It's not feature complete enough to consider as an intellij alternative and a bit too different for vs code users to take serious. So, easy to see why they are pulling the plug on that. Vs Code of course is the wider ecosystem of plugin compatible editors based on the vs codium platform. This includes a lot of the recent AI editors, and several non vs codium based editors that can integrate the plugins (e.g. vi). The core issue is that Fleet is outside of that ecosystem and doesn't have the community or user adoption to get that fixed. It's a chicken egg problem that's hard to fix. It's being pulled two directions. On one hand you have existing intellij users who use that to do most of their development. And on the other hand you have people that are using vs code and depend on a lot of its plugins. Fleet is a bit of an empty room for both groups of users. None of my more serious projects load correctly in fleet. I've tried it a few times and it's just missing too much stuff for me to take it seriously. And I bet VS Code users would be equally unhappy. Fixing that would involve bringing over the majority of features from intellij and vs code, and recreating those in fleet. Which of course wasn't really happening given that it's being positioned as a closed source platform. IMHO keeping Fleet closed source was the mistake that doomed the whole effort from day 1. In short, they were on their own and not really able to pull that off. Google is understandably focusing on supporting intellij, which at least has an open source core. Providing an open source core for intellij in 2009 was the key enabler that allowed them to move from eclipse to intellij. Google embraded it in 2013. Some of the older people here might remember that Android Studio started out on the Eclipse platform. Eclipse support ended in 2015. Open source is what made that transition possible. Which of course raises the question what the whole point of a closed source Fleet was given that users, plugin developers, and major partners like Google are all focus on the open source ecosystem around intellij. And the rest of the ecosystem is vs code based. Answer: there is none. Hence this foregone conclusion.

brap 2y ago

>With Fleet you can collaborate on code in real time Genuine question - Does anyone actually do this? What for? I have been writing code for about 25 years and not once did I wish for someone else to start editing the same files I’m editing in real time. Yet, this seems like a huge selling point for some of these editors.

solardev 2y ago
It's helpful for mentoring or pair programming with another person. They can more clearly see the code as you change it, like Google Docs, rather than just watching a screenshare.
- okr 2y ago
  "Code with me", is still a feature i use in IntelliJ. Never used fleet.
SkyPuncher 2y ago
It’s a nice bonus, but it’s certainly not a critical feature. In every instance, I’ve needed this I’ve already been on a Zoom call and can simply ask the other person to push their code.
nobleach 2y ago
I've used it a total of 2 times since I first saw the ability in Atom back in 2017. Once was more for the "this seems neat, let's try it" factor. The other was a legitimate, let's troubleshoot an issue while staring at the same massive screen together. It's not a bad feature, it just never stuck with my workflow - I typically hop on a Zoom call now days, someone shares their screen and pair program the old fashioned way (by yelling out stuff like one does when someone else is playing solitaire)
VPenkov 2y ago
I've been working for the same company for over 7 years and a lot of the shared code that other developers use is mine. Frequently I would guide other developers to implementing something and in doing so I'd guide them down to what files to open and how to integrate it. I find this process a lot more convenient over Zoom where I can annotate with a pencil. I use that to underline blocks of code. It's a bit like you have a mouse and I have a mouse on the same screen but in a nice way. In a workflow like that I sometimes want to write pseudo code and I would very much welcome a feature like that. Currently JetBrains has a "Code with me" plugin or something similar, but it's a bit laggy and struggles when fast typers meet. And a feature like that is good both when I take my laptop and sit next to you, and when we're on Zoom while talking.

lakomen 2y ago

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rhubarbtree 2y ago

Anyone wondering whether JetBrains IDEs are still worth it - absolute yes from me. VS code is a UX mess by comparison. Webstorm can be tricky to configure with Typescript but once it’s setup my goodness it’s good.

bayindirh 2y ago
Unfortunately many new developers don't believe in powerful "power" tools anymore. They like to connect many small tools for an inferior experience and they just scoff at bigger tools for being "too complicated". I use another big tool which is around 20 years old, and that can do everything and a ton more from a single screen at the same speed or faster, with greater integration. Yet people don't touch it because it's old, complex, looks ugly and its UI is too dense. Oh, I forgot, it also includes a learning curve, but the same people devote their lives to "rice" their Vim installations for months.
- lpapez 2y ago
  In my case it is because I am wary of these tools breaking in a way which cannot be fixed, or services being suddenly revoked for external reasons. Example: now that I'm a solopreneur I use JetBrains DataGrip, and overall I am very pleased with it. But I couldn't have it on my previous two jobs. One of the jobs restricted my work computer to only allow MySQL Workbench (arbitrary Powershell scripts also were allowed, of course), and the other one didn't want to pay for a licence, no matter how much I pleaded. So before I had to make due with (admittedly) inferior tools because they were free and available as the lowest common denominator in the general workplace. Being comfortable with the tools affects a large part of my productivity, and I'm more productive with a crappy-but-familiar toolbox than I am with the unknown spaceship.
  - bayindirh 2y ago
    All of the tools I use are free software and actively maintained and updated, plus they have very nice logging, so I can diagnose what's happening. I only needed to read the logs because I was young and experimenting with the parts I shouldn't and broke the thing on purpose. However, you can just create a copy of the installation directory to back it up completely. Again, the tool I gave as an example has integrated configuration snapshots, and if something breaks I can revert to a config 2 seconds or 2 years before, including component versions installed at that time. To be honest, I probably used that feature at most two times in the last 20 years. Workplace restrictions something off-limits and I can't tell anything about. The people I gave examples are persons I know and they have no such restrictions in place.

andyjohnson0 2y ago

Actual title is "Kotlin Multiplatform Tooling – Shifting Gears".

konradkissener 2y ago
Yes, sorry for editorializing. Did it on purpose though because the original title really was burying the lede.

Decabytes 2y ago

I personally find value in having two editors. A light editor like Emacs for writing Markdown, git, quick scripts, and a JetBrains IDE for longer running projects, and debugging. I don't feel the need to wholly replace one with the other

insane_dreamer 2y ago
Same here. I use SublimeText, or more recently, Zed, for quick-and-dirty stuff.
John23832 2y ago
Same. I basically run a Cursor/RustRover combo. I think the RR tooling is second to none.
cwales95 2y ago
I’m similar but have three main editors: Vim for super quick changes (I’d like to increase my proficiency with vim but not really done much to do so). Vscode for light text editing : coding which doesn’t require me to dig in to debug for a major length of time. Jetbrains IDE for real work / tinkering were I may need to debug / leverage breakpoints / have good autocomplete.

nvarsj 2y ago

After decades using Emacs and Idea, I have post traumatic configuration syndrome. So now I use VSCode and lazyvim/neovim. Which I can install anywhere in about 5 minutes and have a fully working environment with 0 effort and 1 breakage a year. It's great.

sjduk 2y ago

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