JetBrains is obviously becoming more like VS Code here so that they aren't edged out of the market. "Copy your competitors". Complaining as if we are paying customers is understandable because UI changes are annoying. However we have to see things from JetBrain's perspective. They're trying to stay alive in a market where their market share is rapidly decreasing being taken by VS Code.
The only thing that I can think of is that vscode is free and “good enough”. The integration for JavaScript and golang seems to be more “natural” in VSCode, somehow.
If you are using the free IntelliJ tools you get a crappy js editor when using the rust or Java specific IDE. Now I need to install another IntelliJ app.
Also I like being able to run vscode with a dev container. It allows new team members to instantly start working on a project and grt most things done.
Looking around me, I see many people who have to work on crappy corporate PCs where management figures VS Code is good enough, and it's free, so why pay for IntelliJ? And since the devs themselves don't seem to complain, they'll just use VS Code.
Rider is also stuck between a free VS Community version and VS Code which some people successfully use with the C# plugin (although I wouldn't use the latter for large code bases).
Remote development extension that makes development from remote machines, VMs, docker containers seem like it's your local machine.
I switched from CLion to VSCode for this, even though CLion is generally a nicer IDE for C++. VSCode is also better for memory usage.
- People don't know better. That is, they literally have no idea what a proper IDE is and what it does. Hence all the "VS Code is as good as IDEA" comments
- It's free. People feel entitled to have even the most complex software apps for free.
VScode being free and comparable feature wise surely is the main challenge.
It doesn't help that VScode is catching up and in many cases surpassing their engine for some languages. Looking at their poor typescript performance and longstanding python type hinting bugs. I've also heard VScode has much better docker dev container support.
I get the it's not necessarily the same resources working the UI and these things but still. If the UI drastically change to be more like VSCode it's just one more reason for me as an existing customer to change.
I am a paying customer because the UI is so much better than vs code. For my daily work vs code actually covers all functionality that I use, but the UI is shit so I use JetBrains. They will loose the customers that are already using it, betting that they will get more new one - a bad bed imo.
That doesn't make any sense. If they start looking like VS Code I would switch to the (free) VS Code as there is no point in paying for (almost) the same experience.
But I am a paying customer! I've been subscribed to the 'all you can eat' option for several years now.
And as a paying customer, I'm not thrilled about the UI change but I'll get used to it.