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Comment by genmud | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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).

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.

It's very easy to fact check, just use the web archive: 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.

My most recent invoice from Jetbrains was $109. In the previous 4 years, it was $96. I have the 40% continuity discount since I first purchased a license in 2015. I have the "IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate" license, FWIW.

I don't see myself switching to another IDE. $109 is a drop in the bucket. I also use VSCode, mostly for non-code text editing. Relearning and configuring keybinds would be enough to keep me on Jetbrains unless they absolutely screw the pooch.

I mentioned in another comment I must have been mistaken, I had the all products pack. I went from $89/year in 2019 to $149/year in 2022 which was a 67% price hike.

I think IDEA Ultimate was $89 back then and the All Products was $149 until last year. Are you sure you had the All Products pack the whole time?

Yep, that's what the invoice says... was $90 since like 2014 or 2015 when I bought it.

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