Hacker News Reader

Comment by wazzaps | Hacker News Reader

FYI all Jetbrains IDEs include this, as long as they are open on the codebase. It's called "Local history".

I love to use the terminal, and I still do. But as much as I love to unfu*k my local nvim setup, I much rather pay a company to do it for me. Set up vim bindings inside jetbrains and everything comes with batteries included, along with a kick-ass debugger. While my colleagues are fighting opencode, I pointed my IDE at the correct MCP gateway and everything "just works" with more context.

Thought I'd share the data point to support jetbrains

On behalf of everyone who dislikes jetbrains business model, I would like to say: duly noted.

What's wrong with their business model? Pay once, get a year of free updates and keep it forever. Runs locally. Want updates? Pay discounted renewal. Seems reasonable. Their AI subscription OTOH needs work. Not worth it yet with how flaky it is.

I paid once in 2012 and now I can't download it anymore. Even if I could, it probably wouldn't work.

Interesting. On https://account.jetbrains.com/licenses/assets I have a "Download" button and "Download a code for offline activation" and "Generate legacy license key" buttons.. I figured I could use one of those if I ever decide to cancel my sub, but I admit I have not tested the theory. It's possible your copy is indeed too old.

Isn't it available here?

https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/download/other/#releases-2012

FWIW, I dont think I use any software (unless it is single, narrow purpose) that is almost 1.5 decades old. Fun fact, docker was released in 2013, so your IDE likely doesn't even support build targets in containers.

But if you have the receipt, email the company and ask for help obtaining an old version. They are very willing to help customers, both current and previous.

I pay $179 per year for ALL their IDEs as an individual--$15 a month. Nothing compares to their C, Go, and rust IDEs. Chaining in rust make for very verbose statements, folding in jetbrains takes care of it. Took me an hour to get similar, yet still lacking, code folding in nvim with ufo. Sure, they aren't perfect. Working multi-language repos requires multiple resources hungry IDEs (but I typically just use nvim unless I am doing something very involved).

If I stop paying, I have the perpetual licence for the version at which I last paid so the "I WaNt tO owN mY SoFTWArE" crowd (which I am a part of) can choose to only pay when their current version starts lacking modern features. That's the reality of anything that you buy.

My experience is the software development landscape evolves so frequently that a yearly refresh of modern convenience features makes it a no brainer for a professional. I love to tinker, but between family and career, if I do happen to have a few hours to code I don't want to spend any of that time debugging my custom IDE. I used to, I respect those that do, but that's just not how I want to spend my time.

Plus, I am very happy to support developers and I encourage others to as well. Esp when the company isn't "branching out to sell user data, advertising."

I think it only keeps history for user edited files, agent edited files don't seem to end up in it for me (Claude code) but maybe it works with other agents with the proper plugins I'm not sure.

+1 OP here, this is the problem I'm solving for. Agents use tools and may be in multiple places editing; therefore, you need to watch the file system.

vscode and its forks as well (for files it saves)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com