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Comment by jmward01 | Hacker News Reader

I had my (somewhat) breakup when they started advertising their code assistant at me. My IDE is my home. You push an advertisement at me and I get mad. I killed my subscription (with 1/2 a year left) and loaded the old version and haven't looked back. I will eventually give it up completely since new python versions aren't supported for debugging but oh well.

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I quit auto-updating Jetbrains products years ago and it turned out to be a great decision for me. So many updates seemed to just shuffle around UI elements that I had memorized or worsen the performance. Now I only update when there's a specific reason to, and I'm not sure there ever will be a compelling reason to upgrade beyond my current versions; there's a good chance I'll do like the OP and find a more performant editor at that point.

I don't want to sound too negative since I do like their products, but it feels like they've fallen into the same trap as a lot of SAAS companies. They have to constantly make "improvements" to justify regular subscription fees. Their products were pretty great a decade ago. Since then they've made a gazillion changes but I can probably count on one hand the number of them that I found truly useful.

Performance issues haven't been as bad for me as the TFA says, but they certainly use a lot of resources, even after I aggressively removed a bunch of default plugins and disabled features I don't use. Performance improvements would be a nice feature, but those changes rarely make the top of the SAAS priority list.

They could improve it by just rewriting it in C++. Since 1998 or so people insist on Java being fast enough, but to this day I've yet to see a decent Java client application.

It is not exactly about programming language, but rather about architecture. It is the legacy of old constructions which requires refactoring.

I had never felt betrayed by JetBrains until that moment.

I still use the Classic PyCharm UI plugin.

Not sure if I'm missing out on much today.. but initially I despised the minimalist interface for the new UI.

Still using the Classic UI plugin, the new UI has horrible contrast and changes things for the sake of change. Also why does every new UI has horrible monochromatic icons where you have to guess what they are?

Engagement, attention, predicting behavior, telemetry, and on and on.

Simplicity gets market share. Once that's built, the UI gets complex for all kinds of reasons.

Dropbox is the best example to date.

I had my breakup with them when I realized that I always install vim keybindings for every editor I use and that Neovim plus plugins gives me the typical workflow I use. It became a no-brainer to lean into the LSP ecosystem (and DAP for debugging) and have the native version of the way I like to edit files.

It also helped that Neovim tends to consume minuscule amounts of resources compared to IntelliJ. I like the product Jetbrains developed, but I don't like how resource hungry it is—running JVM software is something I try to avoid, if possible.

It was also just plain strange. I don't know what they are doing to squeeze more money out of the tokens they sell, but using jetbrains' AI package always delivered significantly worse results for vs using the providers directly, and it was unbearably slow. But it appears that all of that falls on deaf ears at jetbrains, who are convinced that's the way forward, and they should become a vibe-coding system.

it's sad, but what can you do.

The persistent AI assistant sidebar that I have to remove every three days, the shitty "me too" VSCode clone UI, relegating the professional UI I paid for into a "maybe supported" plugin and then outright lying about the new UI being opt-in and never on by default.

JetBrains is simply not interested in power users and professionals anymore, and seem to be utterly unaware that that's their core customer base.

I canceled my all-products subscription after more than ten years and I'll be using 2024 versions until the wheels fall off.

(Neo)vim or Emacs. Seriously. Pick one, get conversant in its basic commands. These are longstanding, Lindy-effect editors that are free software and independent of sponsorbuxx. If your IDE is your home, then going with some company's IDE, especially the proprietary ones, is like agreeing to live in an HOA where Ring service and smart home features that spy on you are a requirement.

"but we've invested so much in our AI integration, are you sure you don't want to use it?"

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