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How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

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Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#241

Post by andylei »

dfox wrote: post #189
progmal1 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right about being at the mercy, but I have not used free software as good as the Microsoft Visual Studio IDE for development.

I've heard many people say exactly that (or even that VS is simply the best IDE). I somehow fail to see why would anyone say that. The whole solution/project model seems to be optimized for something that does not make much sense to me. The UI is mostly unusable on small screens. Integrated editor feels somewhat weird to me (I'm probably too addicted to emacs' electric-indent, but even then). Thus I may see some reas…

> I somehow fail to see why would anyone say that.

can you really not even comprehend how there's one person out there that would make a choice different than you?

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#242

Post by integraton »

manigandham wrote: post #135
zeveb wrote: post #126

What I don't get is why a developer would ever use proprietary software in the first place. I code—it's what I do. I want to tools to be excellent, certainly, and I don't want to have to spend a lot of time fixing them where they aren't, but I want to be able to improve them for my use cases. Who else in the world is as capable at knowing what I need as…me? If you use proprietary software, you're at the mercy of the…

Please... some of us need to get work done and are perfectly happy to pay someone else to give us good quality products. Just because you can do something doesn't mean it's worth doing yourself.

> ...some of us need to get work done...

There are whole ecosystems of developers and teams getting work done and building companies (including some of the biggest companies in the industry) without these applications, so they clearly aren't necessary to "get work done."

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#243

Post by cromwellian »

JetBrains is in a tough market where they charge for what other competitors give away for free. They do so by making awesome products but doing that takes money and resources. If you want them to continue to invest in making the worlds best IDEs, you should be cheering this decision. They charge a pittance for such products.

Seriously, for the price of IntelliJ ultimate, most programmers will earn that in 2-3 hours of work. Your paying 2-3 hours of your time for a product that saves you hundreds of hours, and helps you earn a high white collar salary.

I just don't get people who whine about the pricing of their tools. Have you looked at the costs of video production, 3d and 2d art programs? Profession music creation software? Or any enterprise software for godsakes?

JetBrains has fought hard to survive and thrive in a cut throat market where most people use free tools and don't want to buy anything. They make a premium product and sell it for less than a cheap smartphone you upgrade every 2 years.

Maybe they can please people who want the false comfort of ownership by boosting the price of the non-rent edition.

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#244

Post by ascagnel_ »

toyg wrote: post #141
jrs235 wrote: post #109

This isn't even Software-as-a-Service. Most companies that offer SaaS are HOSTING the software and thus incurring ongoing monthly costs. The Service part is that the purchaser doesn't have to install the software on their own machines, pay for nor update servers, etc. Selling rights to use [but not own] software on a monthly basis should be called RtpS - Rent-to-pwned-Software (cause you're pwned, you'll never own it…

Some SaaS "hostings" are paper-thin, like Adobe or Steam. They are glorified FTP sites.

Steam isn't really SaaS as much as a platform. It supports eCommerce, the logistics of delivering product on a massive scale (even if said product is bits instead of boxes), and some social networking on top of that.

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#245

Post by noarchy »

toyg wrote: post #155
estefan wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just use IDEA ultimate and install different plugins per language?

I tried, it's not the same. The dedicated tools are better.

Not to mention, I see less incentive now for Jetbrains to make the IntelliJ plugins on par with the standalone, language-specific IDEs.

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#246

Post by calgoo »

Artemis2 wrote: post #205
toyg wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A taxi driver will buy a nice pair of comfortable shoes and then keep them forever. The seller will not come around every month asking for money and threatening to take back his shoes if he doesn't cough up. That's what a different type of "business" does.

A taxi driver will need their car fixed periodically at their dealership. If they don't pay up, no car.

Just like my computer needs upgrades and fixes as well :)

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#247

Post by silvestrov »

ceejayoz wrote: post #222
silvestrov wrote: post #178

Polishing and bug fixes cost money, but nobody wants to pay for that. People only want to pay for new shiny features. If IntelliJ doesn't get money because developers think "old version is good enough for me", then there is no money for bug fixing and for keeping the product alive. It would end up as abandonware like most apps on the iPhone App Store. I'd guess the IDE have now reached this "fully featured" milestone…

> Polishing and bug fixes cost money, but nobody wants to pay for that. You pay for that when you buy the product - it comes with a year of updates.

I want more than a year because:

1) New OS releases might require fixes to IDEA's embedded JVM.

2) There's still a lot of bugs left after the first year.

The ONLY reason that I have bought the past 2 updates is to get bugs fixed, but so far it has been for the worse.

A company can't live forever on one-time payments. It needs a continuing income, otherwise the most sensible business decision is to close shop.

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#248

Post by hinkley »

estefan wrote: post #146
fastball wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contractors that work with different clients using different languages? You've never heard of someone that works with different languages at different times? Huh.

Why not just use IDEA ultimate and install different plugins per language?

I dunno what it's like now, but there was a time when, among other things, IntelliJ could not open a project created in rubymine. They were providing ruby support as a plugin and it was considerably broken, for about six months.

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#249

Post by cool-RR »

malka wrote: post #139
cool-RR wrote: post #137

I see a lot of whining in this thread. If you think that an increase of $100/year in the price of a tool that you use every day, for, say, at least 5 hours daily as part of your job as software developer as a meaningful price increase, than the cost of your IDE is not close to being your biggest problem. Even taxi drivers invest more money than software developers in the tools that they use every day, and software de…

The price is not the problem. I simply do not want to rent the tools I use. I want to buy them.

It's absolutely about the price. If I told you you need to rent them, but the price for renting for the next 15 years is negligible, I don't think you'd have a problem with renting them. Now our only disagreement is on what constitutes "negligible".

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#250

Post by pasbesoin »

cwyers wrote: post #175
balabaster wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, what? The only product I use is Resharper... I was paying $119 an update before, now I'll be paying $240?!? Yeah, that's not a good deal for me. There's no amount of skewed math I can apply that makes $240 less than $119...

Here's the pricing policy: https://www.jetbrains.com/toolbox/ The $20 is for all products, Resharper alone is $11.90 a month or $119 a year.

It used to be you would stop getting updates but could still use the product at its frozen (for you) point. For example, to re-examine an old project (even if you might not want to do any fresh builds on an outdated platform).

Can you still do that, or does the tool "die" for you altogether once you stop paying?

P.S. Assuming underlying OS compatibility, which would probably eventually break unless e.g. also frozen in a VM.

P.P.S. It was a couple of years ago, and during a promotion, but I got the "whole enchilada", plus a year of updates, for a bit under $100. It was a 50% off promotion, as I recall, so the non-sale price would have been under $200. [Or maybe it was just a bit over -- either way.]

I understand concerns about revenue stream; nonetheless, I have to agree with some others here in... more or less detesting such "subscription" pricing/licensing models.

Among other things, I have some old, old systems and programs that work just fine, as long as I keep them isolated e.g. from the big, bad Internet. I don't want stuff that dies unless I perpetually feed it, even just for historical purposes.

I've also been a Safari online book library subscriber, and I've started to regret not simply instead spending the money to buy ebook versions of the titles I'm most interested in.

In areas where I have a stronger personal interest in long-term and historical access, I am growing increasingly tired of and leery of the "subscription model."

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