How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours • Hacker News Board

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

#401

Post by ybrs » Fri, Sep 04, 2015, 6:30 PM UTC

andrewstuart wrote: post #346

What an incredible whinge and whine. Why are people so resentful about paying money for their incredibly useful primarily development tool? Often while I'm using PyCharm I'm awed by how powerful it is and amazed that JetBrains has the resources, time, brainpower and money to write it. And that's not worth a few bucks? Sheesh. Seriously, it's a trivial amount of money and if you or your company can't afford it then yo…

I think if you cant pay for 20$ s a month for your fav tool that you use to earn money, maybe switching jobs might be a better option

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

#402

Post by taco_emoji » Fri, Sep 04, 2015, 6:30 PM UTC

nbevans wrote: post #263

xaqfox wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What flaws in the language does Resharper overcome? Does a language exist that causes you to never need to refactor code?

Have you ever used ReSharper? It is far more than just a refactoring tool. It is basically a set of extensions for Visual Studio that somewhat entirely transforms the VS experience. It could be described as pseudo-productivity tool for Visual Studio more than merely a refactoring tool. With that said, refactorings in C# code (like Java) are quite often incredibly repetitive which is why ReSharper exists: to ease that…

My main use cases for ReSharper are:

1) Auto-formatting 2) Integrated Unit Test runner - not great, but still better than the built-in VS one 3) Go to Implementation - takes you to straight to the actual class implementation(s) of the interface member you clicked on 4) Auto-disassembly when you hit "Go To Declaration" on a referenced DLL

Only automated refactoring I use is the built-in VS stuff for renaming identifiers. I have no idea why you'd alternate between fields and properties - most people just use properties unless it's a private member. Auto-implementing a constructor is A) something VS can already do out-of-the-box (snippets) and B) not really necessary a lot of the time since there's object initializers now. And I have no idea what you mean about "readonly detection" since 'readonly' is a first-class keyword.

> It's just boring repetitive rubbish that the language has delegated onto the programmer rather than simply improve the syntax.

You realize it's a living language, right? There was admittedly a lot of boilerplate in older versions due to strong Java influence. But C# has had type inference (i.e. 'var' keyword), anonymous types, lambdas, auto-implemented properties, and extension methods since C# 3 was released in 2007. C# 4 (2010) added co- and contravariance for generics, late binding, and optional & named parameters. In 2012 they added async/await with C# 5.

And now C# 6 has static type import, lambda-bodied methods, inline null-check operator, first-class string interpolation, and a bunch of property enhancements that remove even more boilerplate.

I'm dying to know what else you would add to the language.

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

#403

Post by jonhohle » Fri, Sep 04, 2015, 6:30 PM UTC

bb0wn wrote: post #264

And this is one of the many reasons why I've not used paid IDEs. I feel bad for everyone over a barrel with JetBrains because they've dedicated so much of their time developing in their lovely IDEs (many of my co-workers use their products.) This is not to say that a SaaS model is necessarily bad... it's just that, as a user, one is now beholden to the whims of a company for what is perhaps the most critical part of…

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Stallman - http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html

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

#404

Post by rebootthesystem » Fri, Sep 04, 2015, 6:33 PM UTC

jordigh wrote: post #389

rebootthesystem wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not aggressive. I am simply stating my position based on thirty years of running a range of tech businesses. Others can do as they wish. And they do. And the overwhelming majority of software developers have exactly zero time or interest in deviating from their work to mess with tools source code. Some percentage will customize via macros and relatively minor scripts but virtually none go so far off course as to spen…

Language such as "exactly zero", "dork around", "mess around" sounds aggressive, as if people who decide to hack on their tools were beneath you. When you say "utter waste of time" on people who do enjoy working on their vimrc or init.el or whatever, it sounds like you think the person themself is a waste of a person. When you mention how many years you have, you sound pompous, as if you were stating your opinions as…

You are going out of your way to ascribe meaning where it doesn't exist. Not sure what to say.

When I say "I have exactly zero interest" it means exactly that. If it offends you the problem isn't mine.

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

#405

Post by fenomas » Fri, Sep 04, 2015, 6:35 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #333

fenomas wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Former Adobe evangelist here. In my opinion, what you said about headline features is the crux of the matter. Under the subscription model engineering's only job is to make the user happy, so they can focus on performance or stability when needed, but when you sell a new box each year their main job is to make sales happy, with new demoable features. The result is always bloat. Whereas the "cynical attempt to milk mo…

> so when Adobe (or JetBrains) sold shrink-wrapped boxes ... they didn't have this wonderful option of bashing customers on their virtual heads and break their products if customers forgot to pay rent. It just wasn't an option, when it all started. Now it is, and here we are. The internet sometimes is just bad for people.

I don't follow, if JetBrains wants to rent software how is it the internet's fault? If the fact that the internet provides an enforcement mechanism is the issue, I'm sure cracked copies will get around that...

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

#406

Post by greg0ire » Fri, Sep 04, 2015, 6:36 PM UTC

rebootthesystem wrote: post #229

jordigh wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not pay them to do it for you and also keep the ability to do it yourself, should you ever need it?

Because I have exactly zero interest in deviating from what I should be focusing on (my business, my product, my clients, my revenue stream) to go dork around with a text/code editor. Doing so, in the context of a real working business with clients, projects, timelines, deadlines and deliverables would be irresponsible if you can simply pay a company for which that product IS their product and business to deliver wha…

> It is an utter waste of time compared to point-click-go-go-go.

Clicking = moving your hand from the keyboard to the mouse. So it's actually point-click-go-back-to-keyboard-go-go-go when it could be type-go-go-go (or go-go-go-go, if you prefer) . I use vim and when I help colleagues that use phpStorm, they seem slow as fuck. Since they have a sidebarmenu, they don't think about their fuzzy matcher, they don't split their display to show 4 files instead of just one and keep navigating through tabs they did not really mean to open.

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

#407

Post by simoncion » Fri, Sep 04, 2015, 6:36 PM UTC

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #363

tobltobs wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most wouldn't mind a price hike. But the outlook that in a few years the tool I rely on for my projects will not work anymore is unacceptable for most developers.

> the tool I rely on Then don't stop paying for it. Meanwhile, its not like they are holding your data hostage. Apart from your customized settings in their IDE you can always access your project files with another IDE or editor.

> Then don't stop paying for it.

If a tool is good, I will happily pay a large one-time fee for it.

Unless there is literally no other choice, I -personally- will not rely on a tool that may cost me an unbounded amount of money in the future. In a subscription model, four things are pretty much always true:

1) When you stop paying your recurring fee, you lose access to your tools.

2) The rate you pay is subject to change at any time.

3) If the company decides to stop offering a given tool, you lose access to it, regardless of how much you relied on it and how unsuitable any replacement tooling is.

4) If the company folds, you've a 50/50 chance of losing legal access to the tools that you "paid for" forever.

I understand that a constant, guaranteed revenue stream makes a company's financial planning easier. Unless I have a contract that makes rock-solid guarantees and imposes penalties that far more than cover my losses for breaking them, neither paying in advance for software upgrades, nor renting tools that will become a vital part of my projects makes any sense at all.

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

#408

Post by rockdiesel » Fri, Sep 04, 2015, 6:37 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #162

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…

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.

I'm pretty sure cool-RR is referring to the fact that most taxi drivers lease their cabs from the cab company, not the pair of comfortable shoes they invest in.

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

#409

Post by mgkimsal » Fri, Sep 04, 2015, 6:37 PM UTC

addicted wrote: post #321

malka wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So if instead of $100/yr they had raised the price to $500 but you "own" the software, you would have been okay with that?

$100-$500 is a bit much, but I'd have been happy with some increase (10%? 15%?).

A modest increase, with a discount for moving to a subscription model (like they're trying to do) would have appealed to all camps, imo. Professionals recognize these are good tools, and want to support them, but not necessarily in a 'one size fits all' SaaS model.

Instead of $199 intellij ultimate license, saying "Buy a perpetual license for $229, or a SaaS model for $149/year"... I would probably still opt for perpetual (at least some of their products), but having the option is important, imo.

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

#410

Post by timrichard » Fri, Sep 04, 2015, 6:38 PM UTC

kailuowang wrote: post #166

JetBrian used to have to improve the product significantly every major release so that people would pay for the new version. Just want to point out that by changing to the new subscription model, they no longer have that drive. Of course there are still other reasons for innovating their product, it's just one less.

Hmm, time will tell. I've been using IDEA since 2008, but switched to WebStorm a couple of years ago because I wanted to get the new JS features and extensions sooner (and didn't need the Java Enterprise bits).

As someone who upgrades WebStorm within an hour of a new version being released, I'm hoping the new subscription model will mean they push out improvements whenever they're ready, rather than waiting for a major release to showcase.

Totally understand the angst on here about the IDE not working if you cancel your subscription, but I guess I'm already in that mindset from using services like Linode and BrowserStack.

As a serial upgrader, the WebStorm subscription price looks okay. Over the years, I've considered the IDE more of a co-worker than a tool (should credit Hector the Inspector as a great Wingman). If you're billing for your hours I still think the product is a no-brainer, but understand this would be a frustrating development for a more casual user.