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JetBrains: $270M revenue, 405K paying users, $0 raised

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Re: JetBrains: $270M revenue, 405K paying users, $0 raised

#601
post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I've found with CLion is that you really, really want to edit the JVM settings for the IDE. By default it starts with a 2GB memory limit for the JVM, which even for small projects will severely drag down performance, e.g. my MBP would run very hot, spin the fans and the IDE would get very laggy. Increasing the JVM settings to allocate 8GB completely solved this.

An editor that needs (even) 2GB to be blindingly fast is a failure.

It's not the editor part that uses all this RAM I suppose, but the code parser and indexer that by default includes scanning & interpreting all your dependencies (system headers, boost, other third-party frameworks). There is a clang process that has the full AST for all of your code + its dependencies in the background all the time, so you can get search, index, autocomplete, syntax check, refactor etc. that actually works compared to the half-baked solutions you get with VIM plugins (and I've tried all of them).

I guess you can switch all of that off of course, but that's what makes it an IDE and not an editor. I think the memory tradeoff is perfectly fine for this kind of application.

Re: JetBrains: $270M revenue, 405K paying users, $0 raised

#602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True; that's the only subscription model I find acceptable for software that hardly changes in meaningful ways. For example, I refuse to upgrade Git Tower to version 3 as a protest against fournova's new licensing. Up to that point, I was a loyal customer and product advocate, basically buying every upgrade anyway, but by my own choice. Instead, I'll be on version 2 "forever", despite all its flaws. It was even worse…

Thanks for your thoughts on this, Thijs! Here's Tobias, the CEO of Tower. We want to make sure that Tower can stay a high-quality application in the long run. This means we want to constantly improve the application, add new features, fix bugs, and help users with great customer support. To be able to do that, we need a steady and reliable source of income. The thruth is: for us - a small, self-funded business - a re…

For the customer, automatically converting long subscriptions to perpetual licenses for an old version is a major safety net (the software will not stop working if I stop paying) and it proves that the vendor is committed to improving the product enough to make upgrades compelling.

On the other hand, reasonable customers do not expect support beyond the latest version and whatever they are currently paying for: "we have fixed that in the latest version, which you should buy" is a valid and honest answer to support issues.

For a tool that can be changed with very little friction like a revision control client, the typical "calculation" about spending money is likely to be waiting for an actual troublesome situation and then get out of it with a short subscription or a 30-day trial.

Re: JetBrains: $270M revenue, 405K paying users, $0 raised

#603
post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An editor that needs (even) 2GB to be blindingly fast is a failure.

It's not the editor part that uses all this RAM I suppose, but the code parser and indexer that by default includes scanning & interpreting all your dependencies (system headers, boost, other third-party frameworks). There is a clang process that has the full AST for all of your code + its dependencies in the background all the time, so you can get search, index, autocomplete, syntax check, refactor etc. that actuall…

At the moment I am sitting here adding couple of things to a huge desktop application written in Delphi. More then a million lines for a full build (which takes 11 seconds on laptop btw). It does all that you mention with all bells and whistles of a modern IDE and consuming whopping 380MB. How's that for a change?

Re: JetBrains: $270M revenue, 405K paying users, $0 raised

#604
post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an outsider fan. I've attempted to use IntelliJ on multiple occasions, but it just can't really compete with Eclipse as far as my requirements are concerned. But the competition from and innovation in IntelliJ has no doubt made Eclipse better (and modern Eclipse is kind of awesome and just keeps getting better).

I switched from Eclipse to Intellij only three years ago because it actually used to be pretty good but just fell behind too much. Gradle & Spring Boot were the reason I gave up on Eclipse. I just couldn't get a project imported correctly without running into a lot of bugs. So, when a new project came up I just switched over and started using Intellij. Before that, for doing vanilla maven + Java projects Eclipse was…

There are, despite the often very aggressive IntelliJ proponents, many areas where Eclipse beats IntelliJ, and incremental compilation is indeed one of the most important. It is also possibly the most important feature in a Java IDE. Ctrl+s and you know the whole codebase is compiled. Go to another file and any code change is available in the code completion (like new or changed methods signatures). Any errors from the change you just saved is shown immediately from across the entire codebase.

I just can't live without a core thing like this missing, and compounded with a number of other things that Eclipse does better, I stay on Eclipse. Unfortunately many younger developers think IntelliJ is all there is.

Re: JetBrains: $270M revenue, 405K paying users, $0 raised

#605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True; that's the only subscription model I find acceptable for software that hardly changes in meaningful ways. For example, I refuse to upgrade Git Tower to version 3 as a protest against fournova's new licensing. Up to that point, I was a loyal customer and product advocate, basically buying every upgrade anyway, but by my own choice. Instead, I'll be on version 2 "forever", despite all its flaws. It was even worse…

Thanks for your thoughts on this, Thijs! Here's Tobias, the CEO of Tower. We want to make sure that Tower can stay a high-quality application in the long run. This means we want to constantly improve the application, add new features, fix bugs, and help users with great customer support. To be able to do that, we need a steady and reliable source of income. The thruth is: for us - a small, self-funded business - a re…

There are many comments complaining about exactly that product, you probably ought to spend a bit more time on that thread.

Re: JetBrains: $270M revenue, 405K paying users, $0 raised

#606

I agree with many of the other posters: JetBrains has succeeded because their products are generally awesome, and I am a happy personal subscriber. People should especially remember what the Java IDE landscape looked like when they first came out with IntelliJ: using IntelliJ after using NetBeans or Eclipse was like using Google for the first time after being familiar with AltaVista - it was just a night and day bett…

>remember what the Java IDE landscape looked like when they first came out with IntelliJ: using IntelliJ after using NetBeans or Eclipse was like using Google for the first time after being familiar with AltaVista You're skipping over several commercial Java IDEs available when IntelliJ first came out: Most notably, Borland JBuilder, which was an excellent product. Symantec had Visual Cafe as well, which was not real…

IntelliJ was much faster than JBuilder. This is what I remember most, IntelliJ was as fast as using Visual Studio.

I liked JBuilder, but VisualCafe was a nightmare. But IntelliJ was much more responsive and much cheaper.

Re: JetBrains: $270M revenue, 405K paying users, $0 raised

#607
post #5

Jetbrains products are awesome though. I used to use a heavily customized vim which was a pretty good setup, but the things a jetbrains ide can do are just much better than what my custom setup could do. I pay for a personal subscription and couldn't be happier. I will recommend everyone to atleast give their products a try. They have a free trial period.

I use Jetbrains products for everything at work. I don't know what's going to happen if I ever have to work at an Eclipse shop. Might have to turn it down, honestly.

I've been the sole Eclipse developer in a number of places where everyone used IntelliJ. At least a couple of the places had switched from Eclipse after having been worn down by that one incessant IntelliJ guy. A few developers discreetly confided that they would rather have stayed on Eclipse, and some new people followed my lead. None of the places were 'IntelliJ shops' though, any more than I know of any 'Eclipse shops'. It would be rather poor form to hard tie your projects to an IDE, so it was always fairly doable to run with your IDE of choice.

Re: JetBrains: $270M revenue, 405K paying users, $0 raised

#608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True; that's the only subscription model I find acceptable for software that hardly changes in meaningful ways. For example, I refuse to upgrade Git Tower to version 3 as a protest against fournova's new licensing. Up to that point, I was a loyal customer and product advocate, basically buying every upgrade anyway, but by my own choice. Instead, I'll be on version 2 "forever", despite all its flaws. It was even worse…

Thanks for your thoughts on this, Thijs! Here's Tobias, the CEO of Tower. We want to make sure that Tower can stay a high-quality application in the long run. This means we want to constantly improve the application, add new features, fix bugs, and help users with great customer support. To be able to do that, we need a steady and reliable source of income. The thruth is: for us - a small, self-funded business - a re…

To summarise, you say you're not offering perpetual licenses for old paid-for versions because you don't feel you can make clear to your customers they don't come with support.

For some reason you do expect you can sell them on this new payment model that benefits mostly you, so it's really not your communicative skills or your customers' capacity to learn that are the problem here. That really only leaves us with the financial advantage to you.

Re: JetBrains: $270M revenue, 405K paying users, $0 raised

#609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unlike Eclipse, which is acceptable That's a nice way of saying it's a trash fire.

What happened to Eclipse? I remember there was a time when IBM really invested in it that it was miles better than anything in the Java editing space, or honestly any competitor at the time. For example, instantaneous compiling and error checking was so far ahead it took MS many years to catch up with it. It used to be a matter of huge excitement when a new language or framework was supported by Eclipse. But I moved…

Funny, the two things you mention (instantaneous compiling and error checking) are still better in Eclipse.

Re: JetBrains: $270M revenue, 405K paying users, $0 raised

#610
post #294
post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1: ctrl-f, 2:, esc 2: select the first :, ctrl+d until all are selected, right arrow, comma Doesn’t sound any more efficient? Plus, who writes code without an auto-formatter these days? Problem two would have been solved by the linter the moment you wrote that.

It's not just code and linting though - this kind of thing happens when you're editing YAML files, when you're editing pure text, when you're editing CSVs, when you're editing some obscure thing no one's heard of - once you have the primitives down, it's just so easy to apply it everywhere.

Did you read what I just wrote? Those commands are not specific to any language.
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