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Dear JetBrains, Don't mess with your UI

neil.computer

211–220 of 420 posts

Re: Dear JetBrains, Don't mess with your UI

#211
This is why it is important to not depend on a single commercial IDE to do all your work. Datagrip has been my go to for sql but would be willing to switch back to dbeaver if I had to. I also use Pycharm when a client has me working with Terraform alongside python repos. However the ide sugar for Terraform isn’t that beneficial and I often feel it would be better if I just went back to vim with a few tweaks for .tf files

Re: Dear JetBrains, Don't mess with your UI

#212
I'm so surprised at the vitriolic response people are having to the change. I spent many of my formative years writing in Eclipse and was an early adopter of WebStorm. I'm no stranger to the IntelliJ style interface. But it has always been a huge impediment for me. It feels clunky, loud, disorganized. Like a desktop with random papers spread out everywhere. And like someone who has one of these desks, I'm sure the people who are upset know exactly where the stapler that they buried 3 months ago is but for me it's just a mess. This new change looks fantastic and might make me not feel so slow working with IntelliJ products.

Re: Dear JetBrains, Don't mess with your UI

#213

If they end up removing the current UI I’ll end up cancelling my subscription. I’ve been a very happy paying customer for over 8 years now but this is ridiculous. The current UI has text (!!) tabs instead of bland non descriptive icons. It has toolbars and menu items that I can configure. I understand that the current generation of new developers are intimidated by so much raw power at their hands ;) But we have got…

Based on how they interacted with the users when they removed the colors for the icons, I don't think they care about user feedback and will just post made up reasons for the change ("colors are distracting when coding").

Re: Dear JetBrains, Don't mess with your UI

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same, the only refresh that I feel is genuinely bad is reddit. The problem with new reddit is that the usage pattern is totally different. Old reddit can be rapidly browsed and only the posts that interest you are the ones that you give attention, in new reddit posts can’t be rapidly browsed and each one is supposed to grab your attention (in my opinion).

The fact that reddit still has old.reddit.com available is a testament to the failure of the new design.

The new design is bad intentionally to improve their performance numbers, that it's still online and that the whole site didn't go the way of digg means they pretty much nailed it.

Re: Dear JetBrains, Don't mess with your UI

#215
post #176
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Forget what VSCode is doing. Except for remote development extension. Do that. It's the killer feature of VSCode.

Why would one do remote development with laptops being as powerful as they are today (think: the raw power of an M1 Mac Book Air even).

Because my ec2 dev server is even more powerful, and I can easily upgrade the hardware configuration without spending $1k on a new laptop.

I never really appreciated a remote dev server until I had to work on a behemoth Java project and then a behemoth C++ project. Having the extra memory and the extra cores is great. Never having to worry about your laptop heating up or having your battery die due to CPU load is even better.

Re: Dear JetBrains, Don't mess with your UI

#216

Eh, I have used vim, spacemacs, sublime, vscode, atom, eclipse and netbeans. Jetbrains IDEs have superior functionality out of the box across languages and don’t require me to mess with and debug a million plugins. I don’t mind a UI refresh, it’s going to be just like the gmail refresh everyone hated it and now we’re all fine with it. I just wish they would invest more money into things that are actually a problem cu…

If you are a professional developer, and plan to be working for several decades, is it really that much of an investment to maintain your editor config a la vim or emacs? I did a lot of work setting up vim 10 years ago, and have only had to tweak it since. It works exactly as I expect, anywhere, in a terminal, for free, and setup is as easy as checking out a repo and running a script. JetBrains is good for stuff I ra…

Quick tip: you can sync config across devices using File > Manage IDE Settings.

One option is to use their sync service with your Jetbrain account, but you can also use git[1]

It definitely makes it easier to move machines when your settings and plugins are kept in sync with it.

[1] https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/sharing-your-ide-setting...

Re: Dear JetBrains, Don't mess with your UI

#218

Seriously! Their slick, compact, and beautifully well laid out UI is one of the primary reasons I use I Intellij Idea. If they force this update, I'll just not update it. Not to mention, since I now will not be updating it, I can cancel my yearly, recurring subscription too. Hey Jetbrains: You just have to do one thing. And that is: to NOT mess up existing thing. Even if you stop launching new features into your prod…

> Seriously! Their slick, compact, and beautifully well laid out UI is one of the primary reasons I use I Intellij Idea. Fascinating. Their flat, contrast-less and confusing UI is one of my biggest chafing points with their product. If I want to resize an UI element, I often have to make several guesses before I find the right border, let alone pixel.

Their UI may be a bit low contrast out of the box (there are themes to fix that, luckily) but if you have a problem with it now, the new UI looks much worse. All the colors are gone and all the icons are now bland shapes.

It looks like they're copying VS Code's UI style which is a huge step backwards in my opinion. This UI minimalism looks great on paper but it's terribly confusing to actually work with and it can take weeks to get around it through sheer brute force and muscle memory.

I agree that their UI needs an overhaul but this isn't the solution.

Re: Dear JetBrains, Don't mess with your UI

#219
post #206

I really like the new UI (and all the other similar modern UIs) and I just can't pretend like I dont. I'm a very visual and a design oriented person and I want my tools to look good. If I'm going to spend countless hours using a product/tool I want to enjoy it's looks as well. Too many tools in my opinion are designed by people who want to maximize productivity with very utilitarian and practical user interfaces (whi…

I was in the private beta for it, I went into it neutral and came out of it really liking it, all the keybinds remain the same and I already had turned off quite a lot of the old UI so for me it felt like what I already had but more refined.

As with all things design, it's open to a large degree of subjectivity.

Re: Dear JetBrains, Don't mess with your UI

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same, the only refresh that I feel is genuinely bad is reddit. The problem with new reddit is that the usage pattern is totally different. Old reddit can be rapidly browsed and only the posts that interest you are the ones that you give attention, in new reddit posts can’t be rapidly browsed and each one is supposed to grab your attention (in my opinion).

The fact that reddit still has old.reddit.com available is a testament to the failure of the new design.

I'd say a big part of this is the atrocious performance
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