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Rider is now free for non-commercial use

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Re: Rider is now free for non-commercial use

#301

Regarding free non-commercial use in Jetbrains you need to accept that you'll get checked (not specified how, but I guess they will scrape your HDD? Or what? It’s also important to note that if you’re using a non-commercial license, you cannot opt out of the collection of anonymous usage statistics. This is similar to our Early Access Program (where statistics is opt-out) and in compliance with our Privacy Policy

It's the dreaded T-word: telemetry. The same sort of thing people get up in arms about in Windows but JetBrains will get a pass here.

Its not telemetry its Microsoft + telemetry that people are up in arms over.

Catch JetBrains doing something dodgy enough and there will be a similar shitstorm against them.

Re: Rider is now free for non-commercial use

#302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that VS Code can't load a large project, that is table stakes. It's that the tools it provides to work with those large code bases are like fisher price versions of the Jetbrains equivalents. If one take their tools seriously, and uses them to the maximum extent possible to increase productivity, reliability, and robustness of code then there is just no comparison between the two. Don't get me wrong, I still…

What tools are missing? It has debugging, a test runner, Intellisense.

To be fair they're not a great comparison.

VS Code starts out as a lightweight code editor & via extensions you can turn it into more of an IDE but it'll take a lot of customization & messing around.

Rider is an IDE with all the bells & whistles already included. It also has extensions but they've built it with the most popular things already.

Refactoring, debugging, code navigation, formatting & hinting/suggestions are far superior in Rider. They have a lot more advanced features. Check out some YouTube videos by JetBrains to see examples.

Don't get me wrong - VS Code is still a great tool & I use it daily. I do wish they would have named it something other than "Code" or "Visual Studio Code" but hey, it's Microsoft. They're famous for terrible bad name choices. Maybe they'll make a copilot to fix that.

Re: Rider is now free for non-commercial use

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VS for Mac was junk. Better off trashing it and pushing people the VS Code route. I use VS Code daily for .NET development. It's probably 70% of what VS on Windows is, but it works well and I don't need to run a VM for it (if I need some of the in-depth tracing and profiling stuff, I can still fire up the gold standard). VS on Mac was maybe 30%

> VS for Mac was junk. Better off trashing it and pushing people the VS Code route. Sure but VS Code for C# is trash as well. All those years, both Microsoft products, and this the experience is subpar, especially in comparison to the real Visual Studio.

100% which is why I use rider :)

Re: Rider is now free for non-commercial use

#304
post #173

what does free for non-commercial use really mean ? if you make a game, then it gets popular what happens ? or some .net api? I'm always confused by such licensing terms e.g what ended up happening with Unity.

I'm not sure about the letter of the law but the spirit is: if you make money off it, then buy a license. I doubt they have any way to know that your weekend project became an income generator.

Re: Rider is now free for non-commercial use

#305

Rider is by far the best C# IDE. Especially if you're not running Windows. It was a real lifesaver while working with Unity.

Well, I'd wager most C# devs are ... running Windows, so...

That maybe true, but .NET runs natively on Linux these days too.

Re: Rider is now free for non-commercial use

#306
post #190
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had no idea Rider supported C++. My impression was that it is for .NET only. How does it compare to CLion?

Yeah they originally had a separate branch "Rider Unreal" but now it's part of Rider, C++ support seems mostly the same across both, except for project support. If IIRC Rider doesn't support CMake projects, but it does support vsproj projects, so if you generate vs files from cmake it'll load fine, but probably better to use CLion for any non-UE projects if using C++. I guess they're seeing it as .NET/GameDev IDE. Ho…

JetBrains IDEs are all the same program just bundled with different language plugins. It would be like if you called VSCode by a different code name depending on which combination of extensions you had installed.

Re: Rider is now free for non-commercial use

#307

Rider is much better and faster than Visual Studio, and it's worth every penny. Making it free is a great move.

I think it’s a bit worrisome that Microsoft can give away VS Code for free because they subsidize it in other ways, but JetBrains - a small software shop - clearly is being forced into this position. Just more Big Tech setting the terms for all of us trying to make a living.

I don’t think JetBrains was forced to make Rider free. Their main customers are businesses, which still need to pay for Rider. Businesses also need to pay for Visual Studio (purple icon) if they have more than 5 developers. VS Code can theoretically do C# for free, but the free plugin is limited, and the paid plugin requires a Visual Studio license (it is mediocre anyway).

Re: Rider is now free for non-commercial use

#308
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, yes, VS Code certainly is great and all, but… > It's probably 70% of what VS on Windows is no. From my perspective, it doesn’t even have 50% of VS features, and that’s probably a generous estimation. VS has lots and lots of features. Granted, many of them are irrelevant for most users most of the time. Even Rider is lacking in comparison. It is very limited regarding debugging targets for example.

As a regulär Jetbrains products user, I was shocked when I first has to use VS. Until today, I haven't figured out how to open a class by name (from any assembly), other than writing they name in code ans strl-clicking it.

Ctrl-T (or depending on your mappings, maybe Ctrl-P). Honestly, you can't blame the IDE for you not spending time working out how to do the basic stuff.

Visual Studio has come a long way (I've been using it since the .net 1.1 days). Out of the box, it gives you most of what you got from Resharper 2 years ago.

All that said, I switched to Rider a year or so ago and haven't looked back. I used to use VS for C# and VSCode for html/typescript/css, but Rider happily handles both. It's really nice to have one IDE for everything. And unsurprisingly, it seems to perform better than Resharper + VS.

Re: Rider is now free for non-commercial use

#309
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rider is an excellent IDE for .NET development. A lot less bloat than Visual Studio 2022. I’ve had a lot of my dev teams switch to it. We offer them both options. If you’re not working in legacy .NET Framework apps then I’d heavily suggest giving Rider a try.

This is exactly the kind of surface-level praise I often hear but what exactly is it? Is it objectively (significantly) more performant? How does the MAUI app development experience compare? Code completion? IIS-integration? Debugging? Look and feel? WPF / XAML designer? File explorer? Git integration? ...

It will come down to preference. The best tool for the job is the one you're familiar with. But if you've never tried Rider, I think it's good advice to try it and form your own opinion.

You might like the built in code completions, with the included local LLM. If you've used the Resharper plugin for Visual Studio, you might like that those features come included in Rider. Same with DotPeek, if you like to decompile dependencies to view implementation details. You might also like Rider's built in 3 way merge with magic wand to auto resolve easy conflicts.

If you also develop outside dotnet ecosystem, you might like that Rider has the same UI as Idea (java development) and Webstorm (frontend development), so switching between them is more familiar.

One thing I don't like about Rider is its inline type hints. I think they clutter the code and I usually disable them.

I haven't gone back to Visual Studio in a while, so I can't offer an honest comparison since my experience is a bit outdated.

(But to be honest, I don't really use Rider too much nowadays either. I've mostly switched to VSCode. So take this with a grain of salt. And apologies I didn't address the items you listed. I just wanted to point out the items I personally took note of)

Re: Rider is now free for non-commercial use

#310
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah they originally had a separate branch "Rider Unreal" but now it's part of Rider, C++ support seems mostly the same across both, except for project support. If IIRC Rider doesn't support CMake projects, but it does support vsproj projects, so if you generate vs files from cmake it'll load fine, but probably better to use CLion for any non-UE projects if using C++. I guess they're seeing it as .NET/GameDev IDE. Ho…

JetBrains IDEs are all the same program just bundled with different language plugins. It would be like if you called VSCode by a different code name depending on which combination of extensions you had installed.

Not entirely. E.g. IntelliJ has a "project environment" modal (not sure about the exact name rn), in pycharm its part of the settings and a bit different. There are a few more things like this between the IDEs.
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