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Agentic Development Environment by JetBrains

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Re: Agentic Development Environment by JetBrains

#21

Post by ceejayoz »

ElijahLynn wrote: post #12
GiorgioG wrote: post #6

Can't wait for this AI shit to be over so they can get back to their bread & butter...great dev tools.

Umm, it ain't ever gonna be over, it is a new era. We need to adapt to new ways of thinking and ways of working with new tooling. It is a learning curve of sorts. What we want is to solve problems, the new tooling enables us to solve problems better by letting us free up our thinking by reducing blockers and toil tasks, giving us more time to think about higher level problems. I remember this same sentiment towards A…

> I remember this same sentiment towards AI when I was growing up, but towards cell phones...

Sure. But the same for NFTs.

We'll see which one this winds up being.

Re: Agentic Development Environment by JetBrains

#23

Post by NumerousProcess »

rfw300 wrote: post #11

I'd like others' input on this: increasingly, I see Cursor, Jetbrains, etc. moving towards a model of having you manage many agents working on different tasks simultaneously. But in real, production codebases, I've found that even a single agent is faster at generating code than I am at evaluating its fitness and providing design guidance. Adding more agents working on different things would not speed anything up. Bu…

I have to agree, currently it doesn't look that innovative. I would rather want parallel agents working on the same task, orchestrated in some way to get the best result possible. Perhaps using IntelliJ for code insights, validation, refactoring, debugging, etc.

Re: Agentic Development Environment by JetBrains

#24

Post by Protato85 »

tortilla wrote: post #20
rfw300 wrote: post #11

I'd like others' input on this: increasingly, I see Cursor, Jetbrains, etc. moving towards a model of having you manage many agents working on different tasks simultaneously. But in real, production codebases, I've found that even a single agent is faster at generating code than I am at evaluating its fitness and providing design guidance. Adding more agents working on different things would not speed anything up. Bu…

My context window is small. It's hard enough keeping track of one timeline, I just don't see the appeal in running multiple agents. I can't really keep up.

For some things its helpful, like have one agent plan changes / get exact file paths, another agent implement changes, another agent review the PR, etc. The context window being small is the point I think. Chaining agents lets you break up the work, and also give different agents different toolsets so they aren't all taking a ton of MCPs / Claude Skills into context at once.

Re: Agentic Development Environment by JetBrains

#26

Post by jmalicki »

hmokiguess wrote: post #17

I really like this initiative, I think the biggest value here isn't the multiple sessions or worktrees, but an interoperable protocol between these coding agents through a new UX. A sort of parent process orchestrator of the many agents is something I want, is there other tools that do that today? e.g. run Claude, Codex, Gemini, all together and sharing data with one another?

Something like Shrimp is useful for at least coordinating different Claude subagents.

Re: Agentic Development Environment by JetBrains

#27

Post by SatvikBeri »

rfw300 wrote: post #11

I'd like others' input on this: increasingly, I see Cursor, Jetbrains, etc. moving towards a model of having you manage many agents working on different tasks simultaneously. But in real, production codebases, I've found that even a single agent is faster at generating code than I am at evaluating its fitness and providing design guidance. Adding more agents working on different things would not speed anything up. Bu…

I usually run one agent at a time in an interactive, pair-programming way. Occasionally (like once a week) I have some task where it makes sense to have one agent run for a long time. Then I'll create a separate jj workspace (equivalent of git worktree) and let it run.

I would probably never run a second agent unless I expected the task to take at least two hours, any more than that and the cost of multitasking for my brain is greater than any benefit, even when there are things that I could theoretically run in parallel, like several hypotheses for fixing a bug.

IIRC Thorsten Ball (Writing an Interpreter in Go, lead engineer on Amp) also said something similar in a podcast – he's a single-tasker, despite some of his coworkers preferring fleets of agents.

Re: Agentic Development Environment by JetBrains

#28

Post by chuckadams »

So do we actually get to edit any of the AI code additions or changes or is this just "PR merge hell mode" in Project Manager Simulator? Yes, I could flip over to my editor, but that kind of misses the whole point of the 'I' in "IDE".

I'm team JetBrains4Life when it comes to IDEs, but their AI offerings have been a pretty mixed bag of mixed messages. And this one requires a separate subscription at that when I'm already paying for their own AI product.

Re: Agentic Development Environment by JetBrains

#29

Post by dwb »

rfw300 wrote: post #11

I'd like others' input on this: increasingly, I see Cursor, Jetbrains, etc. moving towards a model of having you manage many agents working on different tasks simultaneously. But in real, production codebases, I've found that even a single agent is faster at generating code than I am at evaluating its fitness and providing design guidance. Adding more agents working on different things would not speed anything up. Bu…

Completely agree. The review burden and context switching I need to do from even having two running at once is too much, and using one is already pretty good (except when it’s not).

Re: Agentic Development Environment by JetBrains

#30

Post by faizshah »

rfw300 wrote: post #11

I'd like others' input on this: increasingly, I see Cursor, Jetbrains, etc. moving towards a model of having you manage many agents working on different tasks simultaneously. But in real, production codebases, I've found that even a single agent is faster at generating code than I am at evaluating its fitness and providing design guidance. Adding more agents working on different things would not speed anything up. Bu…

The parallel agent model is better for when you know the high level task you want to accomplish but the coding might take a long time. You can split it up in your head “we need to add this api to the api spec” “we need to add this thing to the controller layer” etc. and then you use parallel agents to edit just the specific files you’re working on.

So instead of interactively making one agent do a large task you make small agents do the coding while you focus on the design.

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