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Dear JetBrains, Don't mess with your UI

neil.computer

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

#331

Post by lucideer »

Many have pointed out that the author is jumping to conclusions, which seems to be true from the (lack of) content in the article. So much of it is obviously wrong or lazily (not) researched. Some excerpts:

> Haven't seen them but it will be [...]. The whole interface is going to [...]. Mark my words

Oh really? Sounds like you've spent time using it and forming and informed & balanced evidence-driven opinion alright.

> Rounding of corners. Religion at this point. Homogenization. JetBrains wants to be like VSCode

Author has never used VSCode - not a rounded corner in sight.

But... I have seen a few commenters here on HN that seem more informed than the author and do prefer the old UI. If you're in that category, great. But I wonder are you in a niche minority. I'm a VSCode user but need to use IntelliJ & PyCharm in work as I support some custom IDE plugins & integrations. I hate the UI. I've tried switching to it wholesale on multiple occasions (company covers licences so no cost difference to me) but got quickly frustrated with the experience - especially that the discoverable (mouseclick) UI is always so many more clicks compared to workflows in other apps & that needs to be down for new users during the keyboard/command learning curve.

That's a subjective opinion on my part as a VSCode user, but I get the impression that it's shared by a lot of long-time (& probably now former-) JetBrains users. If they're bleeding users to VSCode, it stands to reason that the userbase that state behind are going to be the subset that prefer the old UI. So pushback is understandable.

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

#332

Post by dmitriid »

kmlx wrote: post #286
albertopv wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IS this new UI going to solve slow indexing problem? I mean, real problems, the ones that really block our work?

is the new UI somehow blocking solving the problems that you mentioned? no. companies can work on multiple things at once.

People working on the new UI are not working on other products. These are not the same people who work with indexing, but these could be people who work on decoupling UI code etc. while indexing is improved.

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

#333

Post by the__alchemist »

My JB Elephant-in-the-room is the awful performance. I'm complaining instead of having switched, since I haven't found anything and powerful for multi-file projects in Rust, and Python. I find myself, more and more, opening files in Sublime and managing the files manually when PyCharm+Rust Plugin is behaving especially badly. Restarting PyCharm often helps, short-term.

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

#334

Post by lucideer »

SebastianKra wrote: post #232

> - Rounding of corners. Religion at this point > - Homogenization. JetBrains wants to be like VSCode > - Animations. Haven't seen them but it will be filled Seriously, HN? This is the quality that you reward with hundreds of points? Unlike the author, I happen to have used this UI for the past five months and it solves many of my longstanding gripes with IntelliJ: - Gutters are now much better at highlighting local…

> This is the quality that you reward with hundreds of points?

Many read HN just for the comments, so will upvote a low-quality article with a discussion-driving headline (often without reading the article), purely to generate discussion on a topic they're interested in.

It's something of a pity as articles like this with absolute garbage takes do a disservice to those users who share the sentiment for valid reasons. But at least we get to read some of those more well-reasoned arguments in the comments here.

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

#335

Post by lalopalota »

mcluck wrote: post #274
matsemann wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'm not "rewarding the post with hundred of points", but I've upvoted because I share the sentiment and want JetBrains to really consider each change they make: Is it for change's sake, or because it's actually better ?

What makes you think that they haven't already considered it? It's rather offensive to assume that a group of UX professionals decided to take on a massive overhaul just for fun. Given UX has never been a major priority at JetBrains, it implies that they decided it was valuable enough to spend the time and money on this. I just can't imagine this was done on a whim

> It's rather offensive to assume that a group of UX professionals decided to take on a massive overhaul just for fun.

It's not "just for fun". If the UX doesn't get updated, then they are out of a job.

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

#336

Post by RunSet »

JetBrains' privacy policy is so open-ended I am surprised their IDEs are permitted in any environment with software that justifies an IDE.

It amounts to "Here are just some examples of the parties we might share your information with / reasons we might share your information but don't consider this a definitive list."

Also their autocomplete sucks. As in always inserts the wrong thing in the wrong place.

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

#337

Post by jen20 »

d3nj4l wrote: post #308
ChymeraXYZ wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have only recently tried GoLand while living in vim for ~5 years. IMO vim's autocomplete is significantly better than GoLand. Not saying the rest of the auto-insert helpers, but the completion itself is way better imo.

GoPLS is honestly really good, and while I haven't tried GoLand myself, I have no trouble believing you. Even rust-analyzer beats IntelliJ Rust IME. I'm very bullish on language servers because these two (and ElixirLS, though it isn't on the same level as GoPLS and rust-analyzer IMO) are countering the common assumption that you need an IDE to have powerful dev tools.

My experience is absolutely the opposite, especially on complex Go projects with multiple modules. I haven’t given Rust Analyzer much of a shot, but admittedly that might be better. Many of the projects I’m working on right now build using Bazel, and gopls has serious issues there even in generated code with a package driver configured.

I used to meticulously maintain a vim config for the 8 or so languages I switch between, but eventually realised that for me the good part of vim is modal editing, and that IdeaVIM gives me that without having to fuss with it. My vimrc is now empty and it’s relegated to commit messages and fixing merge conflicts…

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

#338

Post by xwowsersx »

dfee wrote: post #87
xwowsersx wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like them small too which is why I hide basically everything except for the editor itself :)

I just wish the panels would default hide. I run bazel sync and half my window is build logs until I get around to closing them. If it’s not in active use, maybe after 5s, get it out of the way of code.

I hear you, but...when in the editor, ⇧ ⌘ F12 hides all windows except the active editor. I also added ⌘⇧H as a shortcut.

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

#339

Post by bigbillheck »

djha-skin wrote: post #3

Obligatory xkcd reference to "UI Change": https://xkcd.com/1770/ JetBrains is obviously becoming more like VS Code here so that they aren't edged out of the market. "Copy your competitors". Complaining as if we are paying customers is understandable because UI changes are annoying. However we have to see things from JetBrain's perspective. They're trying to stay alive in a market where their market share is rapidly d…

> as if we are paying customers is understandable

But I am a paying customer! I've been subscribed to the 'all you can eat' option for several years now.

And as a paying customer, I'm not thrilled about the UI change but I'll get used to it.

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

#340

Post by gorjusborg »

9dev wrote: post #66
imron wrote: 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.

They do that, I’m playing with it now. Have a look at Jetbrains Gateway: https://www.jetbrains.com/remote-development/gateway/

I'll admit I haven't looked recently, but last time I looked, it felt like Jetbrains didn't quite get my use cases for remote development. I don't want to install/manage any infrastructure at all. I just want to connect via ssh to a fresh box and have it work. If that isn't possible, back to the drawing board.
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