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Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

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Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like you are understating the backlash they faced. I came back from a vacation the day after they announced it and checked here, /r/programming, and a few other developer-focused forums including their own site and it was like the world was on fire. There were very few people who supported the change or were even indifferent. It seemed like the entire community united against it. JetBrains really didn't have a…

Just out of interest, what other development-focused forums are there?

Forums in general have been dying out for a while now, unfortunately. I think this was back in August 2015 and at the time, I was an active member of some now-dead forums on the ProBoards network and I distinctly remember looking at either laravel.io or the Laracasts forums to gauge reaction.

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#372

if JetBrains people are reading this, I want to say THANK YOU! You saved lots of developer time with IDE, then Kotlin language. I use Golang, Python and Database IDEs, and they are really nice and time saving, can't imagine how much time you guys saved to Java developers where everything is reflection based annotations and deep level of abstract class/interface implementations. (last time when I worked with Java in V…

if JetBrains people are reading this, I love your products, but waaaay more code navigation and pane splitting/management features need to have keyboard shortcuts. VS Code gets this very right. It's generally not as powerful or friendly as JetBrains products, but the far superior keyboard navigation experience gets me to attempt to switch once a month or so.

Not a JetBrains employee, but which features are you specifically looking for? I've never found a single option in the IDE that's available through a menu that cannot be assigned a shortcut.

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#373

if JetBrains people are reading this, I want to say THANK YOU! You saved lots of developer time with IDE, then Kotlin language. I use Golang, Python and Database IDEs, and they are really nice and time saving, can't imagine how much time you guys saved to Java developers where everything is reflection based annotations and deep level of abstract class/interface implementations. (last time when I worked with Java in V…

JetBrains is one of my favourite ever companies! A few years back I switched from Visual Studio + ReSharper to Rider, and haven't looked back - it's such a fantastic, fully-featured, stable product. I have a personal license that let's me use ReSharper, Rider, dotCover, dotMemory (love this!), dotTrace. Some of the best money I've ever spent, and I happily renew year on year. I also love the pricing model that reduce…

> it's such a […] stable product

Am I using a different IDE? I'm dealing with bugs in their refactoring engine almost every day (at least in Python and TypeScript); I need to invalidate the cache every other week because something something is not working; it's 2020 and I still can't configure my IDE deterministically through text files (which regularly results in situations where building the project works fine for colleague X but not for me, even though we seem to have the same config, so I end up having to delete the project and create it again). And don't even get me started about CPU usage…

That's not to say that Jetbrains IDEs don't provide incredible value. They do. But I still think they leave a lot to be desired when it comes to stability.

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#374
post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disposable income seems like the more relevant number here, and in that California is higher ~(48k vs 38k USD, although numbers are a bit stale). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...

It's not more relevant, because disposable income ignores things Norwegians get 'free' (because it is already deducted). Part of that 'deduction' pays for heavy tax-breaks and subsidies for electric cars in Norway. But then GDP is also an abhorrent metric to use for basically anything. If you use either GDP or 'disposable income' as a proxy metric to compare anything between countries, you should seriously re-evaluat…

I don't have to re-evaluate anything. I just wanted to tell OP that Norway is a very rich country and not in any way poorer than California.

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if JetBrains people are reading this, I love your products, but waaaay more code navigation and pane splitting/management features need to have keyboard shortcuts. VS Code gets this very right. It's generally not as powerful or friendly as JetBrains products, but the far superior keyboard navigation experience gets me to attempt to switch once a month or so.

Not a JetBrains employee, but which features are you specifically looking for? I've never found a single option in the IDE that's available through a menu that cannot be assigned a shortcut.

I just want them to make a stand-alone git client - their 3 way merge for merge conflicts is second to none.

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#376

I don't think it's a coincidence that Jetbrains has created a beloved product without the help of VC money. The longer I work in tech the more I see VC money as poison to good products. Because VC funded startups are forced to grow fast or die a lot of good, profitable, user focused ideas are trashed because they won't lead to rapid enough expansion. Virtually every VC startup I've worked closely with or learned abou…

I'm curious, what are the illegal (and the highly unethical) ones doing? Dont need to name the companies, but what sort of activities are you seeing?

I wonder if this shady/unethical behavior is more focused in consumer startups. In enterprise SaaS, for example, unethical behavior is a low-EV move because your customers will have standing to cancel their contracts or pursue you for damages. It's also harder to be shady under the scrutiny of 500 large recurring-revenue customers than 500,000 tiny ones.

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#377
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed - JetBrains is one of those companies where their products speak for themselves, and I happily pay every year. Absolutely money well spent.

Yes! My JetBrains Ultimate renews every November and I get a little giddy in anticipation of paying them for another year. It’s just such an amazing value. JetBrains is so good it’s like finding money on the sidewalk.

No post body was provided.

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JetBrains is one of my favourite ever companies! A few years back I switched from Visual Studio + ReSharper to Rider, and haven't looked back - it's such a fantastic, fully-featured, stable product. I have a personal license that let's me use ReSharper, Rider, dotCover, dotMemory (love this!), dotTrace. Some of the best money I've ever spent, and I happily renew year on year. I also love the pricing model that reduce…

> it's such a […] stable product Am I using a different IDE? I'm dealing with bugs in their refactoring engine almost every day (at least in Python and TypeScript); I need to invalidate the cache every other week because something something is not working; it's 2020 and I still can't configure my IDE deterministically through text files (which regularly results in situations where building the project works fine for…

I haven't used PyCharm or WebStorm (you mention Python & Typescript, so I guess you're using them), only Rider and peripheral products like dotMemory and dotTrace. I mainly use Rider on Windows, but occasionally use it on MacOS too.

I've encountered the odd issue with EAP versions of Rider (to be expected of course), but the release versions have been rock solid. Coming from Visual Studio, it's been a godsend!

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBF, Jetbrains IDEs do feel sluggish at least on macOS compared to the alternatives (like Xcode or VSCode) on my mid-2014 13" MBP. I don't know if the JVM has performance problems specific to macOS which would explain why big UI applications feel so laggy, or whether other systems with more recent CPUs simply have more reserves to hide the lower UI performance though (the latter is probably more likely).

As a counterpoint, for a project of decently large size on my 2019 MBP, IntelliJ is snappy and a delight to work with, while Xcode takes up 30 GB of space, takes minutes to boot up, and gives me syntax highlighting and autocompletion about as reliably as a broken clock tells time.

Xcode opens in seconds for me, and my projects are massive. Sure, it can be slow to do certain things, but its startup time is generally ahead of every Java-based IDE I have every used.

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#380

Jetbrains is one of the few tool vendors that do not have to aggressively market their way into our tech stacks. That alone is a key indication of how good and useful their products are. Great that this is rewarded. I really hope that they will stay this way and grow organically rather than with force. (Long-term user/customer here. I am using IntelliJ since like version 2 (with some gaps).)

I strongly believe their single user license was responsible for a lot of their success.

One of the dynamics that has made open source such a juggernaut is a consequence of the 'give a man a little power': Those with the purse strings making strategic decisions for the company without considering the benefits of buying a piece of software.

"I won't pay for that." could be answered with "That's okay, it's free!"

Jetbrains isn't free, but the license explicitly binds the copy to your person, not your location or computer. I can have my private copy running at work and left open on my personal computer at home.

You won't pay for my IDE? That's okay, I already have a license.

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