[leoh]

I’m baffled by this. Many folks spend thousands on hardware. JetBrains makes such exceptional tools, I don’t understand how a few hundred bucks for the complete product pack is unreasonable (with understandable exceptions for folks with limited income). This stuff isn’t free, it surprises me when fellow engineers are averse towards paying for great software that helps us build software.

[joshstrange]

The price is so crazy cheap I don't get it. I pay $173/yr for the all products pack ($289 first year, $231 second year, $173 year 3+) and it's some of the best value/ROI.

Even if I though VSC was on the same level (I don't) the configuration and plugin management hell alone is worth $173/yr (No, I don't want to hear about how easy you think it is). If you're using it professionally then $173/yr is nothing, hell, I'd probably pay $300/yr and not gripe because again, I get so much value out of these tools. We are talking about a tiny fraction of a percentage of the income I make while using these tools.

[SpaghettiCthulu]

The configuration management in JetBrains' products is far worse than in VSC. On the JetBrains side we have a configuration system based on a tree of XML files, some of which contain system-specific configuration and should not be checked in to version control (sometimes in the same file as shared configuration!). On the VSC side we have a handful of json files where system-specific configuration can be stored in the user's home directory, allowing for easy version control of shared configuration. What killer configuration management feature do JetBrains' products offer that outweighs the aforementioned flaws?

[leoh]

Okay, fine, I don’t disagree. Your complaints are warranted. VSCode is better, Xcode (imo) is worse.

>What killer configuration management feature do JetBrains' products offer that outweighs the aforementioned flaws?

I don’t know your use-case, but I’m sure that their products could support it if you spent a few minutes reading documentation.

Yes, it ain’t JSON, but it’s not “awful” either imo.

FWIW, one neat pattern is binding a nix file for setting up your developer environment with all the tools, scripts, etc. you need. You can even have nix bring in jetbrains products (pinned to a particular version) so the team is all squared away.

[joshstrange]

I don’t have to deal with JSON. It’s really that simple.

I’ve got better things to do than read every plugin’s docs for how they want to do something and hope it’s all up to date. Just give me a UI to configure it.