[solardev]

I think Fleet's their hopeful answer to VSCode. IntelliJ is powerful, but so, so messy, with a convoluted UI from the 90s/2000s. Even the simplified one is much klunklier than VSCode, especially for everyday/every-hour tasks like NPM scripts, debugging, etc. Every essential function is hidden in tiny competing side panels triggered by some obscure icon in a different part of the screen.

I love and use Jetbrains IDEs every day, but after a decade I still only find their UIs merely tolerable. Many of my colleagues try them out for an hour or two and then jump ship back to VSCode just because the initial "wtf is going on" factor is so high =/

I'm guessing Fleet was their answer, an opportunity to develop a greenfield UI for a new generation of devs raised with UX (vs the old guard of IntelliJ users from past decades). It made sense, until AI suddenly took over everything and nobody cared what your IDE UI is like anymore.

[homebrewer]

You forgot to add "IMHO". IDEA has fantastic UI, it's fully configurable and 100% usable through pre-assigned hotkeys. For example, fuzzy search is available everywhere, in every tool window, in the database window, in search results, etc. The same key combination (ctrl+alt+arrow up/down on my instance) can be used to jump between search results, symbol usages, TODOs, linter results, and so on. They thought through and implemented countless convenient features, most of which I will not be able to remember, but do use every day purely through muscle memory.

They're also now intent on destroying them in favor of the "new" primitive UI by trying to cater to new users (who are seemingly fine with never becoming power users). The good UI is still available through a plugin, but it's obvious it will be dropped in the next few years. I'm pretty sure they will lose the old guard like me right after that.

[johnisgood]

> They're also now intent on destroying them in favor of the "new" primitive UI by trying to cater to new users (who are seemingly fine with never becoming power users).

I am a power user of my tools. It is sad when a tool gets simplified and have configurations deleted, it is like getting rid of "Advanced" option, essentially.

[graypegg]

Genuine question, what are you missing from the old UI? I am still maybe not a “fan” of the new UI, but I’ve since gotten pretty proficient with it and I genuinely can’t think of anything that’s impeding me. I think the general information density dropped somewhat, but a lot of the old UI was noise. I don’t need a big file path taking up 60% of the top toolbar. Nor a default Jetbrains space logo just sitting there. Why do I need a disabled stop button when no task/debug job is running? The old VCS tools were quick to access but it was also just 3 arrows next to the word “GIT:”. That’s a bit clunky and hard to click isn’t it? And it’s not like I need to optimize milliseconds on “updating this branch”. It happens a lot but opening a menu is the same amount of effort while not requiring close hit targets. No matter your muscle memory, you’ll nudge 16px over every once in a while. (<shiftshift> pull <return> also being my preferred way to pull/any VCS action anyway, so the point is moot)

Maybe my one main complaint is the side panes. I still loathe the hieroglyphic buttons. I would love a return to the sensible vertical text labels… but even then I realize I never change the order of those panes, so it’s not like I’m ever unsure of which pane is which at this point.

It feels… perfectly cromulent. I don’t really care at this point, if it helps new folks use IDEA IDEs, cool. Doesn’t affect my life at all now. And that’s coming from someone that does actually use the useful features of an IDE, and has been for a long time.

[speleding]

I too missed the old VCS tools in the new UI. But it was 10 minutes work to get them back in the toolbar, along with a few other things I missed (and that setting syncs to my JetBrains account, so new installs get that same modification).

I get trying to be minimalist but the VCS icons are really useful because they also convey if something has not been pushed / pulled yet.

[phreack]

Honestly the hieroglyphic buttons are a deal breaker for me. It's just a cognitive load I can't overcome without frustration. The vertical labels were just perfect and Jetbrains actively ignores feedback on that. On a second place, not having bottom toolbars anymore is such a downgrade! I would use it to have a convenient console at hand constantly. I did use the Git buttons constantly, and now it's either hard or impossible to customize some buttons, plus they'll be hieroglyphical. And at the end, I just don't like how there's less information like where my file is located (as in, "which index.js was I looking at?"), visual separators marking button borders and tab borders are now gone, and so on.

Now, there's the classic plugin but it's got an expiration date. I also could get used to all of this, and I did, I migrated to VSCode. It has a surprising (yet hilariously complex) amount of theming options and I got the contrast to previous JB defaults. Because Jetbrains' communication has been just awful throughout this change these past couple of years, I just don't trust them anymore to not destroy my workflow on a whim, it's a portent of enshittification.

[graypegg]

The bottom toolbar... is something I didn't consider actually. Also agree with you on that. That removed a whole layout option. (Split bottom left/right, OR open a wide bottom pane. Now all panes need to be splits.)

[DecentShoes]

I despise the trend of removing text labels for icons. It's bad design, everyone knows it's bad design, Windows 11 is full of this mistake, but one company did it and I guess now everyone has to do it.

[tommica]

Yep, I'm glad for their "Classic UI" plugin - I really dislike working with the new one, it's too VSCody for my liking.

[solardev]

I mean, I did start the post with an "I think"... it's pretty clearly an opinion, no?

I also don't think that's some obscure hypothesis on my part. It was just the zeitgeist at the time Fleet first came out (https://developers.slashdot.org/story/21/12/04/1655249/jetbr...)... seemed obvious that it was to counter VSCode. Fleet's own homepage says "We envisioned Fleet as a coding tool with a clear minimalist design that doesn’t overwhelm and helps keep you focused."

I'm not trying to convince anyone that one look & feel is better than another, just point out that there IS a generational divide (my guess) or at least a divide (of SOME sort) between those who prefer dense UIs and those who prefer simpler ones. My younger coworkers especially seem to struggle with the full-blown IntelliJ – it's just a trend I noticed, not some deep scholarly analysis. It's part of a generational fashion trend towards more whitespace and less information density.

Jetbrains already risked quite a flame war when they launched the "simplified UI" for IntelliJ, to a very mixed love-it-or-hate-it reception. They realized they couldn't change the existing UI too much without alienating some % of their existing users. So Fleet was a way to instead make an alternative, sharing some of the same backend but with a different enough UI for those who want it.

I doubt it's ever going to replace the traditional IntelliJ UI, especially now that they're refocusing efforts on AI stuff instead of minimalist UIs.

[vr46]

I literally did not renew last month after twelve years of paying, and longer overall, and the UI was the last straw. I installed the "classic" UI plugin, but it's like you say, I know they're going to drop it. I figured that if I have to use a UI like their new one then I can use VSCode as well, there's no real reason to stay. The real cutting edge stuff is happening over at VSCode anyway. Plus Jetbrains never made a decent VCS interface and I can always use an older version with a permanent fallback licence.

[joseda-hg]

I don't know, being uber configurable isn't necessarily what you want when you're not familiar with a tool and you don't know yet what you need to configure or faff with

I've only recently started using JetBrains, so I'm only familiar with the new UI but I distinctly feel like I don't know what I'm missing on extra functions because I'm just not aware of it existing

[solardev]

> I've only recently started using JetBrains, so I'm only familiar with the new UI but I distinctly feel like I don't know what I'm missing on extra functions because I'm just not aware of it existing

Don't worry, I've been using it for 10+ years and I still feel that way every day :)

[DecentShoes]

You also didn't add "IMHO".

[coldtea]

>You forgot to add "IMHO"

But also objectively.

[nsonha]

VSCode can do all of that, and for most languages, VSCode's/OSS LSPs are often more performant/feature rich than whatever running inside IDea that takes tens of minutes to index a project in my computer.

Who should I take seriously now? The "power users" who claim that vim with lsp and terminal is the way, or the "power users" who claim that bloated UIs is the way?

As far as I am concerned, "power users" only really need the functionality to be there and accessible with a command palette, do away with "power users" panels and buttons please.

[indexedcosmoks]

>VSCode's/OSS LSPs are often more performant/feature rich than whatever running inside IDea that takes tens of minutes to index a project in my computer.

Typically if this happens I notice IDEA is indexing the entire dependency tree for something like node or python. It'll have an understanding of everything but is much slower to index and typically not needed. If you exclude node_modules you'll have very fast time once again

[grogenaut]

I'm the opposite, vs code feels so clunky to me and full of crappy bolted on low and mid quality plugins. Yes it's lower barrier to entry on making things and for editing configs but the configs are opaque, hard to find. Odd for microsoft that it's more of a linux mindset than windows. It feels so janky setting up run configurations or test runs.

[phreack]

I think how awful making run configurations is, is the one worst aspect of VSCode. tasks.json? launch.json? I just want the "run" button to run a custom build command and I could just not figure it out.

[MortyWaves]

Not to mention it hardly seems to support simply running things from package.json script section when doing JS stuff. Every time I try it seems to never quite work, or is very clunky and obtuse, sometimes requiring the creation of new files (???) to do it.

Compare that with the other main IDE I use, Visual Studio. It works great.

[coldtea]

>full of crappy bolted on low and mid quality plugins

That's on you. What it comes with is great. And there's a huge selection of good third party plugins if one takes attention to what they install.

[b_e_n_t_o_n]

My only problem with jetbrains UI is that it's slow. Night and day difference using even vscode, let alone vim, sublime, helix, zed, etc. I tolerate it because the functionality it brings, but I find myself actually writing code in something faster. And I don't see fleet improving on this in a meaningful way - it's basically a competitor to vscode, which I don't use for the same reasons I won't use fleet.

There is a whole nother discussion about "progressive discovery" of functionality which I think is actually wrong although that would be a fringe view among "UX" specialists.

[AnthonBerg]

Jetbrains always leave so much performance on the table!!

Jetbrains IDEs go pretty fast when the JVM running them is switched over to the ZGC garbage collector, and by making sure the Metal or Vulkan renderer are being used. (And DirectX on Windows? idk?)

The difference is pretty stark. ZGC is Verygood. Everything is very responsive. This is not an “enterprisey” JVM GC that takes ages to spin up for throughput. It’s quick.

The whole IDE starts up in like 1 second on my 2018 Intel i7 laptop?, including open projects and all. It’s wild how fast IntelliJ can get – and it’s also kinda wild how much performance they leave on the table with the default options.

It’s an easy config change in the .vmoptions file.

I think on macOS the Metal GPU-accelerated UI rendering is the default these days. On Linux you need to opt in to the Vulkan equivalent. It’s still a bit unrefined but worth it even now.

ZGC is a much bigger difference though. Try it!!!

[solardev]

If it's a simple drop in improvement, I wonder why it's not enabled by default?

Seems like some things become faster while other things become slower? https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IJPL-1284/Increase-defa...

[AnthonBerg]

I’ve wondered about the same thing.

–Thanks for the link!

I only notice things getting much quicker, fwiw. I do habitually throw resources at the IDE as mentioned in the next Youtrack comment down.

[b_e_n_t_o_n]

Oooh thanks! I'll try this out.

[juped]

Slow? Jetbrains IDEs, slow? Compared to, of all things, the LSP-reliant VS Code?

I pay for them primarily to save me from LSP, which they do for many languages, though the Elixir plugin is not by Jetbrains (but it actually predates LSP itself).

[nmfisher]

Exactly this. Every time I revisit a Jetbrains product, I uninstall it within 5 minutes. It doesn't matter how great the features are, it's just sluggish.

People can rag on Electron apps all they like, but VSCode on modern hardware is very snappy. Jetbrains is a noticeable downgrade.

[winrid]

Weird. None of my PCs have cpus made after 2018. After the initial indexing, things are fast. I guess that's what you're running into on startup.

[indexedcosmoks]

There are still things like opening a menu somewhere that has a random worst case latency of ~2 seconds for me. It feels random and is frustrating, but not quite enough where I'd consider learning to use something else

[winrid]

interesting, what menu? Just curious if I have gotten used to it. My desktop is a 2700x and my laptop is an 8th gen i7, hardly competitive nowadays. I usually have 3-6 IDE windows open. I think sometimes resolving TS types in Webstorm can take a few seconds after some changes.

It's not Sublime Text fast, for sure.

[pjmlp]

Just use Eclipse or Netbeans instead, I never liked InteliJ for Java development due to its continuous indexing, errors have to be explicilty asked for, and the ten finger combos for shortcuts.

VSCode is anyway running either Netbeans or Eclipse headless for its Java support, better use the real deal.

[anonzzzies]

Yep, same here. I just uninstall because it's unusable compared to vscode/vim/emacs/zed for the same jobs. And I have a new-ish macbook pro. I always hear people say they have a different experience, but, like with so many things in life, that always seems not true when I sit next to them; then it is just them being used to sluggish misery as the normal.

[rhubarbtree]

No complaints on my MacBook Air M2. What machine are you on?

It’s definitely not as fast to load etc as say sublime, but it’s an IDE not an editor.

[mavamaarten]

Well.. I'm running it on an M3 and it can be truly slow. Not always! But opening up a package inside a multi-module Kotlin project can literally take 10 seconds. Which isn't much seeing how great of an IDE it is and how much time it saves because it is so powerful. But it's heavy alright. Every time I see new features I don't really use, I wish they would invest in trimming fat instead.

[mike_hearn]

There's something really not right there. Right click the bottom right status bar area, enable memory monitor and ensure you aren't running out of RAM or something. I use IntelliJ on an old Intel MacBook with a large Kotlin project and its performance is good. I never have to wait ten seconds for something like that. It sounds like you may have some old flag that's limiting its heap size or pushing it into GC thrashing or something. Definitely look at the IDE logs and see if you can track it down.

[cardanome]

I actually use Jetbrains products because of the performance.

Sure indexing a new project takes a while and things will be sluggish at first but once it done, it works great. And you can easily edit huge files, like seriously huge files without problems, even the search will work smoothly. Basically the Java school of performance, absolute resources hog but scales very well.

For me vscode is intolerably slow. Sure it starts up quickly but the editing experience is absolutely infuriating. I had projects that I could not work with in vscode because a few thousand lines of code in a file were already too much for it.

[brundolf]

My main barrier to IDEA is actually performance. Despite people's complaints about electron apps, VSCode is viscerally snappier in all the little interactions. I tried to switch to IDEA for the powerful features, but it always felt like mud

I haven't tried Fleet but that could be part of it

[Aeolun]

I thought fleet would be that snappy alternative, but then, in a fit of insanity, they decided to outsource all the actual non-render logic to the IDEA engine, and the whole thing was dead on arrival for me.

Now I use Zed, which seems to be what Fleet should have been.

[brandonmenc]

> with a convoluted UI from the 90s/2000s

Some of us love this UI.

[cosmic_cheese]

I feel similarly about IntelliJ IDEs as someone primarily coming from Xcode.

Xcode has its own share of weaknesses, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that I’m irritated more frequently by quirks of IntelliJ IDEs like how the sidebar palettes work in a way that they’re constantly at battle with each other and how super simple considerations like per-editor-pane back/forward/history are missing. They sometimes feel like they trip over the basics in pursuit of fancy gizmos.

[MortyWaves]

I’ve been trying DataGrip for SQL stuff after Azure Data Studio (a closed source fork of VS Code) was recently deprecated.

It has all the same UI problems I remember of their other IDEs like WebStorm. Clunky and weird looking, and that’s coming from someone that appreciates generally Windows 9x style controls and palette, JetBrains just can’t get it right.

As a side note one of the advertised features of DataGrip is its AI/LLM features which I thought was kind of cool after dealing with a terribly designed and legacy database; LLMs have really helped with refactoring.

So once I got a license for DataGrip and then opened it the AI tool was no where to be seen. I had to go read the docs page online to find out I have to install the extension myself. Weird.

The advertised AI feature is… behind another paywall with a seven day trial. Hang on, I just got DataGrip for its “included” AI support and you want to charge me for it anyway?

I’m glad I got the license for free via their OSS support, but would I have bothered if I knew one of the main features is actually a separate paid feature? Probably not.

[joseda-hg]

Ostensibly it's not one of the main features, Datagrip as a product has been a thing long before AI integration was even a thought

[MortyWaves]

It’s absolutely front and center of its marketing page.

[mroche]

It's (at least to me) fairly obvious from both the feature's dedicated page and DataGrip's purchasing page that the AI Assistant is an add-on cost.

[conradfr]

I mean adding AI without changing the IDE price would not make to much sense, financially.

I would have love it though ;)

[doctorpangloss]

> Many of my colleagues try them out for an hour or two and then jump ship back to VSCode just because the initial "wtf is going on" factor is so high

People who get hung up on the aesthetics of their IDEs are going to have other problems with programming generally.

[satvikpendem]

I just started using Zed now for many things, it's still in development but it's getting there.

[noodletheworld]

> Many of my colleagues try them out for an hour or two and then jump ship back to VSCode just because the initial "wtf is going on" factor is so high =/

Really?

I mean, the UIs are basically the same now. I have them open side by side on my desktop right now and they're both:

- black boxes with a panel on the left of icons, then a tree of files, then a tabbed pane of open files.

- clicking on the icons on the left opens some obscure subwindow depending on you magically knowing what the icon means.

The only meaningful difference is that in vscode there's a command palette at the top where you can type in random stuff and get a list of actions, and in intellij you have to 'know' that the shortcut for that is 'press shift 3 times' instead of 'shift control p'

...but I mean, thats it; they're otherwise pretty much identical, practically.

Honestly, anyone who opens intellij and then goes back to vscode because its too different is a numpty.

Things work differently, and people don't like different things, and if they go back because it was different or the shortcuts are different, that's fair. It is disruptive.

...but, because the 'wtf is going on' factor is too high? Realllllllly? What does that even mean?

Come on. They're not that different. If clicking on 'run' on the top right instead of on the left bar is too 'wtf', you really haven't made a real effort to try using the other IDE.

(The same goes for old school intellij users who try vscode and then run away. Give it a decent shot before you walk away because it's too hard if the only hard thing is your keyboard shortcut muscle memory... vscode is pretty great)

You only really see the deep differences when you use them extensively for things like refactoring and debugging.

[charrondev]

On the topic of keyboard shortcuts I use both IntelliJ IDEs and VSCode every day.

IntelliJ ships a “VSCode” keymap in the product that you can switch to with one option in the settings.

[DangitBobby]

VSCode also has a plugin for IntelliJ keybindings FWIW.