JetBrains Moving Its Dev Tools To Subscription Model

esarjeant writes: For many Java developers, IntelliJ has been our predominant IDE. JetBrains is looking to make their tools easier easier to buy and use by switching to a subscription program. Their plan is to have people pay a monthly/yearly fee for access to the tools instead of upgrading when they're ready. Fortunately, if your subscription lapses it looks like you'll have 30 days to check all your stuff in. How does NetBeans look now? Many members of various developer communities are pushing back against this change: "For a developer with an unstable income, it might be perfectly fine to stay on an older version of the software until they've stashed enough cash to afford the upgrade. That will no longer work." JetBrains has acknowledged the feedback, and say they will act on it.

Comments

Rent seeking behavior

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

This is just another example of greedy, rent-seeking behavior, trying to force users to pony up cash on a monthly basis forever and ever and ever...heaven forbid you ever get to actually own anything ever again.

Re:Rent seeking behavior

[Anonymous Coward]

This is really quite simple.

The people paying for the upgrades consider the changes improvements. The people who don't pay, don't.

Now you can understand why so many people were on Office 2003 for so long.

Re:Rent seeking behavior

[Anonymous Coward]

Just put the price up then, virtualy everybody has said so, people just dont want to pay a subscription.

Re:Rent seeking behavior

[DivineKnight]

Pity, IntelliJ was on my list of considerations. Now I am rethinking that prospect.

Re:Rent seeking behavior

[Anonymous Coward]

How about paying for the improvements *when* they are made, rather than paying perpetually for implied improvements that may or may not benefit you at all?

Re: Rent seeking behavior

[Anonymous Coward]

People do pay for improvements. You come out with an improved product and I'll buy it--if I want to.

These rent seekers want you to pay whether there are improvements or not, and this may come as a shocl, but some people don't like that.

Re:Rent seeking behavior

[Culture20]

And why a lot of others shifted to OpenOffice and LibreOffice. No ribbon was the selling feature; no cost was icing.

Re:Rent seeking behavior

[Billly Gates]

Outside of slashdot I have not met anyone yet who has ever complained about the ribbon in many years.

It took me a week to end the frustation and get the hang of things. A month later I was proficient and prefer it and the change previews over the hiddeous nested menus of 2003 any day. Now I curse and pull my hair out when I got to 2003 workstation

Want to see something cool? Hit the alt key in office? If you are on a laptop with limited space like a starbucks or airplane you do not need a mouse. Just hit the alt key and it will show you which shortcut will open each ribbon. I got hooked as I prefer to use Window key and type without a mouse and now this on a laptop and find it very Unix like

Re:Rent seeking behavior

[Anonymous Coward]

It's rent seeking if you expect to make some capital, sit on it, and appoint yourself local land baron to collect rents without actually performing further work.

For a lot of us, this goes against basic work ethic and social contract assumptions. We think you should be compensated for new work/value you produce and stop being compensated as soon as your work stops, just like it goes for the rest of us. It's an unfortunate side effect of capitalism that capital seems to move beyond being a temporary store of value and turns into a permanent lever to exploit all who come later.

Re:Rent seeking behavior

[bondsbw]

For what it's worth, they have since stated that they are listening.

I think you are incorrect by implying that nobody wants a subscription model, just as it is wrong to assume that everyone wants it. Many subscriptions are worth it so long as you plan to upgrade every release, and sometimes even if you don't. They tend to come with perks like support and cloud management.

But, I think that companies who offer subscriptions should offer both, and let the customer decide. And I think you should have a perpetual license to any version you download during the subscription period.

Re:Rent seeking behavior

[gohmifune]

It looks like individual licenses are still available. Why not go ahead and purchase it and maybe an extension?

Re:Rent seeking behavior

[GNious]

I got used to the ribbon in a matter of days, but having quite literally NO other software using it, it still means that switching to MS Office applications requires a larger mental "context switch" than switching between pretty much any other 2 applications.

Re:Rent seeking behavior

[codeButcher]

Now you can understand why so many people were on Office 2003 for so long.

Were?

Re:Rent seeking behavior

[tehcyder]

It's rent seeking if you expect to make some capital, sit on it, and appoint yourself local land baron to collect rents without actually performing further work.

For a lot of us, this goes against basic work ethic and social contract assumptions. We think you should be compensated for new work/value you produce and stop being compensated as soon as your work stops, just like it goes for the rest of us. It's an unfortunate side effect of capitalism that capital seems to move beyond being a temporary store of value and turns into a permanent lever to exploit all who come later.

Capitalism is all about accumulating capital, it's not some unfortunate side effect.

Unless you tax surpluses at 100%, I don't see how you can stop companies piling up capital.

Oh, and your "basic work ethic" idea is cute.

Never been a fan

[rholtzjr]

I have used it once on a contract and was not impressed with its functionality. There wasn't much difference from other IDEs and most of them are free.
Hmmm, pay for something or use a free one?

Re:Not going to work out for them

[Z00L00K]

If you think Eclipse is bad you haven't seen bad.

Re:Not going to work out for them

[grahamtriggs]

IntelliJ is one of those free IDEs. There is an open source version. And the open source / community version is vastly superior to any of the other free java IDEs.

As a paying user..

[benjfowler]

... I'd feel a bit better about it, if they actually fixed some of the long-standing rough edges, like the completely-broken built-in compiler behaviour (something that Eclipse, despite being free and generally Old and Busted), and severe lag even on powerful machines, seeing as they're now asking for more money for the same product.

They promised this years ago, and it still hasn't happened. If I'm paying (and now, paying continuously), I'd expect them to lift their game.

Want my money? Give me software that works better than the free alternative.

Re:As a paying user..

[davester666]

They are claiming that with this new model, they won't have the constant pressure to come up with fancy new features each year to make you re-up your support agreement, so they will actually work on fixing bugs and releasing features that have fewer bugs as they are completed.

Somehow, I doubt it, as the subscription model removes any real impetus to advance the application, just to make sure it keeps running with minimal improvements.

Re:As a paying user..

[jma05]

> and the clusterfuck that was Eclipse

I never got this rage against Eclipse. Its a FOSS product. For a FOSS product, it provides a level of polish that goes well beyond the standards of a typical FOSS. It is one of the most complex projects out there. The standard distributions of Eclipse work quite well, out-of-the-box. Now, it has a very large ecosystem of complex plugins - at a level that is unmatched by other IDEs. Like with Firefox, some of these plugins do bog down Eclipse. But that's hardly the fault of Eclipse. I only seem to have problems with Eclipse when I keep one install and load all my plugins into it. When I separate it out (one for functional languages, one for dynamic ones, one for Java etc) to multiple, logical installs (it is a portable distro)... no problems. P2 provisioning (helps create multiple runtime profiles from the same plugin install base) worked quite well (haven't used it recently), but it is not promoted for some reason.

I don't use Visual Studio these days. I tried Python Tools a while ago though. It is funny watching MS reps talk as if it was they who brought code-completion to the unwashed Python masses. I was using code completion with Python in 2001. On Windows, I tended to use PyScripter - very light, but no IPython integration like Spyder.

For me, PyDev worked quite fine (I prefer Spyder myself). I tried PyCharm; it was nice; but surprisingly heavy. I generally dislike IntelliJ and Netbeans based IDEs on Linux because of the fonts. They are more tolerable elsewhere.

Good point, Weak argument

[mtinsley]

For a developer with an unstable income, it might be perfectly fine to stay on an older version of the software until they've stashed enough cash to afford the upgrade. That will no longer work.

Just to be clear, "stashing enough cash for to afford the upgrade" means setting aside $100 for the year.

If you have to "stash cash" to afford the upgrade chances are you should save your money; you can get by with Eclipse. I don't approve of the new pricing model, but the "I can no longer afford to be a developer" argument doesn't work. The new model is actually cheaper per year for anyone who always renews their license.

Personally, I prefer to purchase something and be done with it. If I want the upgrade I can purchase that outright as well. If I don't then I think I should be able to continue using what I have already paid for.

Re:Good point, Weak argument

[gyroheli]

That's just one point he made, could read the article for more. Such as how this new service requires the program to phone home to continue working. In a work environment where internet access is restricted, it make not be able to phone home so using your personal license for use at work won't be an option. Your company would have to pay and host their own licensing server but that server (according to the article) won't be able to validate personal licenses. Even if it could validate person licenses the company would still have to host a validation server for a product they aren't paying for which idk how that'd work. But yah if you are looking at $100 per year that might seem like a large one time purchase, but with the new system you pay per month which is only $8 per month or so depending on the product. If they can pay rent then that definitely is affordable. Personally i too would prefer to keep a copy an indefinite amount of time. As someone else mentioned i'm still on an old copy of Microsoft Office with no reason to upgrade. Not looking forward to when Office 365 is the only available option. Open Office interface is really bad with large drop down lists. Not looking forward to paying $100 a month when you start adding up all the applications that are going to a monthly subscription model.

Re:Good point, Weak argument

[Anonymous Coward]

And what happens when the company discovers this really isn't profitable, so much in fact that they have to close up shop? Show of hands, who here thinks that the company will waste time and money keeping the server up, or making a tool to remove the DRM?

Re:Good point, Weak argument

[lucm]

if you are looking at $100 per year that might seem like a large one time purchase

Wait, is this Slashdot Bangladesh? What's next, a thread about pissing in a bucket to save money on the water bill?
 

Re:Good point, Weak argument

[Billly Gates]

Office 365 is great for me.

MS does sell the regular version of Office too you know. I need MS Access. For $99 a year I have Office on 4 devices with Access including my phone and my exwife in California when she needed a real version of Office and was broke. Their 365 includes free new updates like 2015 when it comes out and 1 TB of Onedrive storage and file synchronization across all my devices. They automatically show up in recent documents.

It is an excellent value as this would cost more than $2000 easily for the professional version on each device ... oh oops I upgraded the motherboard and install got de-actived :-( ... no problem I will just enable it on new computer take it off old one etc.

Done correctly it can benefit the consumer as well. Adobe ... not so much

Re:Good point, Weak argument

[gyroheli]

Their 365 includes free new updates like 2015 when it comes out and 1 TB of Onedrive storage and file synchronization across all my devices.

That's the thing, i don't need those upgrades, and paying monthly is insane. I've had the same version of Office for what is it now 8+ years? I've never had a need to upgrade, the software i purchased works just fine. Not everyone needs bleeding edge, most of the time bleeding edge in software isn't that big of an improvement.

It is an excellent value as this would cost more than $2000 easily for the professional version on each device ... oh oops I upgraded the motherboard and install got de-actived :-( ... no problem I will just enable it on new computer take it off old one etc.

Done correctly it can benefit the consumer as well. Adobe ... not so much

That's a problem with the new DRM. I have an older version Microsoft Office installed on about 7 computers, more if you count upgrades and past computers. It's this new trend where companies are trying to limit the number of computers consumers can install their software on. Ok so Jetbrains wants $20 a month for all their programs, great! That's cheap and affordable compared to paying hundreds of dollars. Adobe creative cloud is just $50 a month, wow what a steal for all their applications. Now suppose Autodesk gets a cloud service, and Microsoft Visual Studio and they price theirs somewhere between $20-50, let's say worse case they both do $50. That's going to be $170 a month. That's $2040 a year. Where as before you could get a slighter older version and it'd work perfectly fine, someone that buys the newest version every year and sells their older copy for cheap. This is exactly what they are trying to take away, people using old versions of their software, they can't make money off it. So they are now simply taking away that choice. Anyways $10 a month sounds great if you only need to use one program from one company, not so much for someone that has to work with a bunch of those programs from a multitude of companies.

You talk about getting the latest updates, but what reason do they now have to update? Before it was to try and get you to move to the next version, with promise of more and better features. They have your money, you can't stop giving them your money cause then you won't be able to use their program at all.

Re:Good point, Weak argument

[Billly Gates]

Adobe sucks and is a monopoly. After buying Aldus and anyone who made video editing they are trying to milk the cow for all its worth. Also they try to make each function into a seperate product to get more money. So it is like MS splitting up word into 3 different programs. One for editing. One proofing. One for clip art etc. Then they have the freaking audacity to charge you full price each year??

Don't view opinions on subscriptions by Adobe who suck.

I pay $90 a year and could go much cheaper with 3 devices without publisher or Access for $60 a year. That is a few dollars a month and I love my cloud as I take pics from work and they all sync up so MS unlike Adobe gave me a feature.

In my scenario I am willing to pay and it seems fair for a yearly subscription. If Adobe was $90 a year and gave you some extra services it may not be a bad thing.

If Jetbrains offers cool features for cheaper and project management capabilities I can see this as a plus for business too

Re:Good point, Weak argument

[gyroheli]

Like i said, if you are only paying for one service then i'm sure you'll find it a steal. Anyways Google Drive is free for 15GB of space (that's more than enough space, i have my backup ISO of windows 8 and 10 on there along with thousands of other files and pictures) and they provide word editing tools all for free. They work in most web browsers and mobile devices running Android. Not sure if it works on Windows Phone but does anyone even have one of those? Again, all that, for free. Looks like OneDrive has free 15 GB of space as well of some free version of Office. Makes me wonder what you are even paying for $90 a year.

I worked for a print shop

[rsilvergun]

in early 2000s. They had an invoicing package designed for print shops. The software was very popular. Apparently just about every print shop in America used it. The software was easy to use, install and maintain. It never broke and didn't need updates The company that made it is tits up. After they were done selling it to all the print shops out there there just wasn't anything left for them, and there weren't enough new print shops to sell to (what with the chains like FedEx/Kinkos muscling in).

Yeah, it's rent seeking, but I don't really see an alternative for a company that makes utility software. It's damned hard to get people to pay for it...

Re:I worked for a print shop

[ZorinLynx]

I find it hard to believe a software company with the talent to make software so robust and well written that it never needs updates couldn't come up with another blockbuster product to continue making money.

Also, if the product never requires updates, wouldn't that mean that if you're paying a subscription fee you're basically flushing money down the toilet? The money's not being used to fund new versions of the software, you're just paying the developer for something you already own for eternity.

Re:I worked for a print shop

[loonycyborg]

If it doesn't need updates then there's no point for company to exist in the first place. What's wrong with people being paid only as long as they actually do useful work? I don't think you showed that rent seeking is in any way needed here let alone that there's no alternative for it.

Re:I worked for a print shop

[swb]

I've found that the smaller the niche market, the smaller the developer, down to the point where some niches it's like a guy who used to work in that line of business who wrote some software for it where none existed and found it more lucrative to sell it than to stay in the business.

There's always the chance "the guy" was in his 40s when the ball started rolling, he had near zero overhead and made enough where he could retire early. Thus, no need to come out with a new product or make the dialog boxes rounder or whatever passes for innovation. He's 59, living with his wife in a condo in Florida and spends his days fishing and living comfortably without having to work anymore. Not family dynasty rich, but retirement home paid for and enough investment capital to live off forever.

In doing SMB consulting, I've run across a couple of applications like this where the software was written by some guy and one day they call up with a question or somethng and the phone number is now disconnected. In one case, it wasn't a big deal because the application did like one market-specific thing and it worked fine. In another, it was a problem because the application had some kind of home-rolled DRM and needed him to generate a new keyfile if it was installed on a new computer.

Re:I worked for a print shop

[gohmifune]

JetBrains charges for updates, and it seems to have worked for them so far. Plenty of don't mind the $50/year to get updates and make sure the software still works. The subscription model isn't nearly as profitable as one would think, especially since old customers get to keep their software and buy 1 more year's worth of updates. If anything, raising the price and allowing for perpetual licenses would have been better.

Re:I worked for a print shop

[greenfruitsalad]

as a happy user of their other product - pycharm, i don't understand the concept of not needing updates in an IDE. at least in python, i expect the IDE to understand the new features in latest versions of python. so normally, i'd expect software updates every time there's a new language version.

could someone explain to me why updates might not be needed for a java ide?

Netbeans is looking just fine

[brendan.robert]

I've been using Netbeans since version 3.6 and am quite pleased with how it works, even in the recently released 8.1 beta. I've tried JetBrains and it seems fine enough for what you pay for (except the maven support feels very clunky and not very seamless, IMHO.) But feature comparison vs. price paid? Netbeans wins, hands down. I've tried Eclipse many times over the years also, but come to the same conclusion: I still don't personally like using Eclipse. Therefore I keep going back to Netbeans because it has 90% of what I need and there's plugins for the other missing 5%. The rest? I have a command line and I'm not afraid to use it. You can use whatever tool(s) you like, but I've been coding in Java professionally since 2000 and you can uninstall my copy of Netbeans when you pry my harddrive from my cold, dead hands.

Re:Netbeans is looking just fine

[Art Challenor]

I assume that there is some type of application for which NetBeans is as good as (or better than) Eclipse - that application is NOT desktop/standalone Java application.

As a long-time Eclipse user, I moved to NetBeans for just short of two years before the delay when starting an application and the very flaky dependency building (when multiple projects are included in the final application) drove me over the edge and back to Eclipse.

In Eclipse you hit "debug" and it starts debugging the application. In NetBeans you hit "debug" and it starts to compile. Change code in Eclipse, hit save, and quite often the application continues with the new code. In NetBeans the on-the-fly debug changes are unreliable and slow (another compile cycle).

Haven't tried IntelliJ but if I have to wait for it to compile I have no interest.

Re:Netbeans is looking just fine

[fnj]

But feature comparison vs. price paid? Netbeans wins, hands down.

No shit. If you consider that Netbeans has even a single feature, its feature to cost ratio is infinite. Nothing could ever beat that. And even if something else costs only one dollar and it has a billion features, its feature to cost ratio is negligible in comparison.

Re:Netbeans is looking just fine

[brendan.robert]

I assume that there is some type of application for which NetBeans is as good as (or better than) Eclipse - that application is NOT desktop/standalone Java application.

As someone that maintains a java-based emulator for several years I couldn't disagree more with that.

As a long-time Eclipse user, I moved to NetBeans for just short of two years before the delay when starting an application and the very flaky dependency building (when multiple projects are included in the final application) drove me over the edge and back to Eclipse. In Eclipse you hit "debug" and it starts debugging the application. In NetBeans you hit "debug" and it starts to compile. Change code in Eclipse, hit save, and quite often the application continues with the new code. In NetBeans the on-the-fly debug changes are unreliable and slow (another compile cycle).

Then you are doing it wrong, dude. You should make sure to check "Generate debugging info" under the compile settings for the project, which eliminates the need for the IDE to do it on-demand later. You can connect the debugger to a running instance by clicking "Attach debugger" as long as the process has JPDA enabled already. I do it all the time when I do J2EE or Sling-based dev work since the app servers I run locally have JDPA enabled for that purpose. If you're debugging a desktop app then, yes, you must tweak the parameters ahead of time, or just remember to run with debug instead of clicking "run", but that's minutiae and can be easily resolved by a little self-organization (e.g. decide if you are debugging or not before you launch the app) As for the flaky dependencies, were you using a Netbeans-defined project or a Maven one? If you define your project as a maven project then not only do you get simplified dependency management (which I use without any issue with both large reactor project structures as well as sibling-level dependent ones) but you also get CI support for Hudson/Jenkins. Incidentally, Netbeans can talk to Jenkins directly if you configure it to do so. If you were using a maven project structure and you still couldn't get it to work then you might have been doing something wrong (or just violated the KISS principle somehow.)

Re:Netbeans is looking just fine

[lucm]

Thanks for the math lecture, but I think to most people it's obvious that the point here is that the value of extra features in JetBrains versus what you can get in Netbeans is not worth the price they ask.

Re:Netbeans is looking just fine

[Art Challenor]

I think you've missed something. If you're using Maven then you have a compile cycle. Eclipse incremental compilation takes, effectively, no time. Hot-swapping frequently saves restarting the application and getting it back to the state where you can reproduce the bug.

NetBeans does not do either of these well

Remote debugging is always very cool, but it's a little frustrating in that when you finally finish a session with Eclipse, including hot-swapping code on the fly - you then have to actually compile the remote application (personally I use Ant, but Maven would be just as frustrating - time spent watching the application compile).

J2EE apps are mostly awash between the two environments since there's almost always a compile/redeploy phase.

Hello Bitrot

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a huge negative for me. As well as being a Java developer I am a photographer who uses Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom in my work. I HAVE NOT UPGRADED EITHER SINCE ADOBE MOVED TO THE SUBSCRIPTION MODEL. If I have a tool that I use for my work I want to own it. I don't ever want to lose access to that tool for any reason. If I have a project built in Idea and 10 years from now the world has moved on, Idea is no longer the tool of choice, and my "subscription" is lapsed because it's not used any more; I still want to be able to go back and open up my 10 year old project with my 10 year old copy of Idea. If I can't do that I need to find another tool to do all of my Java work in. A subscription model introduces a potential for digital bit rot that is unacceptable for professional software. I will never allow myself to depend on such a tool for my work.

Re:Hello Bitrot

[dgatwood]

You know that Lightroom is still available for sale, right?

When Adobe announced the "Creative Cloud" nonsense, I bought a copy of CS6, upgrading from CS3, knowing that if I didn't act, I would never be able to do so again. At that point, I immediately began phasing out my use of Photoshop. Unfortunately, I haven't created any big new projects since then, and I'm stuck using Photoshop for existing projects because Pixelmator doesn't handle manual text kerning changes correctly on import. But the cover art for my fourth novel will be done entirely in Pixelmator.

You see, Photoshop hasn't added anything I really care about since they added layers and layer effects. There are a few minor enhancements that are nice to have, but I was happy on Photoshop 7. I buy upgrades to Photoshop whenever an OS X upgrade breaks it badly enough. It annoyed me badly enough paying for bug fixes when I was doing it on my own terms. When Adobe tried to push me to a monthly fee schedule for Photoshop, I walked away and haven't looked back.

I still buy Lightroom about every second release (about $40 annually), because unlike Photoshop, its upgrades actually provide tangible benefits—new camera support, face recognition, etc. (Yeah, theoretically Photoshop upgrades technically add new camera support, too, but I've imported RAW files into Photoshop a total of three or four times ever; typically, I start out with the processed output from Lightroom.) The problem with Photoshop is that it is a mature product, and there aren't any cool new features left to add that provide enough benefit to pony up an extra $80 a year to get them.

That's a serious problem for companies like Adobe. You see, they're in a position where they command the market. The only place to go from there is down, and the writing is on the wall. Flash is a failure. Photoshop is rapidly seeing the bottom portion of its market worn away by competition. This leaves Adobe's last remaining market—big graphics shops. Those folks will keep buying Photoshop until they no longer find themselves exchanging Photoshop files with other companies. Adobe is thus bleeding those companies for every possible penny they can before Photoshop eventually fades into obsolescence. Or at least that's what it looks like from where I'm standing.

Re:Hello Bitrot

[Waccoon]

That's why you just don't build an empire around a small number of products.

Adobe has to be competitive and spend money developing and promoting new products? Boo hoo..

Easy Solution - Offer Both Models...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's an easy solution to this problem - just offer both pricing models and let the consumer choose.

E.g. you can buy a perpetual license to a specific version of Intellij for $X, or you can buy the subscription model for $Y / year (which is not tied to a specific version). At that point, its the consumer's choice.

I feel like people have knee jerked a bit much of this. I like the idea of owning my version of Intellij (have been using it since 2002'ish), but I tend to avoid buying every single version (I typically upgrade every-other release, to save a bit of $).

Re:Not going to work out for them

[fnj]

If you think Eclipse is bad you haven't seen bad.

And what if you DON'T think Eclipse is bad? What if you consider it to be pretty wonderful? Hmmm?

I can live with this...

[bunyip]

I'm self-employed and the price of IntelliJ is the equivalent of about 30 minutes of my time. I write algorithms for several companies, in multiple languages, and have been quite happy with IntelliJ. Your mileage may vary...

That said, perhaps Eclipse would do everything I need, but there is a cost of changing - I'd be spending some time scanning websites to figure out how to do what I want to do.

A.

Re: I can live with this...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're doing pretty well if you earn $398 per hour.

Re:I can live with this...

[Shados]

That is one thing thats cracking me up.

People freaking out over Photoshop's price is one thing. It's almost (not really) a monopoly, and many professions that require it aren't paid very well. Many of those professions also live or die by their skill in using Photoshop.

The tools Jetbrains make however, are almost all tied with highly paid professions with near zero unemployment rate. They also have a shitload of free alternatives.

A lot of people at work mentionned how "holy shit so expensive would never pay that much for their tools even less with subscription!". Someone buying a $800-1200 piece of software when living in a poor country doing a low paying job? Sure.

a $100-400 piece of software when compared to an american making 175k/year though? It's kind of laughable that they're screaming bloody murder.

Re:Not going to work out for them

[dinfinity]

The hate for Eclipse is so terribly outdated.

I haven't heard anyone come up with one single proper argument against Eclipse that stands today. Any dev worth his salt has an SSD, plenty of memory and a half-decent CPU. In addition to that, Eclipse has come a long way, which make the "It's slow as hell!"-thing quite outdated.

Even if it would be marginally worse than other IDEs, it has some great advantages:
1. Multi-language, hell, multi-purpose even.
2. Cross-platform
3. Free
4. Open source
5. Designed to be extended with plugins and as such, a veritable buttload of them exist.
6. Generally consistent interface

I've used it (professionally) for editing and debugging PHP, Twig, HTML, XML, YAML, CSS, Android, Java, C, Shell scripts and Javascript code residing in CVS, SVN, Git repos (and even via FTP - shudder) in the past decade and in general being able to use the same hotkeys and UI elements to perform similar tasks. I will readily admit that the different languages have varying levels of support for the more advanced features, but on the whole it easily beats other multi-language tools and saves me from having to use and become proficient in the use of a multitude of language specific editors.

It's probably not the best example, but due to the lack of plugins for Objective C in Eclipse I've been forced to use XCode for iOS development: Talking about donkey shit..

Anyway, I am genuinely interested in which features/properties for any of the above-mentioned languages are lacking in Eclipse and make it worth switching to another IDE for that language.

It's harder than you think

[rsilvergun]

If you luck into a niche it's easy to well for a while. Being a competent programmer doesn't mean the money never stops. And making a useful product doesn't matter if you can't get users to pay for it. I'm not defending rent seeking, I'm just saying I don't think utility software companies can survive without it. You can't just keep cranking out new software. It take a lot of time and resources to get a new product off the ground and it's easy for it to flop.

Re:It's harder than you think

[davester666]

So instead you deserve to make money forever on the one product? That's just as fucked up as copyright, where both you AND your children simply must be paid for a work. Otherwise, there's no point in creating it.

Re:It's harder than you think

[Anonymous Coward]

So instead you deserve to make money forever on the one product?

Uh. Yes?

If you don't like it, you're free to make an equivalent, competing product and sell it outright or give it away. If the terms of the agreement don't fit your business model or preference, you can choose not to use the product.

Re:It's harder than you think

[davester666]

Well, it seems a bunch of people are just fine with dropping your product. Just like I plan on not re-upping with JetBrains when my support term expires next year.

Re: It's harder than you think

[rsilvergun]

I didn't say they deserved it, just that I don't see an alternative

Desperate

[fuzzyf]

I think they are really feeling the pressure from Microsoft integrating more and more features in Visual Studio that used to be resharper only. I use resharper at work and also pay for a private license, and I think it's pretty good.

But...
I fucking hate the subscription model.

Maybe it's time to try coderush or something.

Re:Desperate

[Shados]

Resharper is very popular, but Jetbrain's flagship is IntelliJ along with the other language specific IDEs. With Eclipse annoying people more and more, you see these more often.

The main reason behind this change is probably a combination of wanting less spiky income, along with how all of these IDEs are basically useless without constantly being upgraded, because of how quickly things like JavaScript and open source dev tools change, so people either have to keep upgrading, or just stop using them. May as well make it a subscription at that point.

Put down the pitchforks people...

[MikeRT]

You can still buy a license that doesn't expire. It looks like once again, TFS is a steaming pile of dog shit in terms of quality and accuracy.

Re:Put down the pitchforks people...

[Anonymous Coward]

Only until November 1st, after which they will no longer sell perpetual licenses. If you want the latest and greatest, you must subscribe.

BTW, nice job knowing what you're talking about before ripping into TFS.

Re:Put down the pitchforks people...

[DNS-and-BIND]

Yes, we should be less suspicious and more trusting of huge companies. Let's all apologize to our corporate masters for unfairly slandering them.

Re:Not going to work out for them

[Chaos Incarnate]

Then you must be the first coming of our new robot overlords. HAIL CALVIN!

I can has org.eclipse.m2e.logback.feature?

[lucm]

Anyway, I am genuinely interested in which features/properties for any of the above-mentioned languages are lacking in Eclipse and make it worth switching to another IDE for that language.

Here's the Eclipse Experience.

1) Go to their website.
2) Click on download.
3) Spend the next 20 minutes trying to understand which of the 14 editions you need *
4) Give up and download Netbeans.

* bonus round: click on one of the edition then look at the "Detailed features list", and be amazed to see... a list of java namespaces. Very convenient.

Re:I can has org.eclipse.m2e.logback.feature?

[dinfinity]

This I agree with (but it's hardly a basis on which to choose an IDE).

Considering that Eclipse is built around the concept of plugins, the whole 'editions' download page never made sense to me. The only difference between the editions is that they include certain plugins by default (and as such, it doesn't really matter all that much which one you select). The fact that there isn't a basic edition makes it extra silly.
Much better would be to have such an edition as the basis and allow you to tick some checkboxes of the plugins you want included by default. The current editions could just be presets.

I think there are some 3rd parties that provide the abovementioned functionality, but it should be on the 'Eclipse download' page.

Re:I can has org.eclipse.m2e.logback.feature?

[jma05]

20 minutes? You could just pick the one with the most downloads. The top 2, by far, are the Java and Java EE ones. Except for the one "promoted" edition, they are all sorted by popularity.

Re:Maybe this will improve support....

[lucm]

I'm black and sound black, and their racist support refuses to help.

It's a Czech company. Out there the non-Caucasian population is 0.5%, and most of that is Vietnamese.

So the problem is not that they are racist, it's just that when you say "cuz, this shit is whack and if y'all don't make it supafly I'm'a smoke yo dog" they probably don't understand the issue.

Re: Maybe this will improve support....

[Anonymous Coward]

And sexist! When my boss called them they refused to help her. When I called, as a male-ish sounding female, they were helpful.

Re:Not going to work out for them

[dinfinity]

- The UI doesn't scale properly in my KDE environment courtesy of SWT (both NetBeans and IntteliJ do)

This seems to be limited to KDE in certain situations

The profiler is as close to unusable as possible

How so?

- It just consumes CPU for no good reason (as does IntelliJ). Working on an aeroplane flying across continents it's the difference between actually getting some work done and running out of juice after one hour.

I'm not sure 'developing software on an airplane' is a use case to optimize for. Having said that, needless CPU usage is obviously not a plus. Then again: CPU cycles on a dev machine or generally cheap. I'm pretty sure no dev on any semi-modern machine (my CPU is 6 years old) even notices Eclipse CPU usage.

Re:Not going to work out for them

[dinfinity]

1. You need 10 copies of eclipse for each configuration because plugins rarely work together.

Never had that problem, and my install is chock full of plugins.

2. It took 20 minutes to index source changes. It never figured out I just wrote a method and could auto suggest it in a reasonable time.

It used to do that on an HDD, yes. That's why I mentioned having an SSD. I'm not sure whether that is still a problem, as I haven't used Eclipse with an HDD for 6+ years.

3. It's not user friendly.

A very well supported statement.

4. It doesn't run on other operating systems well because it wasn't pure swing.

'Other' operating systems?
AFAIK, it generally runs fine on Linux (barring high-DPI KDE environments) and OSX.

Re:Not going to work out for them

[dinfinity]

Eclipse is indeed still a slow piece of shit, even with an i7 & 16GB. But I suppose you'll claim that frequent processing lag that allows me to type faster than the system can render the characters or the editors taking several seconds to open and process text files are not a "valid complaints".

Sounds bad and that would be a valid reason to dislike Eclipse. As I said to a sibling AC, I haven't used Eclipse with an HDD for 6+ years, so maybe Eclipse is still shit on an HDD.

If you do use an SSD, it would seem to me that there is something wrong with your install. It definitely sounds like something that shouldn't be happening, because it sounds unworkable.

Re:Maybe this will improve support....

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't find them to be racists. They were instead sexist. They refused to help any of the women on our team. Not only did they refuse, they were extremely rude about it. IntelliJ is simply too slow to use, and we were looking for help on what features we could disable so we could attempt to use it. Instead, we gave-up on IntelliJ and just counted the huge amount of money we gave JetBrains as a loss. It was a complete waste of money.

No Incentive to Innovate

[Jagungal]

I purchased the last version of IntelliJ Idea and would upgrade if I see significant incentives in the product to do so. At the moment they seem to be throwing a lot of effort into releasing new products rather than working on existing products.

I can see an advantage for someone who wants the entire suite of products as long as new products are constantly added but not so much for someone who just wants Idea. With a subscription they have no incentive to make a product better as they have you hooked into using that product, if you want to keep using it you need to keep up the subscription.

Personally I can see myself going in other directions for what I want to do now that this has come in.

Updates are not always a good thing

[nehumanuscrede]

For example, Adobe Premiere 2015, which is part of Adobe Creaative Cloud, is pretty much broken as it exists today. If you want it functional, you have to roll back to the 2014 version.

Subscription services suck because they already have your money, so they're in no hurry to fix their broken product. They'll get around to it eventually. Maybe.

Otherwise, a stand alone edition suffering the same problem would be critical fix numero uno or they don't get to sell any.

Another company going the same route is Autodesk. Both Maya and Max are going subscription only starting next year. Max will run about $1500 / year. I have no idea what Maya will cost. Doesn't matter, I'm switching to Blender because I'm not going to pay a subscription to be a permanent beta tester.

It would be one thing if updates were Earth shattering and can't live without sort of things, but the reality is usually something far less impressive. Mostly bug fixes that should have been dealt with during beta. :|

Besides, no one updates to a new version of anything mid-project.

I guess they'll figure that out a few years from now when most of their user base has left and they go the way of Silicon Graphics.

I'm done with companies switching to subscription models based on the sole needs of increasing their monthly revenue.

Wait until Windows 11 is subscription only

[Required Snark]

It's the next logical move.

Re:2015

[jma05]

Well, its not just Java Devs. Xamarin and Appmethod are also doing this subscription model. That covers all major RAD tool languages.

Re:Not going to work out for them

[jma05]

> 3. It's not user friendly.
> A very well supported statement.

I for one would like all my Desktop apps to have an Eclipse style UI. Its very flexible to layout, as you see fit. I first tried Eclipse in 2002. I picked it up instantly and had no confusion about anything (had used several other Java IDEs before).

> 4. It doesn't run on other operating systems well because it wasn't pure swing.
> 'Other' operating systems?
> AFAIK, it generally runs fine on Linux (barring high-DPI KDE environments) and OSX.

Indeed. I prefer Eclipse on Linux in part because it is NOT "pure swing". Swing fonts on Linux are not nice. I wish that no IDEs are Swing-based.

Re:2015

[gohmifune]

They make the best PHP IDE, and maybe the best Ruby and Python IDEs. It is very much worth it.

Re:Not going to work out for them

[dinfinity]

I for one would like all my Desktop apps to have an Eclipse style UI. Its very flexible to layout, as you see fit. I first tried Eclipse in 2002

Yes, exactly. I bought a 3840x2160 monitor a while back and it is absolutely fantastic to be able to use that screen estate exactly as I want. A dedicated little corner for this, a little corner for that. It's just great. My most recent bit of perspective design is having the task list always visible and displaying the open TODOs in the currently edited file, which makes me aware of which open ends coincide with what I am editing the file for at that point.

Its also one of the reasons why I love Foobar2000 so much. It just seems natural for any advanced user to want to be able to truly customize their tools. I sure like it.

I also remember seeing the auto-complete for finding a certain preference in the configuration. I thought it was awesome and was fairly sure that all mildly complex desktop applications would soon include such a thing. To my surprise, not many have done so.

Re:Not going to work out for them

[dinfinity]

Your post seems to be lacking in the 'proper arguments'-department.

Re:Not going to work out for them

[dinfinity]

I didn't say it was necessary to buy faster hardware. I just said that the "it's slow as hell"-argument doesn't really stand today.
You can call it 'heavy' or 'badly optimized', but not 'slow' anymore.

I'm not sure 'badly optimized' is even warranted still. As I said, Eclipse has come a long way and some things just intrinsically require a lot of processing. I sortof want to try running it from and with code on an HDD to see if it is still significantly slower than the alternatives on those. OTOH, if you're devving (professionally) off an HDD, you are doing it wrong anyway, so fuck it.

Re:Not going to work out for them

[frank_adrian314159]

That you have a pretty low bar for "wonderful"?

Well no more resharper then

[SuperDre]

When they go for this, it's bye bye new resharper.. I hate all these subscription models of late..

Re:Not going to work out for them

[El Rey]

So, it sounds like you are saying that you love Eclipse for what you are doing and you want people to try and convince you otherwise. Why?

If it works for you, that's great, but this approach you seem to be taking that anyone who doesn't like Eclipse is, "outdated", or a moron because you've never had that problem before is just petty and ridiculous. You've obviously been using Eclipse for a long time and have it set up in a way that works for you. Good for you.

For folks who are new to Eclipse, like me, I have to agree with the folks who say that the UI is heavy, ugly, and stale. In my limited experience (on OS X, a year ago) I saw toolbar buttons enabled when they weren't applicable. If I pressed one then a dialog would pop up saying something like, "That button isn't enabled." Really? If it wasn't enabled then how did I press it and make you show me that message? So, first impression was that it is low quality. If the UI can't even keep state straight then it feels like a toy. I know, it never happened to you, so it never happened...

So, then I'm working on a RESTful API and the "built in" Tomcat just stops working. So now I can't debug the thing I was able to debug 5 minutes ago. What happened? So I ask the developers who are familiar with Eclipse and they can't get the "built in" Tomcat working again either. Lame. Time to hit Stack Overflow...

So, I take the time to set up key mappings and Fonts & Colors (for which the settings are spread out in different sections). Almost every other time I start Eclipse, my key mappings have been reset for no apparent reason. They're just gone. If I change workspaces I have to set it all up again as well. Lame.

So, yeah, I expect that if you have been working with Eclipse for many years and have already learned its quirks then it seems natural to you now.

My experience with IntelliJ Community Edition on the same machine was that the UI was more modern / consistent, debugging from IJ to standalone Tomcat never gave me a problem, and my fonts, colors, and keystroke mappings never got reset to default values. Everything just worked out of the box with minimal learning curve whereas with Eclipse I was burning too much time on Stack Overflow trying to figure out why it was broken again...

Welcome to SaaS

[MoarSauce123]

Any SaaS model has only one purpose: make more money for the vendor over time and get rid of customers who do not buy. Typically, SaaS costs the customer more after two to three years, plus, and that is the complaint here, they either pay up or lose the software. Traditional licenses allow for running the application indefinitely. There are a few tricks for overcoming subscription model restrictions, such as backdating a VM or cutting a VM off the Internet once the license got applied and confirmed. That is eliminated by providing SaaS exclusively as a cloud service. The great thing for vendors is that they will get recurring revenue without having to deliver much value in return. There are no obligations as to when updates are pushed out and what scope of changes and additions they include. Even better, keep core functionality only as wide as necessary to make the initial sale, then sell upgrade packages and make a big PR deal out of it "We listen to customers and offer more customization options!" In fact, all that happens is that folks have to pay more and keep paying. The only option is to hit these vendors where it hurts,,,means stop buying their product.

Re:Maybe this will improve support....

[lucm]

I think you need to recalibrate your offend-o-meter.

Netbeans for Java, PyCharm for Python

[AlanObject]

Is anyone else here using this combination?

I am a longtime Java programmer that has been using Netbeans since 3.x. Recently I have started doing Python projects and found the Python plug-in support for Netbeans 8.x very rudimentary. So I tried PyCharm and found it does what I want and ended up paying the $99 for the personal-pro edition. There are a number of things I don't like about PyCharm and it has a lot of rough edges for a paid-for product but I haven't found anything better yet.

When Netbeans Python support comes up to speed I am not sure what I will do. I am open to suggestion if anyone has one but I suspect I will end up dropping PyCharm for Netbeans.

Re:Netbeans for Java, PyCharm for Python

[greenfruitsalad]

although i don't deal with java at all, i do write a fair amount of python scripts to help me manage our infrastructure. i originally started with eclipse+pydev but moved to Komodo and then to pycharm. as a (primarily) network guy i require a lot of handholding from my IDE. i've found komodo a lot poorer at that than eclipse. then i discovered pycharm and haven't looked back. i haven't found anything (on gnu/linux) that comes even close to it. i'm interested in what you don't like about it. (apart from speed - i use it with jdk off a remotely mounted volume so my particular installation is especially slow)

Re:Not going to work out for them

[dinfinity]

So, it sounds like you are saying that you love Eclipse for what you are doing and you want people to try and convince you otherwise. Why?

Well, I firmly believe in the power of advanced IDEs and I am always looking for new features that enhance my productivity. I've seen the Netbeans vs IntelliJ vs Eclipse (vs vim) debates many a time here on Slashdot and apparently IntelliJ is 'infinite times better than Eclipse' (which is 'donkey shit'). Taking such comments at face value, I would be an idiot if I wouldn't switch to IntelliJ, right?

The thing is that I just don't see it. I don't see the mountainous advantages of IntelliJ or disadvantages of Eclipse. I'm definitely not in love with Eclipse and have had plenty of battles with it (albeit not more or less than with pretty much every other mildly complex application out there), so if there is a better alternative out there, then I need to invest time in that alternative.

However, the replies on my (upmodded and early up in the comments, so highly visible) request ("I am genuinely interested in which features/properties for any of the above-mentioned languages are lacking in Eclipse and make it worth switching to another IDE for that language") have been mostly the same old same old: anecdotes of issues which I've never experienced and general comments about slowness which I also don't experience.

If it works for you, that's great, but this approach you seem to be taking that anyone who doesn't like Eclipse is, "outdated", or a moron because you've never had that problem before is just petty and ridiculous.

Citation, please. I don't think or have said that such people are 'outdated' or 'a moron'. I will tell you who I do think are either morons or assholes: people who create and attack straw men.

If I pressed one then a dialog would pop up saying something like, "That button isn't enabled."

Which button was that? Was it part of a plugin? Because in 10+ years of working with Eclipse almost daily, I've never seen anything like that.

So, I take the time to set up key mappings and Fonts & Colors (for which the settings are spread out in different sections). Almost every other time I start Eclipse, my key mappings have been reset for no apparent reason. They're just gone. If I change workspaces I have to set it all up again as well. Lame.

You know you can export and import preferences, right? It's one of the features I really really liked the times I worked on the employers location. Install Eclipse and plugins, import the preferences I brought from home and go.

The intermittent reset keymappings and suddenly breaking Tomcat thing sound as if something was messing with or just locking your workspace files. Some syncing or backup tool perhaps. It's still obviously a bad way to fail for Eclipse.

Alas, again, these are two of those: 'never had that problem'-things again. Anyway, I have given up on my initial request. Apparently people don't wish spending time on telling me which great features of IntelliJ I'm missing out on.

Re:Not going to work out for them

[El Rey]

Outdated was your word not mine.

The way you blithely dismiss anyone's "anecdote" on how Eclipse was an epic fail for them makes it quite clear you think they are a moron. I don't have time to go back through your posts to pick out everywhere you blame flaws of Eclipse on operator error.

The button was "stop debugger". Every time I started Eclipse the UI state was as if the app was running in the debugger. Bizarre to be sure.

All I know is that one IDE let me get my work done and the other was a constant battle to keep running.

Re:Not going to work out for them

[dinfinity]

Outdated was your word not mine.

Note that a sentence is commonly made up of multiple words. You turned my qualification of a sentiment into a sweeping ad hominem and then attacked that ad hominem.

My version: "The hate for Eclipse is so terribly outdated"
Your version: 'anyone who doesn't like Eclipse is, "outdated"'
See what you did there?
Asshole.

The way you blithely dismiss anyone's "anecdote" on how Eclipse was an epic fail for them makes it quite clear you think they are a moron

Like I said, citation needed. You are imagining things. I haven't blithely dismissed shit and furthermore have no problem calling people morons when I feel it is warranted. Let me reiterate that I think that people who create and attack straw men are morons or assholes.