What bugs me about this is when I asked them about the change on Twitter and they kept trying to blow smoke up my butt about how it's better for everyone.
Their first response was that it's cheaper than before. Except it's not. Did they think I wouldn't actually go look at the prices?
Then they said it's better because you can jump in and out at will. Only need Product X for a month? Only pay for a month. Which is fine, except I've never heard of a developer who would do that.
This move wouldn't bug me so much if they were just honest about it. If you're doing it because you need the money or it makes your life easier or whatever, then fine. I don't like it even so, but I could deal with it. But when you try to convince me it's better for me, while treating me like a fool, I start to have a major problem with the whole thing.
> Their first response was that it's cheaper than before. Except it's not. Did they think I wouldn't actually go look at the prices?
Uh - their "everything" price is $20/month = $240/year (or $200 for the annual plan)
(All renewal at current license price)
PHPStorm - $129
PyCharm - $99
ReSharper Ultimate - $600 (no renewal price)
If I were to purchase that with their old license it would cost me $828, with the new plan I only pay $240. And those are just the tools I have an immediate need for (I do Python, PHP, and C# on an almost daily basis).
$20/month for their full suite of tools? Count me in.
When I first found their tools - I was like "ehhh I don't know - I'll stick with Eclipse/Netbeans etc". Eventually I tried IntelliJ, PHPStorm and PyCharm and they have been the best IDEs I've ever used. Trust me I'll advocate open source when I can - but after all the issues I've had with Eclipse and Netbeans I almost just totally switched to vi.
Linux users expect the GUI to be unusable so they split into the camps who (i) think Eclipse is the bee's knees or (ii) use vi.
The difference between IntelliJ and Eclipse is like night and day -- Eclipse fans think the plug-in feature is great but install one too many plugins and your Eclipse will get sick with pluginitis.
I recently had to use Eclipse again, after 5+ years of Emacs mostly coding sessions, and boy it was tough. I kept thinking it's just one IDE, and others are better, thinking about IntelliJ. Heh.
ps: people, take a look at Emacs, it really is nice, and only needs 8MB cough
> I kept thinking it's just one IDE, and others are better, thinking about IntelliJ. Heh.
I usually don't endorse a product or service (different tools for different tasks and different people etc) but at least try out IntelliJ. I'm pretty sure there is a reason why Google decided to dump Eclipse in favor of IntelliJ as their officially supported IDE.
You may be able to crank out code faster using vi and/or emacs - but an IDE will be more advanced to tell you mistakes that could mean a world of difference. You don't know how many times I've seen people make simple mistakes writing PHP with vi that could have easily been avoided using an IDE.
My English is often cryptic, it was flattering towards IntelliJ. Since long ago they wrote very useful code either infrastructure (their caching mechanism) or UX (thorough keyboard bindings).
What kind of errors did they fail to catch ? vi/emacs rely on external checkers, I don't know what IntelliJ uses, if they have an in-house fully fledged AST analyzer or if they reuse community made ones.
> ps: people, take a look at Emacs, it really is nice, and only needs 8MB cough
As an Emacs fan, I feel obligated to, ahh, unpack this reference.
EMACS: Eight Megs And Constantly Swapping. A Humorous Expansion of the name from when eight megabytes of RAM was more than you had, bucko.
These days, I'm sure that, if you really worked at it, you could get an Emacs process to take up as much RAM as the Chrome tab you just opened to look something up on Stack Exchange.
Some times emacs has perf issues, but Eclipse overhead is really too much for me to enjoy. And the UX is miserable, all this OOP, OSGi plugins and frameworks for this leaves me meh.
I am a complete newbie so my perspective is inherently flawed but I am wary of installing anything on a Debian machine that I can't just get using aptitude (sudo apt-get install foo).
Correct me if I am wrong but isn't it possible to create a Debian repository server at Jet Brains that I can add to my aptitude sources list and then install Intelli J and stuff from the conventional command line interface? Why does Jet Brains insist on doing things the Net beans way with opening a web browser and downloading a binary every time?
Fwiw it's worth learning how to use the excellent Debian Alternatives [1] system to install stuff not in the repo's. Download the precompiled binary, or download the source and compile it, put in $HOME, /opt, or wherever you want, then use update-alternatives to soft link it into the standard system directories (/usr, /usr/bin, /usr/local, etc). You can manage and toggle between multiple versions of the same software that way, including the repo version, and lots more benefits, see github readme below.
Not just that, but they've closed numerous bugs as "wont fix" & blamed them on the linux ecosystem. On Ubuntu, I've gone through some very annoying bugs like the IDE randomly freezing every 10-15m and needing to be restarted, even after removing openJDK & installing the official Java, and all the other annoying things they suggested.
I dislike them as a company because they claimed to support Linux, took my money, and then blamed my choice of OS when things broke. If they don't want to support linux, fine, but they shouldn't say that they do on the sales page, then act to the contrary.
> I am wary of installing anything on a Debian machine that I can't just get using aptitude (sudo apt-get install foo).
I don't think that is really an issue (anymore?) - I've installed deb packages manually and compiled stuff from scratch. The only problem you could run into is if package A from the Debain repos requires Version X.1 - but you installed some random deb which installed Version X.2 - you might get into dependency issues. I've found backports to fill this gap.
In fact the Jetbrains stuff is self contained so you need to bring your own JRE and run it from the folder that you extracted it to.
In that example, you have someone working regularly enough in PHP, Python and .Net (Resharper) to appreciate the JetBrains tools. I'm sure it happens, but it doesn't seem to be the usual case to me.
edit But looking at the pricing page ( https://www.jetbrains.com/toolbox/ ), a pure C# dev could just get "ReSharper Ultimate" for £79 Per year, or "ReSharper" for £71 per year, which I think is not much different from the current price?
I code php, java, python regularly. My team of two code php and java regularly and a little python. We have a small resource starved team. May not be normal but it is for us.
All of those languages are already covered by IntelliJ Ultimate. So your net cost in this new scheme is roughly the same as before, except if you don't renew your IDE stops working.
I have a feeling that the people posting here on HN that are against the subscription may only be a small percentage of their user base.
Personally I don't upgrade - because I don't need to. But if given the subscription I probably would if the price was right. Take Office 365 - yeah you can pay $200+ for a full offline copy but you have to do that for every version (and the whole keeping track of your media). Or just pay $99/year and get a perpetual license + extras + online installer. I know there are a number of people who are like "open office does everything I need!" - and that's great but just wait until you need to work on a document with another person who is using office 20XX and open office doesn't support the subtle formatting in that version yet. I know of a large company that tried switching to open office - they couldn't do it because open office didn't format many documents correctly.
With the previous model you could just stop paying them and keep using your current version of the software. With the new model stop paying them and you are locked out.
Wait, what? The only product I use is Resharper... I was paying $119 an update before, now I'll be paying $240?!? Yeah, that's not a good deal for me. There's no amount of skewed math I can apply that makes $240 less than $119...
It used to be you would stop getting updates but could still use the product at its frozen (for you) point. For example, to re-examine an old project (even if you might not want to do any fresh builds on an outdated platform).
Can you still do that, or does the tool "die" for you altogether once you stop paying?
P.S. Assuming underlying OS compatibility, which would probably eventually break unless e.g. also frozen in a VM.
P.P.S. It was a couple of years ago, and during a promotion, but I got the "whole enchilada", plus a year of updates, for a bit under $100. It was a 50% off promotion, as I recall, so the non-sale price would have been under $200. [Or maybe it was just a bit over -- either way.]
I understand concerns about revenue stream; nonetheless, I have to agree with some others here in... more or less detesting such "subscription" pricing/licensing models.
Among other things, I have some old, old systems and programs that work just fine, as long as I keep them isolated e.g. from the big, bad Internet. I don't want stuff that dies unless I perpetually feed it, even just for historical purposes.
I've also been a Safari online book library subscriber, and I've started to regret not simply instead spending the money to buy ebook versions of the titles I'm most interested in.
In areas where I have a stronger personal interest in long-term and historical access, I am growing increasingly tired of and leery of the "subscription model."
After 30 days of a failed payment [1] or 30 days without contacting JetBrains servers [2] it will only allow you to open their software briefly before "the product will gently notify the user and will allow some time to connect to the Internet before asking to close the application".
no $119 would buy him one year of updates, and he could choose not to update in the future if he didn't want to. If he chose to update on a regular basis, then he would still need to pay $119 every year
Also, under the new regime, the moment he stops paying, the IDE stops working. Previously, when you stop paying,you'd be left with a working-but-outdated version. This is definitely a downgrade
Do you have anything that says that's specifically what happens? Cause their FAQ says that when your subscription expires, you can continue using the last version that was released when your sub expired.
Where did you read that? The closest I could find was "Does the new model demand that I have Internet access?" [1] in which it states that it requires an internet connection every 30 days to authenticate and if it cannot then it will close the application. I'm guessing that also means if it does auth but sees an expired license, it would also close the application.
> Cause their FAQ says that when your subscription expires, you can continue using the last version that was released when your sub expired.
Would you mind mentioning the question in the FAQ which states this? Everything I've read so far (notable this question: https://i.imgur.com/u7Y7otq.png) suggests the software cannot be used when a subscription is not being actively paid for each month.
PHPstorm was excellent when I, a Ruby developer (among other languages), had to adopt a PHP codebase. RubyMine was less impressive, especially with all the enhancements available for Pry and IRB. RubyMine couldn't find method declarations or infer types the way PHPstorm could.
So, I stick with Vim for Ruby, but don't rule out IDEs entirely for other dynamic languages in a pinch.
I agree, it is cheaper but there are some of us that simply have no way to force, convince or otherwise cajole our employers to adopt a service license model. I have designers on staff using old Adobe products due to this same problem. JetBrains isn't going to magically convince management to open their wallets for monthly fee's. If this goes through, I'm boned. Stuck trying to make shitty IDE's work like jetBrains products. Not a happy day.
The problem with SAAS pricing for previously bought software is that the conversation changes from 'Pay us for this great bit of software, then pay us again when we make it even better', to 'Pay up or all your years of work goes away'.
Agreed. The incentive to make it better becomes less because users are on the auto-pay plan. Whereas they have to prove themselves worthy of the upgrade otherwise.
A typical move to subscription based pricing LOWERS costs to the consumer, but the company gets the benefit of more predictable recurring revenues. That makes the pricing JetBrains puts out a little bit of a head-scratcher.
Starting from zero, their pricing is lower over a set number of year. They got rid of the initial "hump" and in turn made the annual amount higher. I didn't look too closely but I guess the cost evens out over a 3-4 year subscription span. For a business this is actually going to simplify accounting I would think. It's no longer a cap-ex with a maintenance fee, it's just rental so all pre-tax.
My guess is that overall their spreadsheeting makes this even out based on how customers have been paying.
The fringe bits (loss of permanence, ability to install a home copy) will disproportionately hurt solo/small business folks and hobbyists. The very people that have been their champion getting their software into enterprise dev teams.
I don't understand why they don't go to the rental model with optional one-time permanent license add-on.
So like hypothetically 100$/year rental and a 100$ supplement for permanent license. Basically option into the current deal. They can even make the sum total greater then it used to be. Like 120$/year rental + 100$ permanent license supplement.
A company that knows that people will blindly say "Hey, if I only have to fork over $7 a month instead of finding $80 plus tax, plus gas, plus the inconvenience of going and finding a router myself, and configuring it so that my network works, seems like a good deal" and they purchase the rental - even though $420 for an $80 (plus tax and inconvenience) router is a terrible deal.
Then you get the types that have a box full of routers at home or know that if they purchase for $80, then in a year, it's paid for itself and everything else is gravy.
I imagine they're stumbling thru this viable business model notion, just like everyone else.
Cut them some slack.
I frankly don't care about the price. Developers need to get paid. I hope they figure out something fair (reasonable) with modest profitability, so they can enjoy vacations and have hope of someday retiring.
If I ever stop renewing (or subscribing), I can just use the community version.
Contractors that work with different clients using different languages? You've never heard of someone that works with different languages at different times?
@toyg (not sure why I can't reply to you so I'll reply to me instead) - really? I've never tried them. I thought Intellij was the same with the appropriate language plugin. Maybe I'll give some of them a go...
I dunno what it's like now, but there was a time when, among other things, IntelliJ could not open a project created in rubymine. They were providing ruby support as a plugin and it was considerably broken, for about six months.
> Their first response was that it's cheaper than before.
It is cheaper if you are using a number of their products. It's the same price for the individual products I'm currently using. Net for me is that it's cheaper.
> Which is fine, except I've never heard of a developer who would do that.
I don't code in Python or Ruby every day, but when I do, it's usually for a specific project, and having PyCharm or RubyMine at a low price point and in an environment that I'm familiar with is nice to have. I wouldn't want to buy the IDE outright, but the lower price point is more attractive.
Their first response was that it's cheaper than before. Except it's not. Did they think I wouldn't actually go look at the prices?
Then they said it's better because you can jump in and out at will. Only need Product X for a month? Only pay for a month. Which is fine, except I've never heard of a developer who would do that.
This move wouldn't bug me so much if they were just honest about it. If you're doing it because you need the money or it makes your life easier or whatever, then fine. I don't like it even so, but I could deal with it. But when you try to convince me it's better for me, while treating me like a fool, I start to have a major problem with the whole thing.