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Comment by johnwheeler | Hacker News Reader

Why

Two big reasons: 1. It’s a distraction from developing a solid IDE. I’m already displeased with their obvious VSCode envy and the new UI, so focusing on shiny features makes me unhappy as a customer.

2. I don’t want AI assist, let alone “deeply integrated” AI assist. It is a security and privacy nightmare. As the article notes about the privacy policy, “Neither the user nor JetBrains has control over this third-party data processing.”

Perhaps I’m a Luddite, but I think tools like this and copilot are terrible, and I don’t want to be forced into them.

1. It’s a distraction from developing a solid IDE. I’m already displeased with their obvious VSCode envy and the new UI, so focusing on shiny features makes me unhappy as a customer.

I agree with you! I have had reasonable success in the past reporting bugs and getting them progressed via youtrack.jetbrains.com, but I have this lingering fear that less attention is being paid to that vs the exciting new features... I held my nose and paid for another year of subscription, but I'm not sure what I'll do next year. BTW, I love the phrase "obvious VSCode envy" :-) but I don't like what it portends :-(

New UI and VSC envy are good, it's already better than the old point-and-click adventure game UI they had.

AI thing will be good too. It's not more of a security nightmare or different than SO assuming that the IDE isn't leaking secrets.

They haven't had a "point-and-click adventure UI" for years. Pressing left Shift twice has been able to find ever single setting, button, code symbol, tool window, etc. since at least 2020.

I initially really disliked the new UI but since they trimmed the negative space around icons and even introduced a compact mode, I switched. My only dislike is that all buttons are monochrome.

>Pressing left Shift twice has been able to find ever single setting, button, code symbol, tool window, etc. since at least 2020.

Which made the point-and-click early 2000s-level "every control is visible at all times" UI pointless. The visual minimalism is better.

Just to clarify: No one is forcing you to use AI assistance features. All the deeply integrated features start working only after you explicitly log in to JetBrains AI service.

It's not intended to be one of those "on by default" things in a future version of IntelliJ is it?

If it is, I'll probably be cancelling my IntelliJ Ultimate subscription at about that point.

I got some great advice when I first started coding / CS classes. "Skip Eclipse, use Dr. Java. Skip the intellisense and autocomplete at first so you can really learn". I've kept that mindset for all of my coursework and career. It has probably been the most impactful thing for my career. These AI assistants are the antithesis of this idea. Learn your tools and your codebase deeply, the easy things will be so easy you won't need the AI, the impossible things the AI could never do will be possible.

I was with you until “skip intellisense and autocomplete”. They save so, so much time.

My thoughts too, it's like shooting yourself in the knee just so you can flex that you had it 'harder' but you managed. Like... what's the point. Being good at software development has nothing to do with knowing every single method of standard library, I have 7 years of experience and I regularly google how to init an array in the language I work in(just as an example).

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