JetBrains defends removal of negative reviews for unpopular AI Assistant(devclass.com)
devclass.com
JetBrains defends removal of negative reviews for unpopular AI Assistant
https://devclass.com/2025/04/30/jetbrains-defends-removal-of-negative-reviews-for-unpopular-ai-assistant/
153 comments
Yes, it's a terrible excuse, and it's concerning that they think it's a good one. I highly doubt that they make a habit of fielding requests from plugin authors to nuke outdated reviews: you simply can't scale the verification that would require to do honestly. If they don't offer this as an option to others then this move is wrong both for the reasons you give and because they're claiming a privilege in their app store that they won't afford to their competition.
I don't think that they think it is a good one. It was just the best excuse they could come up with after being caught. The "good idea" was to remove the reviews without anybody noticing.
They sent emails notifying people that their comments were removed. They weren't exactly trying very hard to be sly.
Or the PM didn't know it would automatically send emails.
I wonder if they remove reviews that complain about bugs that were resolved (at least according to the plugin author) for all other plugins that aren’t theirs… Do they? … yeah I thought so.
Ive seen plenty of reviews in app stores where the vendor responds to negative reviews and confirms when the issue described in the review was fixed. Is JetBrains also removing positive reviews that mention features that have been discontinued?
Something tells me they wouldn't remove positive reviews mentioning something that has since changed.
They should attach a YouTrack issues to reviews, which would automatically show that the issue has been fixed. Their YouTrack integration is pretty deep elsewhere. Still doesn't solve the problem of the average score, though.
if the youtrack issue linked is fixed, it's also possible for the average score to get updated to weight those reviews lower.
But this needs to be transparent - hidden average score manipulation just leads to distrust in those scores.
But this needs to be transparent - hidden average score manipulation just leads to distrust in those scores.
My comment complaining about it being bundled and enabled by default, with no way to uninstall, only disabled. They gave me the same excuse, but those "features" are still exactly the same as they were then.
I agree, it shouldn't be. Particularly as I can't imagine them removing reviews if it praised a feature that was subsequently removed or changed.
I like how I've seen this addressed (maybe in Google Play?) where they tag the review to the version and indicate that to the reader.
"This thing is expensive and it barely works"
"We fixed yesterday's outage, review removed"
"We fixed yesterday's outage, review removed"
[deleted]
If they are both marketplace and seller, and if this is a policy they apply to all vendors, seems fine to me.
It's a bad policy even if it's not anti-competitive. At the absolute bare minimum, they should also be removing every positive review that mentions any feature that has been changed since the review was written. Then, once they're all out of reviews that actually mention the software in any way, they can institute a sensible policy of not deleting reviews.
Normally I'd agree but this is a project that has changed significantly over a verey short period of time. Those reviews may simply not be relevant anymore. I trust that JetBrains going forward will simply respond to the reviews, not remove them.
They should have responded to them in the first place, not removed them, and state that the issue has been fixed and invite the commenter to try again. I wouldn’t trust them to not remove reviews until they start not doing it.
And then the reviews would not have been changed by their authors anyway, because that's not something people typically do. So you still have a bunch of negative reviews for issues that have long been fixed. And that's not fair. If you handle critic and improve, then thats a positive thing that should not be punished by an obsolete negative review.
This is kind of the reality of ratings online: you have to accept that someone could leave a bad review about something that you’ve fixed, or even arbitrary. In general if you’re doing a good job the positive reviews will eventually counter the bad ones. It’s arguably not fair but 1. in this case maybe they should have put more care into the initial release, and 2. I, not the company, would rather be the one to judge the review and the response because I don’t have an incentive to hide negative things about the product.
> And then the reviews would not have been changed by their authors anyway, because that's not something people typically do. So you still have a bunch of negative reviews for issues that have long been fixed. And that's not fair.
That is more fair than Jetbrains removing other people's negative reviews unilaterally, especially when it remains to be seen whether Jetbrains actually fixed the issues.
Legally, Jetbrains is allowed to be judge, jury, and executioner of reviews on their own site. Morally, they should not act unilaterally, and should gain customer approval before harming customers.
> If you handle critic and improve
You are assuming they improved. With the reviews deleted, there is no way to know for sure, they could just as easily have gotten worse and hidden it by deleting the review. That's why you don't delete the review.
The proper move here would indeed be to post a reply, and have a public conversation. Readers of reviews can then read the reply, and either trust them at their word that they fixed it with no bugs or other mistakes, or test for themselves.
tl;dr: the reviewer, not the biased company being reviewed, is the judge of whether the issues described in the review have been addressed / fixed / made irrelevant. YES, there may be downsides to this, but they are not as bad as the downsides of the alternative (company deletes arbitrary reviews about themselves for arbitrary reasons with no oversight).
That is more fair than Jetbrains removing other people's negative reviews unilaterally, especially when it remains to be seen whether Jetbrains actually fixed the issues.
Legally, Jetbrains is allowed to be judge, jury, and executioner of reviews on their own site. Morally, they should not act unilaterally, and should gain customer approval before harming customers.
> If you handle critic and improve
You are assuming they improved. With the reviews deleted, there is no way to know for sure, they could just as easily have gotten worse and hidden it by deleting the review. That's why you don't delete the review.
The proper move here would indeed be to post a reply, and have a public conversation. Readers of reviews can then read the reply, and either trust them at their word that they fixed it with no bugs or other mistakes, or test for themselves.
tl;dr: the reviewer, not the biased company being reviewed, is the judge of whether the issues described in the review have been addressed / fixed / made irrelevant. YES, there may be downsides to this, but they are not as bad as the downsides of the alternative (company deletes arbitrary reviews about themselves for arbitrary reasons with no oversight).
Deleted comment cited by the author:
“ I previously submitted a review critiquing this plugin, but it was removed by JetBrains moderation — an unfortunate decision that, in my view, undermines trust in open feedback. I have now tested the latest AI plugin (v243.23654.270.16). The plugin does offer limited support for third-party providers like Ollama and LM Studio (the latter being a better fit for most local LLM users). However, this support is restricted to chat interactions only — not to autocomplete, inline suggestions, or in-editor refactoring tools. In practice, this limitation significantly reduces the plugin’s value for users who already maintain ChatGPT Pro accounts or local LLM workflows. Rather than fully enabling local model integration, the design seems oriented toward promoting JetBrains’ proprietary cloud models and subscription services. Specific ratings: • Integration with IDE: 5 stars — Excellent UI integration into JetBrains products, smooth setup. • Performance: 1 star — Noticeable latency compared to local models; frequent delays. • Available Features: 1 star — Limited flexibility for serious LLM users; core features locked to cloud services. • User Interface: 1 star — Chat feels bolted-on rather than deeply native; inconsistent UX across project types. • Documentation Quality: 1 star — The documentation exists but feels sparse, with limited guidance on third-party setup and unclear disclosures about feature limitations. While some users may find the plugin sufficient for lightweight AI chat, in my assessment, it falls short both in technical flexibility and in respecting user choice. Thank you to JetBrains for providing the opportunity to share my neutral and unbiased observations with fellow developers” [1].
[1] https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/22282-jetbrains-ai-assi...
“ I previously submitted a review critiquing this plugin, but it was removed by JetBrains moderation — an unfortunate decision that, in my view, undermines trust in open feedback. I have now tested the latest AI plugin (v243.23654.270.16). The plugin does offer limited support for third-party providers like Ollama and LM Studio (the latter being a better fit for most local LLM users). However, this support is restricted to chat interactions only — not to autocomplete, inline suggestions, or in-editor refactoring tools. In practice, this limitation significantly reduces the plugin’s value for users who already maintain ChatGPT Pro accounts or local LLM workflows. Rather than fully enabling local model integration, the design seems oriented toward promoting JetBrains’ proprietary cloud models and subscription services. Specific ratings: • Integration with IDE: 5 stars — Excellent UI integration into JetBrains products, smooth setup. • Performance: 1 star — Noticeable latency compared to local models; frequent delays. • Available Features: 1 star — Limited flexibility for serious LLM users; core features locked to cloud services. • User Interface: 1 star — Chat feels bolted-on rather than deeply native; inconsistent UX across project types. • Documentation Quality: 1 star — The documentation exists but feels sparse, with limited guidance on third-party setup and unclear disclosures about feature limitations. While some users may find the plugin sufficient for lightweight AI chat, in my assessment, it falls short both in technical flexibility and in respecting user choice. Thank you to JetBrains for providing the opportunity to share my neutral and unbiased observations with fellow developers” [1].
[1] https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/22282-jetbrains-ai-assi...
…why can’t I edit this 9-minute old comment for formatting? @dang
Apparently some accounts can have their edit window muzzled if a moderator chooses to. I have a reduced 10 minute edit window that was applied to my account without notice or explanation, it's fully possible that you might have one too.
How do you know what your edit window is?
I refresh the page until the edit button isn't on my comment anymore.
> The spokesperson added that the company could have done better
They seem to have to say that a lot about this product, yet they don't really seem to learn any lessons. When the original flood of bad reviews came it it was because they made that plugin bundled with the IDE and then had a "bug" where it couldn't be effectively removed. There was no precedent for bundled a paid plugin nor need for it to be bundled with the IDE. Just their desperation to cash in. They then walked that back with the same "we could have done better".
This is more of the same. The "AI Assistant" still lives on the default side bar regardless if you have that plugin installed or not.
At this point, they know they could do better yet are choosing not to.
They seem to have to say that a lot about this product, yet they don't really seem to learn any lessons. When the original flood of bad reviews came it it was because they made that plugin bundled with the IDE and then had a "bug" where it couldn't be effectively removed. There was no precedent for bundled a paid plugin nor need for it to be bundled with the IDE. Just their desperation to cash in. They then walked that back with the same "we could have done better".
This is more of the same. The "AI Assistant" still lives on the default side bar regardless if you have that plugin installed or not.
At this point, they know they could do better yet are choosing not to.
> There was no precedent for bundled a paid plugin nor need for it to be bundled with the IDE. Just their desperation to cash in.
For me that started with Kotlin.
Not only are they quite open it is a means to cash in more InteliJ licenses, the community has generally an anti-Java sentiment, especially on Android, as if it doesn't depend on the ecosystem for its own existence.
The language might have a great design, however for me that is off-putting and makes me rather play with other JVM languages, like Clojure.
"The next thing is also fairly straightforward: we expect Kotlin to drive the sales of IntelliJ IDEA. We’re working on a new language, but we do not plan to replace the entire ecosystem of libraries that have been built for the JVM. So you’re likely to keep using Spring and Hibernate, or other similar frameworks, in your projects built with Kotlin. And while the development tools for Kotlin itself are going to be free and open-source, the support for the enterprise development frameworks and tools will remain part of IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate, the commercial version of the IDE. And of course the framework support will be fully integrated with Kotlin."
https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2011/08/why-jetbrains-need...
Not only are they quite open it is a means to cash in more InteliJ licenses, the community has generally an anti-Java sentiment, especially on Android, as if it doesn't depend on the ecosystem for its own existence.
The language might have a great design, however for me that is off-putting and makes me rather play with other JVM languages, like Clojure.
"The next thing is also fairly straightforward: we expect Kotlin to drive the sales of IntelliJ IDEA. We’re working on a new language, but we do not plan to replace the entire ecosystem of libraries that have been built for the JVM. So you’re likely to keep using Spring and Hibernate, or other similar frameworks, in your projects built with Kotlin. And while the development tools for Kotlin itself are going to be free and open-source, the support for the enterprise development frameworks and tools will remain part of IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate, the commercial version of the IDE. And of course the framework support will be fully integrated with Kotlin."
https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2011/08/why-jetbrains-need...
> The next thing is also fairly straightforward: we expect Kotlin to drive the sales of IntelliJ IDEA.
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The only way to actually uninstall it is to manually rip out the files from your installation. It's nuts.
I'm really concerned over the last couple of years that my two paid subscriptions (work/personal) go into AI BS development I do not need, instead of fixing pain points I have daily. It may continue for so long. I hope to see they defend the removal of AI assistant completely, by moving it completely off the main channel. They are not MSFT that can waste a billion here and there. Every AI feature they make is paid by existing users.
Yeah, I cancelled my subscription when it became clear they just did not care about my custom any more. The core products had pain points just sat with open issues forever, and they just started doing nothing but trying to upsell me on stuff I didn't care about or want.
I used to be a huge evangelist for JetBrains products, I loved having a product where I felt like I could just pay and get something of quality, it's really sad seeing that devolve into the same mess of "you are the product" as virtually everything else, despite the fact they were still demanding my money.
I used to be a huge evangelist for JetBrains products, I loved having a product where I felt like I could just pay and get something of quality, it's really sad seeing that devolve into the same mess of "you are the product" as virtually everything else, despite the fact they were still demanding my money.
I've also cancelled my Intellij Ultimate subscription, because I feel Jetbrains lost its direction. They've made the classic interface a plugin and replaced it with a VSCode lookalike, and didn't have an integrated AI assistant that accepts your own API key. I'm ok with them selling their own AI subscriptions but let me use AI autocomplete on my pro subscription without further charges as long as I supply the LLM model API.
Just to be clear: JB have been and still are so ahead in ergonomics that I still cannot imagine going back to VS and I will renew my personal one without any doubt. For now. I just question their priorities.
I even tried, when my old work-paid CoPilot subscription expired, to use a paid membership for their AI tool. It was so-so, but I was happy to give them money. And then my modest use for my personal open source project hit their monthly limit.
So I just went back to CoPilot.
I know they don't have deep pockets, but, like you, I'd rather they just spend it on making a good tool.
So I just went back to CoPilot.
I know they don't have deep pockets, but, like you, I'd rather they just spend it on making a good tool.
The second a better product comes along I'm moving away from Jetbrains. Unfortunately I think we're about to get into an IDE winter since everything thinks all problems should just be solved by AI rather than doing the hard work like "good refactoring tools" and "acceptable user experience".
Even without AI winter, I don't know how you can catch up to intellij. Vscode is a hodge podge of dubious quality plugins by randos. I'm sure you can build yourself a nice IDE by being very selective, but part of what I'm paying for is the curation and cohesiveness, and I think you need a big player that is invested in building something for a large variety of use cases. I think Microsoft has their own set of tooling that works for them at their company and so does Apple and I'm not sure Google really wants to make a public IDE. Any small scale startup will take many years to catch up.
Microsoft uses a mixture of Visual Studio (classic) and VSCode internally. The AI assistant is Copilot. The exact same stuff that the users use, albeit slightly buggier. To get the True Microsoft Experience, take VSCode, install the Git, GitHub, Azure, Typescript, and Copilot plugins, and disable third-party repos. A cohesive IDE!
> what I'm paying for is the curation and cohesiveness
Seriously. This is where Jetbrains went astray. Their original programmers I think were pretty high quality, but their product people are clearly so pants-on-head clueless that they wouldn't know a golden goose if it crushed them under metric tons of golden eggs. Good things don't power-law scale and "let's make 1000 forked IDEs and 50 really weird infrastructure servers" isn't a winning strategy. It's how you bury yourself in tech debt.
> I'm not sure Google really wants to make a public IDE.
I mean, that's what launched Jetbrains in the first place. Google needed proper development tools for Android and a language more modern than Java at the time to support it. So we got Android Studio and Kotlin. They dumped a bunch of money into them and this is what we got once they started to get more independent.
Seriously. This is where Jetbrains went astray. Their original programmers I think were pretty high quality, but their product people are clearly so pants-on-head clueless that they wouldn't know a golden goose if it crushed them under metric tons of golden eggs. Good things don't power-law scale and "let's make 1000 forked IDEs and 50 really weird infrastructure servers" isn't a winning strategy. It's how you bury yourself in tech debt.
> I'm not sure Google really wants to make a public IDE.
I mean, that's what launched Jetbrains in the first place. Google needed proper development tools for Android and a language more modern than Java at the time to support it. So we got Android Studio and Kotlin. They dumped a bunch of money into them and this is what we got once they started to get more independent.
I was using IntelliJ before Android came along, and Android Studio was Eclipse-based until Android 4.x (and Java-based well after that!). Kotlin was an alternative to Java 1.6, already fairly late, and wasn’t well supported on android until much later. Before ART, Android didn’t even run Kotlin outside of trivial programs because of the dex classfile limit!
I got into Vim (NeoVim) recently, after coding in a multitude of IDEs for the last 15yrs.
I spent about a month getting to grips with it, and now i feel more productive than ever, and I regret not doing it sooner!
Also I can rest assured that it will be forever free, no more annoying licenses to deal with.
I spent about a month getting to grips with it, and now i feel more productive than ever, and I regret not doing it sooner!
Also I can rest assured that it will be forever free, no more annoying licenses to deal with.
Yes! And once you have it the way you like it can stay there forever hermetically sealed with all your plugins and integrations on pinned versions until you decide to upgrade them. The feature of "will work exactly the same forever until I have time to spend to deal with updates" is underrated.
Why are you coding? AI will code for you!!
Vibe as a service
Vibe as a service
They have much superior product compared to VSCode in terms of pretty much everything, except AI.
Not sure why it’s so hard for them to catch up with Cursor. They have everything they need but somehow they focus on just something that they don’t have much expertise, building models instead of better integration. It’s a shame seeing such good product going downhill considering AI is becoming fundamental for dev productivity.
Not sure why it’s so hard for them to catch up with Cursor. They have everything they need but somehow they focus on just something that they don’t have much expertise, building models instead of better integration. It’s a shame seeing such good product going downhill considering AI is becoming fundamental for dev productivity.
> They have much superior product compared to VSCode in terms of pretty much everything, except AI
Disagree, I keep trying Jetbrains once in a while and keep walking away disappointed (used to be a hardcore user). I use VS Code bc it is seamlessly polyglot. Jetbrains wants me to launch a whole separate IDE for different use cases, which is just horrible UX for me. Why would I pay hundreds for a worse UX?
Disagree, I keep trying Jetbrains once in a while and keep walking away disappointed (used to be a hardcore user). I use VS Code bc it is seamlessly polyglot. Jetbrains wants me to launch a whole separate IDE for different use cases, which is just horrible UX for me. Why would I pay hundreds for a worse UX?
you can install nearly all of their supported language plugins in your editor fyi. you just lose some of the language specific integrations if you use the python plugin via intellij for example.
Which isn't a problem with VSCode. And it's free.
> Which isn't a problem with VSCode
you also have to install plugins in vscode
> And it's free
not relevant to my comment
you also have to install plugins in vscode
> And it's free
not relevant to my comment
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They’re in a difficult position because half their users want more AI but the other half complain loudly when it’s forced on them. Cursor is beating them because they can deeply embed AI everywhere without worrying about this.
That's not a difficult position at all, just make it an opt-in feature.
That’s what they’re evidently trying to do, but it means they’re moving too slow and the AI integration feels like a bolted on afterthought (hence the reaction to failed features like this).
I am a lifetime user of PyCharm but the reality is that Cursor is just so much more productive now. “Junie” is a decent attempt but nowhere close to Cursor yet.
I am a lifetime user of PyCharm but the reality is that Cursor is just so much more productive now. “Junie” is a decent attempt but nowhere close to Cursor yet.
If I rename a function in Cursor, will it modify the name everywhere in the codebase? (I honestly don't know)
Yes, but it will be very, very slow (think minutes for a not particularly large codebase), and probably contain mistakes. It's not at all comparable to refactoring tools like Jetbrains' rename tool.
The refactoring feature in Cursor barely works, unlike any Intellij products
Do any IDEs expose their features (like refactoring) as tools the AI can use? Would much prefer that over the LLM trying to figure it out.
I wouldn’t even want the LLM for a simple rename. Volar and TSLS seem to handle renames without issue, even across files and file types (eg Vue and Typescript)
As someone who used cloud-code (ridiculously expensive) and Junie (I am so happy with it) - what do I miss from Cursor?
[deleted]
The classic disruption of a startup. This is actually a good thing. This allows new startups to come into the market.
Yeah, I’ve spent some time building IntelliJ plugins, and honestly, the authoring experience has some real limitations. It’s not the easiest platform to work with, especially when it comes to writing automated tests. That might be part of the reason why their or any third-party AI plugins don’t feel as smooth as the ones on VS Code.
I actually have hopes that this will work out for them in the long run. Their bet seems to be at this point including the AI stuff in with the subscription: staving off the existential threat to their business without charging more, while still not having to spend insane amounts paying for someone else's model.
At least with code completion it's pretty obvious at this point that no one needs the overpowered top-line models, and the trajectory on local LLMs is such that I don't think it's unreasonable for them to hope to avoid the big players entirely.
They don't need to beat Claude for it to work, they just need to keep their customers satisfied.
At least with code completion it's pretty obvious at this point that no one needs the overpowered top-line models, and the trajectory on local LLMs is such that I don't think it's unreasonable for them to hope to avoid the big players entirely.
They don't need to beat Claude for it to work, they just need to keep their customers satisfied.
Unless I have to use them indirectly via Android Studio, I prefer to stay on Eclipse or Netbeans land for Java.
Visual Studio is still the best for C++, followed by C++ Builder.
VSCode is the only Electon app that I tolerate on my own computers.
When is InteliJ finally going to support JNI development instead of requiring two IDE licences?
Visual Studio is still the best for C++, followed by C++ Builder.
VSCode is the only Electon app that I tolerate on my own computers.
When is InteliJ finally going to support JNI development instead of requiring two IDE licences?
I prefer Java in VS Code, but unfortunately there's no solid option for Kotlin outside of IntelliJ.
One of my two major gripes about Kotlin -- that, and the lack of a standardized style guide and formatting tool so that there's no bikeshedding or difference between repos.
One of my two major gripes about Kotlin -- that, and the lack of a standardized style guide and formatting tool so that there's no bikeshedding or difference between repos.
Java in VSCode is either Eclipse or Netbeans running headless, better use the real deal.
Of course that is no Kotlin outside InteliJ, JetBrains even has a blog post on how Kotlin is supposed to help selling more licenses.
https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2011/08/why-jetbrains-need...
By the way, for a little while there were some JetBrains employees doing an Eclipse plugin, but naturally they ramped out that effort.
https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2015/09/kotlin-eclipse-plu...
Of course that is no Kotlin outside InteliJ, JetBrains even has a blog post on how Kotlin is supposed to help selling more licenses.
https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2011/08/why-jetbrains-need...
By the way, for a little while there were some JetBrains employees doing an Eclipse plugin, but naturally they ramped out that effort.
https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2015/09/kotlin-eclipse-plu...
They don't need to do it themselves; there lots of AI plugins for IntelliJ and I use one by Sourcegraph.
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Not great. Any other company would have been put on my greedy-morons list. But i believe JetBrains is special and is allowed more mistakes than others.
I also believe they should really stay calm and not get sucked into the AI hype. Worst case they will be the heroes to the people who like to program for the joy of it, in case these AI IDEs should really take over (which i highly doubt).
I also believe they should really stay calm and not get sucked into the AI hype. Worst case they will be the heroes to the people who like to program for the joy of it, in case these AI IDEs should really take over (which i highly doubt).
Their main target market are enterprise Java developers, whose intersection with "people who like to program for the joy of it" is close to zero.
Lately they've also been coddling with the VSCode crowd by aggressively pushing the new UI over loud objections of old loyal users.
Either one seems like direct opposite of the hacker user you're mentioning.
Lately they've also been coddling with the VSCode crowd by aggressively pushing the new UI over loud objections of old loyal users.
Either one seems like direct opposite of the hacker user you're mentioning.
I love JetBrains and hate vscode, but Cursor was such a huge productivity boost that I ended up switching. Unfortunately none of the JetBrains plugins (Junie, the older AI Assistant, Windsurf/codeium, etc) come close yet :(
After hearing so much about Cursor, and then reading your comment, I decided to give it a try. Here's my honest, first ever time trying to use it:
- I go to its website and neither on the homepage nor the features tab does it bother listing what languages the IDE is even for. Is it Python? C? HTML? It's an IDE .. for what? What languages? What project types? How can they not list this basic fact?
- Oh well, click the big Download link, and it downloads an app image file. No idea what to do with this, never seen one before, have to google it.
- Mark the file as executable and run it and get a cryptic error: "The setuid sandbox is not running as root" and it errors out.
- Back to google, google for that error message. Find various Cusor bug reports and people complaining about it but they haven't bothered fixing it.
- Find a workaround, to pass in a –no-sandbox arg when running Cursor, and now I get it to launch.
- It opens up but the text is incredibly small on my (4K) monitor and the text coloring is a dark grey that's almost indistinguishable from the background color, immediately go look for settings to fix it. There's ~50 settings results for "font" or "size", I change a few of them and it seems to make no impact to the UI font and I quickly give up and just want to try the editor.
- I read online that I need a "CMake Tools" extension to open a CMake project. In cursor I open the extensions marketplace and search for "CMake" and there's zero results. I try to open a CMakeLists file anyways and it opens it as a text file and then prompts me to install a "CMake Tools" extension. Ok? Why didn't it show up in the marketplace before?
- I click the popup about the CMake Tools extension it opens the marketplace page for it, showing me the details about it. Whilst I'm reading the details for example to see who the author of the extension is, whether it's even a legit extension or not, the reviews of it, it just automatically installs it by default without me clicking the Install button that was on the page.
- After installing the extension the CMake file I opened is just in a tab but hasn't imported the CMake project, so I close it and re-open it from the File->Open menu.
- It again just opens the file as a plain text file and doesn't actually try to import the CMake project in any way, I don't see any popup or button or call to action to actually import the CMake project in any way.
- I give up and just switch back to my normal IDE
- I go to its website and neither on the homepage nor the features tab does it bother listing what languages the IDE is even for. Is it Python? C? HTML? It's an IDE .. for what? What languages? What project types? How can they not list this basic fact?
- Oh well, click the big Download link, and it downloads an app image file. No idea what to do with this, never seen one before, have to google it.
- Mark the file as executable and run it and get a cryptic error: "The setuid sandbox is not running as root" and it errors out.
- Back to google, google for that error message. Find various Cusor bug reports and people complaining about it but they haven't bothered fixing it.
- Find a workaround, to pass in a –no-sandbox arg when running Cursor, and now I get it to launch.
- It opens up but the text is incredibly small on my (4K) monitor and the text coloring is a dark grey that's almost indistinguishable from the background color, immediately go look for settings to fix it. There's ~50 settings results for "font" or "size", I change a few of them and it seems to make no impact to the UI font and I quickly give up and just want to try the editor.
- I read online that I need a "CMake Tools" extension to open a CMake project. In cursor I open the extensions marketplace and search for "CMake" and there's zero results. I try to open a CMakeLists file anyways and it opens it as a text file and then prompts me to install a "CMake Tools" extension. Ok? Why didn't it show up in the marketplace before?
- I click the popup about the CMake Tools extension it opens the marketplace page for it, showing me the details about it. Whilst I'm reading the details for example to see who the author of the extension is, whether it's even a legit extension or not, the reviews of it, it just automatically installs it by default without me clicking the Install button that was on the page.
- After installing the extension the CMake file I opened is just in a tab but hasn't imported the CMake project, so I close it and re-open it from the File->Open menu.
- It again just opens the file as a plain text file and doesn't actually try to import the CMake project in any way, I don't see any popup or button or call to action to actually import the CMake project in any way.
- I give up and just switch back to my normal IDE
The CMake (and C++) integration story for VS Code is not great... I ran into lots of issues when I tried some years ago, and now this happened too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43788125
I assume you can still get everything to kind of work, but be ready to commit to a fair bit of fiddling with extension settings.
I get that you found it frustrating. But speaking as somebody who’s not used Cursor and is genuinely interested in hearing unbiased perspectives about it, your “review” isn’t helpful. It boils down to “I couldn’t get it to work.” Given that lots of people have gotten it to work, that sounds like a you problem.
It's a VSCode fork that ships in a single file executable on all platforms. It's almost identical to (one of?) the most used IDEs in the industry
Half of your bullet points above are you being intentionally obtuse to be grumpy in this comment.
Half of your bullet points above are you being intentionally obtuse to be grumpy in this comment.
This is curmudgeonly af. Sorry you couldn’t figure out how to use a massively popular program that my 14-year-old neighbor seems to have got running just fine.
Ditto, I love JetBrains, but cannot ignore Cursor. I use the IntelliJ shortcuts / Darcula extensions to help with familiarity.
Among the ones you mentioned, I also tried Gemini Code Assist JetBrains extension, but it doesn't integrate anywhere close to what Cursor does. (Direct code inserts, rollbacks, checkpoints, context integration) Zzzzz come on JetBrains
Among the ones you mentioned, I also tried Gemini Code Assist JetBrains extension, but it doesn't integrate anywhere close to what Cursor does. (Direct code inserts, rollbacks, checkpoints, context integration) Zzzzz come on JetBrains
The subscription costs are worth it?
I use it mostly as smarter autocomplete and it's still absolutely worth it. I really tried having it write unit tests in Go, write simple Astro websites, etc, but I'm never satisfied with how dumb it is when "vibe coding", so I use it as Intellisense on steroids for now, but I don't doubt it will become even better soon. The chat feature is fantastic and between it and the contextual help I barely ever have to reach for actual (code) documentation.
Depends mostly upon what you're doing.
Having done go and python in jetbrains and vscode, I definitely enjoy the experience in jetbrains more. A lot of java people like IntelliJ for their Java and Kotlin support.
OTOH, copilot has been not as good on Jetbrains as it has been on vscode. Updates are delayed to give VSCode a first mover advantage to VSCode.
Google Gemini Code assist plugin last week still sucked, didn't try it today.
Copilot can also use Gemini Pro 2.5, but they delayed the release of the plugin for Jetbrains, and only have a context of 10 files I believe for the edit mode.
And I thought I read somewhere that Jetbrains AI Assistant can use gemini AI pro, it's limited to a context window of 200,000. I might be wrong on that.
Junie is reasonably good, but still has issues with understanding large code blocks of more than a couple of kilobytes. But it applies the changes first, without letting you do a review of the code. The only real way to do it, is to check in the code in git, then let it run, and then look at the results.
I've asked Junie to fix unit tests using brave mode, and it seems more than capable with that.
I think the trick with Junie is small defined tasks, rather than large bullet points. Or at least have a detailed plan which you can paste in, and reasonably detailed so it won't have to guess or infer what it is you want.
But generally speaking, I've had far better luck with Google Gemini Pro 2.5 on code generation than with some of the others lately.
Edited to add: Github Copilot added agent mode. I'm going to try it now.
Having done go and python in jetbrains and vscode, I definitely enjoy the experience in jetbrains more. A lot of java people like IntelliJ for their Java and Kotlin support.
OTOH, copilot has been not as good on Jetbrains as it has been on vscode. Updates are delayed to give VSCode a first mover advantage to VSCode.
Google Gemini Code assist plugin last week still sucked, didn't try it today.
Copilot can also use Gemini Pro 2.5, but they delayed the release of the plugin for Jetbrains, and only have a context of 10 files I believe for the edit mode.
And I thought I read somewhere that Jetbrains AI Assistant can use gemini AI pro, it's limited to a context window of 200,000. I might be wrong on that.
Junie is reasonably good, but still has issues with understanding large code blocks of more than a couple of kilobytes. But it applies the changes first, without letting you do a review of the code. The only real way to do it, is to check in the code in git, then let it run, and then look at the results.
I've asked Junie to fix unit tests using brave mode, and it seems more than capable with that.
I think the trick with Junie is small defined tasks, rather than large bullet points. Or at least have a detailed plan which you can paste in, and reasonably detailed so it won't have to guess or infer what it is you want.
But generally speaking, I've had far better luck with Google Gemini Pro 2.5 on code generation than with some of the others lately.
Edited to add: Github Copilot added agent mode. I'm going to try it now.
It’s just $20, that’s almost free compared to cost of human labor
Have you tried Continue?
Not a good look. A better way would’ve been to add a response to the reviews (and notify the reviewers via eg email):
“Hi, we’ve updated and these issues should be addressed now. Please take a look and let us know what you think!”
“Hi, we’ve updated and these issues should be addressed now. Please take a look and let us know what you think!”
But that would be a lot of work and the damned user could reply or update their review that “it still doesn’t work and my review still stands”.
If you control both the product and the platform, deleting negative reviews is much more convenient than actually resolving the issues.
If you control both the product and the platform, deleting negative reviews is much more convenient than actually resolving the issues.
Any company that thinks it's too costly to respond to paying customers better have a really good ads product or airtight enterprise licensing deals. Because that's the only type of revenue stream where you can get away with ignoring the user.
I cancelled my JetBrains license a few days ago after I was required to agree to new terms and conditions, they expended no effort and took zero time to explain the changes, what has changed and why, I was shown a ridiculously long legal document and asked to agree or get fucked. There was no feedback option when cancelling the subscription, they clearly don't care.
Didn’t you read the ridiculously long legal document and agreed to it when you got the license in the beginning as well?
Probably not in all honesty, I cared less back in 2014 when I started using their IDEs.
I used to be a fan of jb products since they used to give it out for free in college, and continued using it into my professional career (I loved the refactoring tools!). However, lately they have been adding too much junk to their IDEs.
Have switched to my very old workflow of using nvim and customizing it with NvChad.
Have switched to my very old workflow of using nvim and customizing it with NvChad.
The correct approach, IMO, is to try to incentivize re-review after the issues have been fixed. Not delete the negative reviews. If you want to prove you're customer centric with your product and that you actually care, you can find a way to encourage them to change their vote.
It's quite shocking to me how many people already told me to disable the annoying "single line" AI-completion if I ever were to try out a JetBrains IDE.
> AI services are expensive to provide, because they tend to be processor-intensive, but competition between vendors is a likely reason for JetBrains introducing a free tier earlier this month
If it's so expensive, why do they force it on everyone? Sure, a lot of folks want support for this, but enabling it by default is just annoying for their long-time users. Not to mention the costs of full AI-completion, I hope they don't get the idea of also enabling that by default.
> AI services are expensive to provide, because they tend to be processor-intensive, but competition between vendors is a likely reason for JetBrains introducing a free tier earlier this month
If it's so expensive, why do they force it on everyone? Sure, a lot of folks want support for this, but enabling it by default is just annoying for their long-time users. Not to mention the costs of full AI-completion, I hope they don't get the idea of also enabling that by default.
First thing I do with any jetbrain ide is kill that ai assistant. I'm paid to think.
The whole Jetbrains product suite is sliding downhill quality wise. Can we go back to the days of yore where it was just a lightning fast Java code editor and it did that extremely well?
This has also been my experience. Every update brings new weird bugs that disrupt my workflow - it's gotten bad enough that I've stopped updating their tools when the bugs aren't in main parts of my workflow, because while updates may fix those, they are sure to introduce even worse ones. And it's not like I'm doing crazy stuff, for a while even copying text made a "Copying..." dialog pop up and freeze the editor for a while.
Unless something drastically changes, I won't be renewing my license anymore. I don't like VS Code, but it's been much more reliable than the Jetbrains tools I use.
Unless something drastically changes, I won't be renewing my license anymore. I don't like VS Code, but it's been much more reliable than the Jetbrains tools I use.
I really keep trying to replace Jetbrains with VSCode, and I keep going back. VSCode is just so deficient in comparison in ways on which I depend. But yes, Jetbrains keeps making that statement harder and harder to make for me
It really has. I had to disable the GitHub plugin to get rid of a PR comment box that wouldn't disappear.
Junit test runs say No tests available about 50% of the time
It feels slower and slower
Today I started getting "unable to save settings" or something, no idea what that is about
It really shows that they're distracted from quality. My guess is with the breadth of features and quite amazing attention to detail, they needed 100% dedication to those efforts, and now a chunk of the company is doing something else, and now the product is falling apart
But hey we have a totally new console engine or something so that's really nice (I've personally never used the console ...)
Junit test runs say No tests available about 50% of the time
It feels slower and slower
Today I started getting "unable to save settings" or something, no idea what that is about
It really shows that they're distracted from quality. My guess is with the breadth of features and quite amazing attention to detail, they needed 100% dedication to those efforts, and now a chunk of the company is doing something else, and now the product is falling apart
But hey we have a totally new console engine or something so that's really nice (I've personally never used the console ...)
I agree, they should focus more on quality, because there are still a ton of tiny, yet annoying issues.
In Webstorm it sometimes does not recognize comments (colorizes them as code), does not reliably recognize multi line ToDos, and frequently warns me in a if (myVar == null) that myVar may not have been initialized.
At least the last issue is as old as the hills, has been reported several times, and yet they seem to be unable to properly fix it.
In Webstorm it sometimes does not recognize comments (colorizes them as code), does not reliably recognize multi line ToDos, and frequently warns me in a if (myVar == null) that myVar may not have been initialized.
At least the last issue is as old as the hills, has been reported several times, and yet they seem to be unable to properly fix it.
Downhill fast since JB hastily exited its offices in St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk. It’s no coincidence.
Agree ever since Roman Elizarov left that company has gone downhill big time. Crashing all the time, stuff that should be rock solid because it so common. Like the other day syntax errors stopped being highlighted. I never update because every time something will be broken guaranteed.
I don't know.. there are some plugins crashing, but I haven't experienced the whole IDE crashing in a long time. I regularly use PyCharm, IntelliJ, Android Studio and WebStorm. There's simply no alternative to those, in my opinion.
Yeah Jetbrains is going down a very similar path to Borland.
Being fast is not enough in 2025.
Yes it is, VSCode is so painfully slow. Maybe I have Vim brain rot but the input latency in VSCode is extremely noticeable and there's the whole having to use a mouse for proficiency that slows you down too.
I'd pay decent money for an editor that could be faster than Neovim but until then they get my yearly donation.
There's so much that can be gained solely on speed alone. Especially for JetBrains products here too.
I'd pay decent money for an editor that could be faster than Neovim but until then they get my yearly donation.
There's so much that can be gained solely on speed alone. Especially for JetBrains products here too.
Sublime Text is in the business of being fast.
Yes! Sublime Text 2 with vim mode was my jam for a solid 8 years and paid for a new license for every machine that let me.
Haven't it used it since adopting neovim but I am happy that the Sublime team is still around and able to make a living on a good product.
Haven't it used it since adopting neovim but I am happy that the Sublime team is still around and able to make a living on a good product.
Any specific reason you’d say that? I’ve been using Rider for years it has been strictly getting better with each version.
(Please don’t disappoint me by saying “they added an optional feature and I don’t like it”)
(Please don’t disappoint me by saying “they added an optional feature and I don’t like it”)
I just spent half a day troubleshooting why PHPStorm suddenly took 15 minutes to become responsive. The cultprit was the built-in markdown plugin, probably after an update. I don't have time for that.
Another annoying thing is they also removed the modal commit window in favor of a VS code style commit. It was removed without notification, and I had to install a plug-in to restore it.
IDE UI is the most important thing for me, I've built muscle memory to use it without think. When they tinker with it, it forces me to think about the IDE instead of about what I'm working on, and that's really annoying. Not enough to lead me to change, for now.
Another annoying thing is they also removed the modal commit window in favor of a VS code style commit. It was removed without notification, and I had to install a plug-in to restore it.
IDE UI is the most important thing for me, I've built muscle memory to use it without think. When they tinker with it, it forces me to think about the IDE instead of about what I'm working on, and that's really annoying. Not enough to lead me to change, for now.
Rider stands out because the competition for C# development is VS2022 and VSCode. VS2022 is bloated and slow, while VSCode is missing tons of important features. Can't really speak to how other JB offerings compare to their competitors, but Rider is best-in-class for C#/.NET.
I'd say it would depend on the product. I understand there are different teams developing each IDE.
They have had quite a few issues open for nearly a decade (I wish I was kidding) for features that had been quite sought after, that free tools have had for years.
They have had quite a few issues open for nearly a decade (I wish I was kidding) for features that had been quite sought after, that free tools have had for years.
I'm not OP, but agree that the tooling—DataGrip and WebStorm for me—is getting worse. Here are issues observed for the latest updates:
- DataGrip sporadically stops working when returning from sleep. I have to force-kill it to continue.
- Take a relatively empty file with 10 lines. WebStorm is supposed to reformat on save. It hangs for 10+ seconds or until I cancel reformatting.
- I saw a low memory alert for the first time in months this week. My workflow hasn't changed drastically and I wasn't running anything, just editing a few files.
- Overall everything feels a little slower than it did a couple weeks ago with the older version.
I don't think it's worth filing issues in YouTrack because I've seen those go nowhere in the past.
- DataGrip sporadically stops working when returning from sleep. I have to force-kill it to continue.
- Take a relatively empty file with 10 lines. WebStorm is supposed to reformat on save. It hangs for 10+ seconds or until I cancel reformatting.
- I saw a low memory alert for the first time in months this week. My workflow hasn't changed drastically and I wasn't running anything, just editing a few files.
- Overall everything feels a little slower than it did a couple weeks ago with the older version.
I don't think it's worth filing issues in YouTrack because I've seen those go nowhere in the past.
> it was just a lightning fast Java code editor
Uh, I don't think it's ever been "lightning fast"... Great at refactoring, navigation, and boilerplate generation, yeah; fast, no.
Uh, I don't think it's ever been "lightning fast"... Great at refactoring, navigation, and boilerplate generation, yeah; fast, no.
It was actually known as the fast option. You have to remember that this was from a time where the alternatives were Eclipse and NetBeans. Lightweight vim/emacs style "text editor" IDE's (maybe except for hardcore configuration heavy plugin collections) hadn't come around yet.
I guess if you compared it to those two, it definitely was faster ("lightning" though, really?). TBH, at the time, for Java I was happily using the likes of jEdit with a bunch of plugins, and for Microsoft stuff I had Visual Studio. Those editors were fast; IDEA had many advantages in comparison, but definitely not speed for me.
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Confirmed - it is an expensive turd. Windsurf IntelliJ plugin is better and faster at auto complete and has useful interactive natural langue interaction based coding features.
I have been using this pairing for the past eighteen months and it has been a very productive and smooth experience. The Codeium/Windsurf JB IDE plugin is much better than their standalone vscode fork IDE
There is already a huge discussion going on about their big re-design last year, so I guess they are now feeling the burn with all the users leaving...
Junie is a much better agent than the AI Assistant and uses the same AI subscription plan, but Augment blows the doors off both of them.
I didn't know what Augment is, so I checked it out. There's absolute no way I'm going to agree to this [0]:
> When you open a workspace with Augment enabled, your codebase will be automatically uploaded to Augment’s secure cloud.
[0] https://docs.augmentcode.com/jetbrains/setup-augment/workspa...
> When you open a workspace with Augment enabled, your codebase will be automatically uploaded to Augment’s secure cloud.
[0] https://docs.augmentcode.com/jetbrains/setup-augment/workspa...
I never managed to get anything out of Junie. Each of my queries end up with an internal process stuck on a loop eating 100% CPU until I kill it. Back to Windsurf for now which is disappointing because I much prefer PyCharm for everything else.
Results quality is probably language-dependent. I was able to use Junie to do a bunch of Java/Kotlin tasks and it worked very well.
Do third party plugin authors get this privilege, to remove reviews where they deem the mentioned issues solved?
From consumer perspective, I’m actually not against this probably. Would be nice to have way to give more weight to reviews relevant to current product version. Old reviews are very confusing for consumers since they basically provide false information about the product.
Soon we will have to pay premium to not have AI Assistants in our tools.
ugh that whole review thing is super sketchy, i really don't get how they think that builds any trust
Noone would care in a week
IANAL but is this even legal despite recent curb on FTC?
[0] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/...
[0] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/...
Everyone is rigging reviews. Welcome to capitalism.
Right? Are 3rd-Party Plugin developers allowed to ask for old negative reviews to be deleted? I would guess that no, you cannot request that, because Jet Brains are overstepping their position.
I would LOVE to see a paid plugin challenge Jet Brains on this by asking that their old negative reviews get deleted under threat of legal action.
I would LOVE to see a paid plugin challenge Jet Brains on this by asking that their old negative reviews get deleted under threat of legal action.
Yeah, unfortunately, they have to jump on the AI bandwagon because they are forced to by other editors, providing free AI, but they simply do not have the skills to integrate the AI properly. It's a shame, and unfortunately removing negative reviews will not help as people will simply migrate to a different product. You can have three 5 star reviews, but that doesn't help if nobody else is using it.
That shouldn't be considered a valid reason to remove a review. I could maybe understand down-weighting reviews as they age and as issues are resolved, but as a potential buyer of some product/service/whatever, knowing that something was released with a bunch of issues (even if now solved) is a valuable signal. Preferably, they would reply to reviews and say "XYZ was addressed in update ABC" or something.
Nuking reviews is a valuable signal as well, I guess. Just not in the way that they hope. Knowing that they've done that has (further) lowered my impression of them.