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JetBrains invites developers to join the Fleet Public Preview Program

by topka on 10/12/22, 11:24 AM with 322 comments

  • by _fat_santa on 10/12/22, 12:51 PM

    This looks really promising. But by far the biggest moat that Jetbrains is going to have to cross to get into VSCode territory is the plugin ecosystem. Personally I work on React projects so my first thought was: "is there a Prettier[1] plugin?". Looking through the landing page it looks like Plugins are in the works but until that is implemented, it's going to be hard adopting it.

    ALSO I just noticed this but can someone (ideally from JetBrains) explain what this line means: "Requires login and periodic connection to JetBrains servers to verify the project" (specifically the last 3 words of that sentence). Quite frankly this line is extremely alarming, are you saying that you're scanning my project to make sure it's not a "professional" project? I'm going to assume this line means that they are checking the IDE and not your source but I won't be using this product until I get an explanation for this. You can find this at the very bottom in the licensing and pricing section.

    [1]: https://prettier.io/

  • by __warlord__ on 10/12/22, 1:30 PM

    I installed this 30 min ago.

    1. My M1 temp went from 28c to 60c

    2. CPU utilization to 103%?

    3. It's using 3.29Gb of RAM

    And it hasn't changed.

    With a single python project with 3k lines of code.

    VSCode sits at 280Mb and CPU temp around 28c.

    Edit:

    Vim + SpaceVim sitting at 17Mb :)

  • by capableweb on 10/12/22, 12:04 PM

    > Fleet is our new distributed polyglot editor and IDE.

    Ok, polygot makes sense, it supports more than just one language. But what does distributed mean in this context? You run the editor across many machines? What does that mean? Coming from a backend perspective, it quite doesn't make much sense. Thinking about it from a client-side perspective, I'm guessing they mean the architecture is decoupled, meaning basically plugins/extensions but with a fancier word?

    Judging by the "Features Matrix" (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vTWt9RlJ...), sad to see not a single non C-like language is being considered.

  • by cmrdporcupine on 10/12/22, 2:46 PM

    So I tried it out. I own a CLion license and have been using Jetbrains products since IntelliJ 3.0. It seems ok, but very very VSCode-ish.

    I tried it with our Rust codebase and it seemed to be fairly competitive with CLion in terms of analysis. I didn't try any refactorings but I did notice that it doesn't have many of them. It was fairly snappy, felt more responsive than CLion. I was disappointed that even after I switched it to "IntelliJ" keybindings many keybindings still were more like VSCode than IntelliJ. I.e. Ctrl-N was still "open new tab" and not "jump to symbol" (have to do ctrl-shift-alt-N for that.)

    Overall, I guess I'm curious where they go with it. I won't be trading in my CLion license, though. I am probably not the target audience; I suspect they're looking to capture customers who work in large corporations where VSCode is getting penetration as a hosted/fleet solution. With the default keybindings I suspect those coming from VSCode will find Fleet very comfortable.

    For myself, I continue to give Jetbrains money for their IDEs, because as a company they do great work and give good value. I'm happy to modestly help pay the salaries of their employees. I wish them luck.

  • by fayten on 10/12/22, 2:55 PM

    Some neat info on the performance side of things, Fleet is using Skija[1] and Compose[2] as a rendering engine and UI framework. Skija is a java wrapper for Skia and still does not support the full API. Compose is still relatively new and has not had nearly the amount of man hours devoted to it as Swing. This is just a technical preview, I'm sure there will be plenty of optimizations to come. I think it's pretty exciting to see Skija being used for a mainstream project!

    [1] https://github.com/HumbleUI/Skija

    [2] https://github.com/JetBrains/compose-jb

  • by dangerboysteve on 10/12/22, 2:41 PM

    To use Fleet you have to download the JetBrains Toolbox. Really? Look, I'm a JB subscriber and have the toolbox, but Fleet should not require another app to launch or update itself.
  • by tommica on 10/12/22, 12:40 PM

    Tried the private beta for a while, and although it was rough on the edges, I really enjoyed the ability to "enable" the smart mode - if I needed to do a quick edit in a file, without having to load all the IDE magic, I had an editor that was quick to start, and if I needed all the bits and bobs, I just clicked a button and off we went.

    What kept me using their main products instead of fleet was the plugins that are available, that makes working just more enjoyable.

  • by pjmlp on 10/12/22, 12:28 PM

    JetBrains trying to fight back Visual Studio Code taking over their market share.
  • by monlockandkey on 10/12/22, 12:21 PM

    I just downloaded the Fleet beta from the App toolbox. First impressions is that it is very clean.

    This is essentially Vscode but with Jetbrains language and refactoring engine.

    Quick thoughts:

    - It needs a bit more autocomplete e.g automatically close tags for React components

    - GUI run configuration - they have made it so it uses a JSON file like Vscode to configure, GUI is quicker and easier (can still click run on gutter for package.json scripts so not that bad)

    - Sometimes you want to use Vscode to make some quick changes/play around instead of firing up an IDE. Fleet replaces that for me

    - Part of me think that Jetbrains should have created paid extensions for Vscode much like Resharper for Visual Studio

  • by Kukumber on 10/12/22, 2:35 PM

    They made a mistake to keep using the JVM..

    They should have went with kotlin-native from the start

    EDIT:

    Ok i gave it a try, so far very responsive, typing latency feels much better than vscode, overall i like the UX, they kept it simple yet very well organized

    Much better than vscode already, congrats!

  • by no_circuit on 10/12/22, 3:33 PM

    So if they are making progress to a distributed polyglot editor, then this mean that we'd be able to run multiple windows of Fleet working on different projects connecting to the same remote host? Is the connection mechanism basically the same as the Gateway product? If so, I wonder if this bug will ever gets fixed, or if it is a "works as intended" that you cannot run multiple projects on the same host? [1]

    However this issue doesn't really apply if you create a VM per workspace either manually or the service that is provided...

    [1] https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/GTW-813

  • by artdigital on 10/12/22, 1:13 PM

    Looks and feels nice

    Sadly no plugin support yet, and no VIM keybdings, that's a bummer.

    I loaded up a JS project, but no support for prettier, LSP or eslint formatting means the Format Code feature doesn't match with the rest of the projects style, so I can't use it.

    I'll keep it installed and revisit now and then (similar to Nova). Excited to see what they have planned

  • by davb on 10/12/22, 1:45 PM

    It’s so slow to startup. On a laptop with 11th gen i5, 16GB ram and a fairly fast NVMe SSD running Windows 11 and I see ~10s startup time. I really hope it succeeds but for a lightweight editor it’s just too slow to start.
  • by kaladin_1 on 10/12/22, 1:56 PM

    Nice one Jetbrains!!!

    Let's see if this competition eventually leads to one of them launching something as snappy as vim but with IDE functionalities. VS Code is close but noticeably slows down as soon as you install many plugins.

    With Fleet, newbies now have an alternative editor cum IDE.

    Many people that were into programming in my University couldn't afford the kind of machine that would load IntelliJ or Jetbrains IDEs in short time. Rooting for Jetbrains to put up a good fight and recover some market share :)

  • by onebot on 10/12/22, 2:01 PM

    I would love this if it wasn't also built on the Java runtime. I hoped the "from ground up" rewrite to include a new much more performant backend that didn't burn resources. To be fair, I even think VSCode is too slow. I have been loving Helix Editor since it gives a great out-of-the box experience for terminal. But craving a better VSCode replacement. Had high hopes for Fleet, but I guess you can't teach an old dog new tricks.
  • by uticus on 10/12/22, 3:20 PM

    No Ruby support out of the box - yet there is support for Java (a la IntelliJ), C# (a la Rider), Go (a la GoLand), C (a la CLion), Python (a la PyCharm), Web-anything (a la WebStorm & PhpStorm)...

    RubyMine is a great IDE, worth paying for, but this looks like writing on the wall.

  • by hampereddustbin on 10/12/22, 11:59 AM

    I've been browsing their site for a few minutes now and I'm still lost on what Fleet actually is.

    It says it's a new IDE, built from scratch, sure, but isn't IntelliJ already the gold standard for many languages? What problems does creating an entirely new IDE solve?

  • by TheChaplain on 10/12/22, 12:03 PM

    I'm sure this is great for enterprises but for me, a single developer on a local machine, what benefits does Fleet bring?
  • by barefeg on 10/12/22, 6:52 PM

    Sorry for the unfamiliarity with JetBrains products. Is this architecture similar to VSCode’s? So the ide has a backend that can run remotely and a frontend client that can run in multiple environments including web? I remember a long time ago pyCharm had the ability to run the interpreter remotely. What are the benefits of pulling more stuff in the backend? Is it in order to be able to run the editor in different environments?
  • by bluelightning2k on 10/12/22, 1:51 PM

    For what this is for: I think the clue is in the name. It targets large groups of developers offloading the language server with thin clients.

    At least that's my understanding.

  • by noob_07 on 10/12/22, 3:40 PM

    Anybody having memory issues with it? I opened a large react project and it utilized nearly 2GB of RAM. I am on a linux machine.
  • by rz123 on 10/12/22, 2:32 PM

    Problem with JetBrains support docker for PyCharm and most likely other IDEs.

    1. Why JetBrains can not connect to docker running container by using exec operation and read installed packages?

    Issue: - It is not possible to just go into running container install some library and get it visible within IDE, it needs to go via all pain to clear caches and wait until IDE will load again.

    How it works now: - It creates copy of docker image and read installed packages from it, does not read anything installed within currently running container. - Developer needs to install packages within image creation for PyCharm to pickup it. If package is installed in current container, developer needs to go clear caches, restart IDE, wait until it loads etc. and it is because the way how JetBrains integrates and supports running docker containers.

    ::Reproducing issue with running docker containers within Pycharm:: --- If you want to reproduce issue create docker-compose installation with python. Start by running "docker-compose up" from terminal load PyCharm and configure everything what is require within PyCharm.

    Going into running container by terminal: # docker-compose exec ... bash # pip install pip-licenses

    This pip-licenses package will not be visible inside IDE! Developer needs to go clear all caches, reload PyCharm and do other things just to get package recognised from running docker container. ----

    2. Why jetbrains can not find proper solution to see packages from currently running container without clearing caches? Cache should be update if recognised that new package exist within currently running container, not by developers maintaining jetbrains IDE caches. 3. VSCode(free IDE) did find how to support running docker containers, but paid product by Jetbrains can not solve this problem? 4. Can you at least implement something similar level to VSCode for running docker containers?

  • by hbn on 10/12/22, 3:05 PM

    Seems pretty slick from what I've played with so far. I don't need anything fancy, I kinda just want something to replace my usecase for VS Code which is a quick-to-open text editor that I don't need a PhD in in order to use effectively. For getting work done I'll continue to use IntelliJ, but sometimes I just need to edit a file or open a directory of files and don't want to open a big IDE for that and have it start indexing things.

    Slightly disappointed they've changed the default key mappings? I went to open a file with cmd+shift+o but that immediately launched a symbol search and I have to hit cmd-p to open a file search.

    Seems like the git comparison UI is worse. Aside from it stacking up a giant list of diffs, it seems very simple, like Github's PR diff UI. Not doing the nice thing where it shows which lines map to which lines in the changes. I'll chock that up to being a preview.

  • by mgkimsal on 10/12/22, 12:53 PM

    Mostly OT, I know, but... anyone have any clue as to when 'spaces' might actually be a supported task server for their IDE products? They offer 'spaces' as a project tool - keep track of issues/bugs, planning, communication, etc. But you can't connect your IDE to it the same way it can connect to Jira, Github, Trello, Gitlab, Redline, Pivotal and others. It seemed like a short-term oversight at the start, but after... 2 years(?) ... it seems like a vote of no-confidence in their own product. I was excited to use spaces but... some of the most basic stuff I wanted to use wasn't there, and still isn't.

    https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/community/po...

  • by savingGrace on 10/12/22, 5:59 PM

    I have used JetBrains products for a decade (IntelliJ, Android Studio, WebStorm, PHPStorm). Does this mean that those products are having resources shifted away from them to work on Fleet? I am not a developer who enjoys the 'plugin' mindset and tend to install very few. I prefer Visual Studios over VSCode as well...
  • by nobleach on 10/12/22, 4:51 PM

    I had high hopes that JetBrains would relent on their decision to avoid implementing a Language Server Protocol server. There is a 3rd party implementation out there, but it needs a lot of help. I realize this cuts into their core business... but it'd sure make using Vim to write Kotlin a more pleasant experience.
  • by chewmieser on 10/12/22, 3:21 PM

    Felt really great! Snappy and familiar to modern equivalents (e.g. VS Code). That said, memory consumption is pretty high at around 3.35 GB for the backend, 1.83 GB for the frontend on a decently sized project. Compared to Nova which has that and a lot more loaded at 1.26 GB.

    PHP smart mode definitely needs work. A lot of errors that wouldn't be errors if we could specify which version of PHP the project was running as. Using any PHP7+ feature ends up in an error.

    Some silly issues with namespacing as well - like using "string" type-hinting on class functions in a namespaced class shows an error.

    And some highlighting oddities with some of our files, but all-in-all I really liked Fleet. Will keep an eye on it!

  • by PeterStuer on 10/12/22, 12:14 PM

    Still confused.

    Is Fleet to IntelliJ as VS.Code is to Visual Studio?

  • by bluelightning2k on 10/12/22, 1:50 PM

    I have read all the comments on this thread.

    I'm fascinated by people's thoughts of VSC Vs JetBrains.

    It seems the consensus is that JB is better, except for web platform?

    Maybe this is because TypeScript is an excellent language server

  • by kburman on 10/12/22, 1:56 PM

    Jetbrains seems so confident about future being full of collaboration.

    For me it would be very hard to work if someone else is also updating the codebase at the same time.

    Anyone working like can you share your experience

  • by wg0 on 10/12/22, 7:27 PM

    I think Visual Studio code has great influence on it but after trying it, I think VS code can also learn few things about interface from it. Really neat.

    Probably JetBrains thought to leverage tons of in house Java code otherwise I think Rust + Skia or similar would have been a great option with almost no run time requirements. Rust gurus can say better but I have seen pretty impressive cross platform apps in Rust such as alacritty and warp.

  • by EugeneOZ on 10/12/22, 2:16 PM

    Requires some mega-ugly “toolbox” app as an installer for all the JetBrains apps - no, thanks, Adobe taught me to burn such things when I see them.
  • by bestest on 10/12/22, 12:52 PM

    Yet another editor with no ability to switch to vertical tabs. Looks like I'm staying with the old-school JetBrains IDEs for the time being.
  • by anotherrandom on 10/12/22, 8:41 PM

    Interesting! Looking forward to trying it out. I won't consider paying for it until it's at least FOSS though, like IntelliJ or PyCharm. I paid for those 2 products and those 2 products alone solely because they are free and open source (I can't get shafted by a sudden change in licensing and can switch to a functionally equivalent free version on a whim).
  • by lopkeny12ko on 10/12/22, 3:59 PM

    I'm pretty confused by the product positioning. If Fleet is built on the same technologies as other Jetbrains IDEs, describes itself as an IDE, and is natively polyglot, why shouldn't it replace the other language-based IDEs? From the marketing material, it's not clear to me the value proposition of, for example, IntelliJ compared to Fleet.
  • by cpctheman on 10/12/22, 2:39 PM

    Unfortunately it doesn’t look like this supports remote development (at least from what I can tell poking around their site).

    Until Gateway is performant & stable enough to use, I’m sticking with VSCode. It’s a shame because I prefer IntelliJ for Java development, but lacking remote development stability is a deal breaker.

  • by cheptsov on 10/12/22, 1:39 PM

    Already saw it in Toolbox App and installed ;-) Gonna give it a try.

    Congrats on the launch, and kudos to the Fleet team!

  • by mehphp on 10/12/22, 5:36 PM

    Very sluggish and no vim support. It looks promising but I’m going to let it bake for a while.
  • by tibbydudeza on 10/13/22, 10:17 AM

    Ditched VSCode for PyCharm when I started learning Python.

    Simply using it for a few months convinced me to upgrade to the Pro edition, the same vibes as when I used Borland Turbo C - VSCode just has that bloated feeling like Eclipse.

  • by robertlagrant on 10/12/22, 12:25 PM

    > Fleet is an opportunity for us to provide a different user experience for developers

    Given they're presumably spending a lot on this development, it would be useful to give a bit more detail than this. What is different?

  • by moogly on 10/12/22, 8:59 PM

    Looks pretty and well-designed. Snappy too, but they're going to have to work on the startup time.

    I'll check back in a year when it's a bit more feature rich. And when you can disable the smooth scrolling.

  • by Asdrubalini on 10/12/22, 1:25 PM

    Rust support seems good and it's already integrated if you press the lightning button in the top right. Sadly no vim support so it's not really usable yet (at least for me).
  • by nik736 on 10/12/22, 12:48 PM

    Maybe this can replace Atom. But for that we need a OneDark theme :)
  • by idk1 on 10/13/22, 8:47 AM

    Might need some Apple Silicon testing, I could toss and egg on my M1 MBP and it'll be done by the time I scroll to the bottom of the document.
  • by stunt on 10/12/22, 3:21 PM

    It looks very practical and I like the choices they made. But, I can't use it as a daily driver because it doesn't have vim mode.
  • by ddorian43 on 10/12/22, 2:37 PM

    > Run in a performant virtual machine with up to: 16 CPU cores 32 GB Memory 40 GB Disk Drive

    Literally my laptop that I bought for $1300 3 years ago.

  • by krzyk on 10/12/22, 1:49 PM

    I wonder if it would be possible to use vim as the UI and connect to the backend of Fleet - best of both worlds.
  • by mi_lk on 10/12/22, 3:05 PM

    I like the fleet light/dark theme, can JetBrains put it as a plugin so I can use it in other JB products?
  • by cheeaun on 10/12/22, 3:14 PM

    Just wondering, there's no way to launch Fleet directly without launching it from Toolbox or using CLI?
  • by gnerkus on 10/12/22, 1:58 PM

    I wish they'd provide more support for C++; CLion is incredibly slow on older Macbooks.
  • by pknerd on 10/12/22, 1:49 PM

    Instead of coming up with a new project, why just they do not provide a community edition for each of their products? Currently they provide a CE edition for PyCharm only?

    I remember I loved the initial version of Goland a lot but found out it is not free and expired after a while, I switched back to VSCode and did not regret at all

  • by deagle50 on 10/12/22, 7:17 PM

    When will IdeaVim (or similar) work? Can't use it until then.
  • by nikolay on 10/12/22, 5:44 PM

    I was hopeful, but after playing with it, I'm not impressed!
  • by Brystephor on 10/12/22, 4:43 PM

    How is this different from intelliJ Ultimate?
  • by junaid1460 on 10/12/22, 2:48 PM

    3 gigs for a web app :crycat:
  • by randomsearch on 10/12/22, 1:43 PM

    A bit OT but if any JetBrains employees read this: please, please could you change the icon for webstorm? It is so ugly that it hurts my eyes. I will pay you to change the icon. Thanks.
  • by neilv on 10/12/22, 3:00 PM

    I think the name is a little funny, and maybe the funny is so crude and juvenile, that no one was willing to mention it? Like the Pepsi logo, I can't unsee it.

    "OK, people, creative time! Blank slate, no second system syndrome. Let's rethink the JetBrains concept, from the bottom, up!"

    "Jet-- Butts?"

    "Will the JetButts brand fly in all markets? Riff alternatives?"

    "...Fleet?"

    "Explosive! Sounds fast and productive! Can we get a mark search?"

    https://www.amazon.com/s?k=fleet