> I think it wouldn't make the same total revenue if they were selling it for twice the price.

To be fair, that's true of almost everything.

I'd pay for it if I did enough programming in my day-to-day life that it would justify the cost. But I only occasionally get into the swing of doing a project, and even then I've never made money off of any of them.

I still have my university email (graduated in 2020) so I've been renewing my student license that gets me a free license for the occasional times I use them.

I kinda wish they'd just go for the Winrar or Docker business model, where it's free for individuals but businesses have to pay up.

Also, even though it's "expensive" for an individual user, you own a full version forever!!! That makes the several hundred dollar price tag much less of an issue.

Kotlin is such a lovely language, and I really like that it was made by JetBrains because that means I can count on a top notch IDE/development experience.

This is one point that worries me about Kotlin (which I like a lot). Is it even practical developing in Kotlin using something other than IntelliJ? All of its toolsets come from the same company, which could kill it one day.

Yes, but the work you do has commercial value to you also, based on its merits alone.

Example: without Intellij, you deploy some back end code interacting with an OCR solution.

Example: with Intellij, you can build the whole OCR solution yourself.

Doing the latter translates long term into higher salaries and more money in your pocket. You have to talk about what you did in interviews and your answers will be reflected in the offers you get.

The only way this would not apply would be if you can say “I am absolutely sure I will never move on from, or be laid off by, my company,” which is not a recommended strategy in this economy.

> GitHub Copilot are the two exceptions for me as an individual programmer

I'm sure your boss will be overjoyed when the company will get hit by a lawsuit :)

I personally find JetBrains IDEs' capabilities exceed that of VSCode. The IDE just feels better thought out to me. However, the convenience of VSCode Web/GitHub Codespaces far exceeds that of JetBrains IDEs', so that's where I'm at now - on-demand web-based IDEs and a thin client.

After trying it a bit more I am slightly leaning towards keeping Intellij again. Mostly because of being better at the small things. Like more readable file tree-view and better project search tools.

> if you like them.

Important caveat here. My only exposure to JetBrains had been through Intellij which was thoroughly unpleasant around 2012-2013. That impression has left me forever sour towards them. Surprised to hear people say that it could be a step up from VSCode.

It looks like "Fleet" is their VSCode competitor? I'm not sure if the homepage does a good job at communicating how this improves over of VSCode. First of all VSCode has an enormous ecosystem of tools which seems hard to replicate. In terms of advertised features for Fleet, it seems like the one most highlighted on the page is multiplayer, which would possibly enable others watching me code live? Sounds nerve-wracking. Although I could imagine some helpful scenarios when pair-programming or something.

Other items that are advertised don't really encourage me to want to make the leap, especially as something I have to pay for. It sounds like they could host your code, or something like that, which could be nice. An annoying part of my workflow is that I work on the same codebase between multiple machines and every time I hop between machines I have to commit the changes to a private repository that is separate from my team's repository. It seems like it would be somewhat straight-foward to have the same code shared between all machines.

Other than that I would be interested to hear on how any Jetbrains products would improve productivity.

I think it’s because the free and OSS tools are of such a high quality for developers. There is a much bigger chasm between GIMP and Photoshop than there is between VS Code (with plugins) and JetBrains.

It’s hard for many to get over the fact that JetBrains is infinitely more expensive than VS code in dollar terms.

Because I'm always disappointed with paid proprietary software eventually. Despite some shortcomings, I used Windows 7. Anything after that had a confusing interface with two settings panels, some kind of an attempt to bring a tablet interface to desktop, loss of control over my computer.

After installing NixOS, I never actually boot into Windows 10 anymore. Naturally, I never use MS Office or Photoshop anymore.

It would feel weird to buy some proprietary software, even if it is good. Why not contribute to an open source effort?

I donate to the FSF and subscribe to iTerm2's patreon, FWIW.

I have to admit, though, I think the world would be a much more drab and less productive place if open source were completely dominant. We'd all be chiding each other to donate more and pitch in more, while barely scraping by in comparison to the vast wealth sloshing around today. Maybe it would be a BETTER world if it weren't all fueled by addictive mobile games, privacy invasive advertising, etc. But we'd be a lot less rich

> It is strange how reluctant programmers are to spend on tools even though they are, as a rule, quite willing to let themselves be paid handsomely for their services.

Ability to find someone willing to pay XYZ for foobar does not imply that I am willing to pay the same amount of money for something similar.

In fact, by doing this exact transactions it means that I find such transaction advantageous for me.

Also, I had enough stories of lock-in and losing access to proprietary systems that I prefer vastly inferior open source.

Also, I am not aware of paid systems worth paying for.

I use primarily Linux (Lubuntu), git, Codium, Python, Kotlin, pgsql, Android Studio, LibreOffice, Firefox, uBlock Origin, Leechblock, sqlite.

For what I can pay that makes it worth it? For contributing back, I prefer working on code over donations (due to geoeconomical situation and ability too direct my effort precisely where I care about things over donations often being wasted)

I also pay for JB tools. But that's because it's well beyond me or other open source developers to make a product that's competitive with it, and the competition is well behind (VS Code and Eclipse are good, but once you learn IntelliJ more advanced stuff, you feel like a programming God - something worth paying for ;) ). An IDE is insanely complex nowadays. I am not sure what Kite had in mind, but to me, what they were proposing would be "just" an IntelliJ Plugin. And I don't pay, and can't see myself paying, for any plugin.

I am glad to pay for software, but I want it to be free as in freedom: I insist on being able to modify, fix, extend and share it. So all of my tools I rely on are AGPL, GPL or BSD-licensed.

Graphics designers don't have much choice because even if they decide they are entirely fine with free program, the graphics design world runs on Adobe file formats. Not the case for programming

Designers have to spend money on their tools. There's no other option. Developer's don't. Plus, developers can make their own tools if they need to.

Because developers want to be able to hack on their own tools: fix bugs, add features, whatever. Graphics designers do not have the skills to hack on their own tools, so there isn't a huge population of them sitting around going "damn, I wish I had feature X -- I know, I'll build my own editor and open source it!"