Aurora feels like it is developed by a different team

I could not help to notice the difference in atmosphere between Ariadna and Aurora:

  • Multiple build a week vs multiple weeks between builds

  • JetBrains very active on intellij.net vs very few interaction

  • Almost all new requests were opened or rejected within the day vs hundred of requests are left submitted.


I am not sure if it is a good sign yet. I hope it isn't a sign of rigidity settling in the software. Like some of you responded in one of Thomas thread earlier you are more focused now on the things you are doing.
However as a committed user I can say that I have a lot less incentive to participate than before.
The feedback works both ways. By not engaging your users you miss the opportunity to have a constructive discussion and you run the chance of loosing their interest.

I haven't run any metrics but it definitively feel like there is less activity already, at least meaningful ones.

I understand that you cannot answer all of them in a meaningful way but the effort to open them will be the same now or after. By changing their state now you are giving feedback to your users that yes you have read it and no you do not think you can address it now but you will later. Why having a state Open it isn?t for that?
I suppose you do not intent on leaving hundreds of requests submitted. So it is the difference between a little slower pace now but meaningful feedback and dialog and knowing better where you are or a little faster with losing some of your users and potentially missing some important SCRs (I assume that since you do not open them you are not reading them).

Maybe it is also time to make the intellij.net more scaleable. You could quickly think of
1. Have the SCR categorized based on functional groups: refactoring, cvs, java editing,? You could focus on the ones that you are actively developing in.
2. Have a ranking of users. You could focus on the higher rank first.

As a final thought I will provide a concrete example why I believe it feels like a different team:
The CVS integration is been re-written but none of the VCS Open API requests have been opened/discussed and no discussion AT ALL has been going on on the subject. We have no feedback that you are already working with the knowledge of these requests and it isn?t for the lack of attempts. I know of 3 actively developed VCS plugins that you could leverage off of (p4, subversion, clearcase). To me it looks like the perfect opportunity to get some great feedback on your open API and explain your new direction.
(http://www.intellij.net/forums/thread.jsp?forum=23&thread=26260&tstart=0&trange=100 ).

I am sure you do not intent on raising a wall of silence between your users and yourself but as least to me it feels that way. Maybe the old way cannot work anymore. I could not really guess you handled requests before but it seems that anybody would monitor the forums and the tracker. Maybe you are growing too popular for this. You need a little more structure and dedicate some people time to keep in touch with your user community. As usual rigidity isn?t just in the software. It is also in the organization.

A dedicated IDEA oldtimer.


0
72 comments

I've noticed this change as well and look forward to getting IntelliJ's
perspective.

Jon

Jacques Morel wrote:

I could not help to notice the difference in atmosphere between Ariadna and Aurora:

  • Multiple build a week vs multiple weeks between builds

  • JetBrains very active on intellij.net vs very few interaction

  • Almost all new requests were opened or rejected within the day vs hundred of requests are left submitted.


I am not sure if it is a good sign yet. I hope it isn't a sign of rigidity settling in the software. Like some of you responded in one of Thomas thread earlier you are more focused now on the things you are doing.
However as a committed user I can say that I have a lot less incentive to participate than before.
The feedback works both ways. By not engaging your users you miss the opportunity to have a constructive discussion and you run the chance of loosing their interest.

I haven't run any metrics but it definitively feel like there is less activity already, at least meaningful ones.

I understand that you cannot answer all of them in a meaningful way but the effort to open them will be the same now or after. By changing their state now you are giving feedback to your users that yes you have read it and no you do not think you can address it now but you will later. Why having a state Open it isn?t for that?
I suppose you do not intent on leaving hundreds of requests submitted. So it is the difference between a little slower pace now but meaningful feedback and dialog and knowing better where you are or a little faster with losing some of your users and potentially missing some important SCRs (I assume that since you do not open them you are not reading them).

Maybe it is also time to make the intellij.net more scaleable. You could quickly think of
1. Have the SCR categorized based on functional groups: refactoring, cvs, java editing,? You could focus on the ones that you are actively developing in.
2. Have a ranking of users. You could focus on the higher rank first.

As a final thought I will provide a concrete example why I believe it feels like a different team:
The CVS integration is been re-written but none of the VCS Open API requests have been opened/discussed and no discussion AT ALL has been going on on the subject. We have no feedback that you are already working with the knowledge of these requests and it isn?t for the lack of attempts. I know of 3 actively developed VCS plugins that you could leverage off of (p4, subversion, clearcase). To me it looks like the perfect opportunity to get some great feedback on your open API and explain your new direction.
(http://www.intellij.net/forums/thread.jsp?forum=23&thread=26260&tstart=0&trange=100 ).

I am sure you do not intent on raising a wall of silence between your users and yourself but as least to me it feels that way. Maybe the old way cannot work anymore. I could not really guess you handled requests before but it seems that anybody would monitor the forums and the tracker. Maybe you are growing too popular for this. You need a little more structure and dedicate some people time to keep in touch with your user community. As usual rigidity isn?t just in the software. It is also in the organization.

A dedicated IDEA oldtimer.


0

2. Have a ranking of users. You could focus on the higher rank first.


There's a new game
We like to play you see
A game with added reality
You treat me like a dog
Get me down on my knees
We call it master and servant

Sorry for this, just bored today... But I do not like idea of ranking users.



0

Michael Jouravlev wrote:
>>2. Have a ranking of users. You could focus on the higher rank first.


Sorry for this, just bored today... But I do not like idea of ranking users.


Agreed on not liking user rankings but agree with Jacques' observations.
He is reaching for some, any way to restore the way things were.

Jon

0
Avatar
charles decroes

-1 on ranking users. We all should have paid for a license and deserver equal billings

0

I agree with you that ranking users has to be used cautiously but I have seen it used in collaboration system with high traffic. One of the gripe with Wiki sites and established news groups for example is the signal to noise ratio. On high traffic yahoo groups like XP I tend to filter by users so I am performing a user ranking even though it isn't official.
It comes down to what impact it is going to have on your community culture. For example epinions has a ranking system that works well. You can rely more on opinions of Leaders than anybody else. Reviewers can select other reviews they "trust". This way you reward your best contributors by letting the community chose its spoke-persons and hearing their voice first.
Again this is just a suggestion.

Some other data point that the current system is breaking down: http://www.intellij.net/tracker/idea/viewSCR?publicId=9535

0

I'm a little surpised someone from Idea hasn't weighed in on this one yet.
Maybe that just goes to the point...


0

Well when you look at it, this is not a commercial setup anyway. It is a open community. If this was handled by marketing/sales directly they would factor in the number of licenses that every contributor represents.
intellij.net is just a open community site. Ranking should be based on merit.

0

Or maybe it is in the middle of the night in Prague or St Petersburg. It would be a bad sign if they were pulling all nighters...

0

Or maybe it is in the middle of the night in Prague or St Petersburg. It would be a bad sign if they were pulling all nighters...


first 10 days of May in Russia are usually holydays and almost everybody goes somewhere.
so guys, don't worry, they'll be back :)

--
Dmitry Skavish
-


Boston, MA, USA
tel. +1 781 910-3810
http://www.jzox.com
http://www.flashgap.com

0
Avatar
Robert S. Sfeir

yeah niet on ranking users.

Second if you look at the fixes for 813, to 814, there are 150 so far, and though no one is chatting much on the forum, there seems to be someone home quietly fixing a sh*t load of bugs... On their own vacation time I guess too.

Patience young Jedis, things will come to us in due time. At least we can see where things are going, we can see bugs fixed, and we can see the product development cycle. It will pick up speed I'm sure.

The unfortunate part, at least for me, is that I can't use 813 on windows because I get NPEs and AIOOBEs left and right, so I am waiting for 814. Yup my bugs have already been submitted. Dunno yet if all of them are fixed, I guess I'll find out.

R

0
Avatar
Permanently deleted user

Yes, it's a holiday season in Russia.

Apr 27 - Orthodox Easter
May 1-2 - May Day
May 9 - Victory Day

(all are popular and widely celebrated holidays in Russia, http://www.russianembassy.org/RUSSIA/holid.htm )

Also this year it's 300th anniversary of St.Petersburg. It will be celebrated May 24-Jun 1 ( http://petersburgcity.com/300/ ).

Happy holidays, everyone! :)

0

Let's not forget the point of this thread before it gets hijacked:

Jetbrains if they do not react (and I know already they have something in the works to do just that) stand the chance of losing the community that I believe contributed heavily in making IDEA the best java IDE on the market.
They appear to not be listening and they are definitely not talking anymore. This community cannot live without them pitching in. The community will wither and die of uselessness.
On the other hand maybe the traffic is too great for them to just handle as I believe they did in the past w/o losing focus. There are many clues that things are falling through the cracks.
They have to devise some other ways (ranking user is just one of them) to filter out the valuable info from the noise. They are better equiped to see if most of the value comes from a few users or not. If it isn't the case then ranking is not a good fit.
In any case they have to give us feedback when we give them feedback! Without that loop it cannot go on.

Jacques

0

You can find how epinions ranking works
http://www.epinions.com/help/faq/?show=faq_recognition#004

0

Basically, two weeks of non-stop drinking ;)

"Timur Zambalayev" <jiveadmin@jetbrains.com> wrote in message
news:9733797.1052257417149.JavaMail.javamailuser@localhost...

Yes, it's a holiday season in Russia.

>

Apr 27 - Orthodox Easter
May 1-2 - May Day
May 9 - Victory Day

>

(all are popular and widely celebrated holidays in Russia,

http://www.russianembassy.org/RUSSIA/holid.htm )
>

Also this year it's 300th anniversary of St.Petersburg. It will be

celebrated May 24-Jun 1 ( http://petersburgcity.com/300/ ).
>

Happy holidays, everyone! :)

>


0

It sounds like a threat. Don't be so impatient. This is really a holyday
season in Russia. Give the guys couple of week to relax and another couple
to get out from the hangover ;-). I wouldn't expect an answer in the nearest
time.

/kesh

"Jacques Morel" <jacmorel@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:2712170.1052260923106.JavaMail.javamailuser@localhost...

Let's not forget the point of this thread before it gets hijacked:

>

Jetbrains if they do not react (and I know already they have something in

the works to do just that) stand the chance of losing the community that I
believe contributed heavily in making IDEA the best java IDE on the market.

They appear to not be listening and they are definitely not talking

anymore. This community cannot live without them pitching in. The community
will wither and die of uselessness.

On the other hand maybe the traffic is too great for them to just handle

as I believe they did in the past w/o losing focus. There are many clues
that things are falling through the cracks.

They have to devise some other ways (ranking user is just one of them) to

filter out the valuable info from the noise. They are better equiped to see
if most of the value comes from a few users or not. If it isn't the case
then ranking is not a good fit.

In any case they have to give us feedback when we give them feedback!

Without that loop it cannot go on.
>

Jacques



0

That is bound to make them talk to us...
On the other hand if they do hold their liquor it will kill all hope to have a meaningful dialog ;)

0

No no. This is not a threat to them or to other posters. I just wanted to remind people that I started this thread to express my wanting more involvement from them. It wasn't to propose a user ranking.

0

Have to agree with Jacques, the pace and involvement of the Intellij team during Ariadne was the reason I worked through the betas before convinving my entire department to make the switch to Intellij from JBuilder.

Yes 150 bugs have been fixed in 814 so why not push it out as a build ? I know for a fact that a big problem I had with 813 was fixed weeks ago, it would be nice to be able to move forwards.

Holiday season or not (and they are headquartered in the Czech Republic not Russia so surely somebody is at work) we need a bit of feedback here.

0

While some bugs might be fixed, there might be stuff in the newer builds that created new problems that the IntelliJ guys want to fix before releasing a new one... or they are getting ready to deliver a significant new part for Aurora. Who knows?

I would like to see a new build as much as anyone else but I'd rather see a new build that I can really use instead of something half-baked due pressure to release often.

We should already be glad to be able to get our hands on EAP builds! :)

Best,
Chris

0

And I am not impatient towards JetBrains either. I know they are most likely in vacation. Good for them! They earned it and need it!
I trust that they will do the right thing given the right feedback and I am not expecting them to solve the issues I am outlined here right away. This trend has been going on for 2 months now (and actually getting worse) and they need to be aware of the potential consequences. I am neither impatient nor threatening.

0

Bezug: Deine Nachricht vom 07.Mai.2003 01:06:

And I am not impatient towards JetBrains either. I know they are most
likely in vacation. Good for them! They earned it and need it!


I was getting answers on Saturdays and Sundays. I think, we should be
patient. Or course it is more fun tracking down bugs in a new build
every other day but big things take some as you saw with the new CVS
integration (I remember people screaming about missing CVS configure
dialog and so on). The integration of AspectJ, the CVS rewrite and the
GUI designer are huge tasks. I guess right now a lot of code is changing.
Hopefully, they'll become more responsive as things stabilize and the
time for polishing things has come. Do you remember any longer holiday
period in the last EAP?

Dirk Dittert

0

On Tue, 06 May 2003 21:00:41 +0000, Robert S. Sfeir wrote:

Patience young Jedis, things will come to us in due time. At least we can
see where things are going, we can see bugs fixed, and we can see the
product development cycle. It will pick up speed I'm sure.


And a 3 week wait between things we can test is better than 12 months of
"purchase and hate" the new JBuilder version :)

--
...turn to the light - don't be frightened by the shadows it creates,
...turn to the light - turning away could be a terrible mistake
...dream theater - the great debate


0

On Wed, 07 May 2003 04:15:13 +0000, Chris Laprun wrote:

While some bugs might be fixed, there might be stuff in the newer builds
that created new problems that the IntelliJ guys want to fix before
releasing a new one... or they are getting ready to deliver a significant
new part for Aurora. Who knows?


Hopefully they're putting the new EAP through some rough testing
internally before releasing it out to the wild masses like us. Its quite
possible that builds get thrown back to the developer to fix up.

--
...turn to the light - don't be frightened by the shadows it creates,
...turn to the light - turning away could be a terrible mistake
...dream theater - the great debate


0

On Wed, 07 May 2003 07:06:04 +0000, Dirk Dittert wrote:

I was getting answers on Saturdays and Sundays. I think, we should be
patient. Or course it is more fun tracking down bugs in a new build every
other day but big things take some as you saw with the new CVS integration
(I remember people screaming about missing CVS configure dialog and so
on). The integration of AspectJ, the CVS rewrite and the GUI designer are
huge tasks. I guess right now a lot of code is changing. Hopefully,
they'll become more responsive as things stabilize and the time for
polishing things has come. Do you remember any longer holiday period in
the last EAP?


I was just thinking - maybe after the problems with the CVS integration of
the last few EAPs, they're taking alot of extra time doing internal
testing to try and ensure that further problems of that magnatude don't
occur.

I wonder - if someone was to make a phone call to the JetBrains office -
and ask someone whats going on, what kinda of response you'd get...


--
...turn to the light - don't be frightened by the shadows it creates,
...turn to the light - turning away could be a terrible mistake
...dream theater - the great debate


0

I will definitely reply to the thread today, sorry for having you wait on
this important issue.

--

Eugene Belyaev, CTO
JetBrains, Inc
http://www.intellij.com
"Develop with pleasure!"



"Mark Derricutt" <pinhead@satinism.org> wrote in message
news:pan.2003.05.07.09.32.33.51529@satinism.org...

On Wed, 07 May 2003 07:06:04 +0000, Dirk Dittert wrote:

>

I was getting answers on Saturdays and Sundays. I think, we should be
patient. Or course it is more fun tracking down bugs in a new build

every

other day but big things take some as you saw with the new CVS

integration

(I remember people screaming about missing CVS configure dialog and so
on). The integration of AspectJ, the CVS rewrite and the GUI designer

are

huge tasks. I guess right now a lot of code is changing. Hopefully,
they'll become more responsive as things stabilize and the time for
polishing things has come. Do you remember any longer holiday period in
the last EAP?

>

I was just thinking - maybe after the problems with the CVS integration of
the last few EAPs, they're taking alot of extra time doing internal
testing to try and ensure that further problems of that magnatude don't
occur.

>

I wonder - if someone was to make a phone call to the JetBrains office -
and ask someone whats going on, what kinda of response you'd get...

>
>

--
...turn to the light - don't be frightened by the shadows it creates,
...turn to the light - turning away could be a terrible mistake
...dream theater - the great debate

>


0

On Wed, 07 May 2003 13:35:08 +0400, Eugene Belyaev wrote:

I will definitely reply to the thread today, sorry for having you wait on
this important issue.


yay Eugene lives ;) Hope you had a good break away, whatever you guys
were doing :)

Mark


--
...turn to the light - don't be frightened by the shadows it creates,
...turn to the light - turning away could be a terrible mistake
...dream theater - the great debate


0

And to illustrate
Ariadna: 619,620,621,622,624,626,627,628,629...
Aurora: 802,804,807,811,813

0
Avatar
Robert S. Sfeir

AHA! You found the pattern, they will only release the Ariadna EAP on ODD Numbers! So it seems 814 will be skipped and we will see 815. So sit back and wait :)

In the mean time, I'm sure we all have other things to do... or do we? :)

R

0
Avatar
Robert S. Sfeir

Exactly. Also it hasn't been 3 weeks, not even 2 yet until Friday (At least that's how it feels).

0

Not fully exactly. The (difference) pattern is 2-3-2-2-?
I guess, the ? can be 3 ;)

Tom

0

Please sign in to leave a comment.