Poll: Demetra stability

On the bright side, this will stop my madly refreshing the eap page. sniff

It's interesting that someone asked this question. Actually, I ALWAYS revert to the latest stable release after I download and try an EAP version. It is not because the EAP releases are extremely unstable, they are ok, I guess, for EAP releases. However, I just can't afford restarting my IDEA a few times a day, or clearing exception messages every few minutes. And that's exactly what my experience has been with EAP downloads. I can see how many developers just can't wait to get their hands on the latest and the greatest. But if having a new cooler-looking progress bar, or something, negatively affects my productivity - just one bit - I chose to stick with the stable version. Also, lately I have been finding fewer and fewer new features in EAP releases that would make a lot of difference to me perrsonally.

I think it's important to understand what the "audience" is for EAP. If a developer is constantly swamped with work on a serious project, there may be no room for fun activities like trying out the new cool stuff, just for the hell of it - unless the EAP release really offers the exact functionality that your project needs, that has been missing in the previous releases. Other than this, I suspect that the majority of the most enthusiastic EAP users are the guys who spend at least half of their time programming for their own fun rather than working on tasks under a pressure of timelines.

If changing ZKM won't help, help about just moving the classes we need (those used by/for the ModuleBasedRunModule into the OpenAPI jar and not obfuscate them?

is this also the cause for http://www.jetbrains.net/jira/browse/IDEA-7380 ?

this is really annoying :(

you did not mention one audience: plugin authors eager to extend their existing plugins with the long awaited new functionalities which didn't make it into 5.x :)

Yep

-

Maxim Shafirov
JetBrains, Inc
http://www.jetbrains.com
"Develop with pleasure!"

"Maxim Shafirov (JetBrains)" <max@jetbrains.com> wrote in
message
news:488e3f9b267498c82be132b29840@news.jetbrains.com...

I have an old Vaio notebook, made in 1998 (don't laugh),
upgraded to 256 Meg of RAM.

>

This is absolute nonsense from commercial point of view to

target there since

most people have much more powerful hardware nowadays and

they like this

power to be used wisely.

I do have an Athlon 2500 desktop with 1Gig of RAM. But that
is not the point. Sometimes I just want to kick back in the
recliner with my laptop. I can do it with IDEA3 (switching
from IDEA to Tomcat is not lightning fast but bearable),
doing this with newer versions is almost impossible. It is
not that I cannot afford a new laptop, I just like this one
and I cannot stand Brightview screens. So I guess I will
stick to version 3 for some time.

I might upgrade to version 5 or 6 on my desktop if I could
use the same project file(s) between version 3 and version
5/6. Can I? I guess this is FAQ question, will go search for
the answer now.

Thanks for the response.

Michael Jouravlev wrote:

... So I guess I will
stick to version 3 for some time.

I might upgrade to version 5 or 6 on my desktop if I could
use the same project file(s) between version 3 and version
5/6. Can I? I guess this is FAQ question, will go search for
the answer now.

I think that is the right answer. Folks who want, or need, to use older hardware need to
use older software. I have been in that boat more times than I care to remember.

IntelliJ just can't be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator over the last five or
six years. If it was, it would become irrelevant in the marketplace and I certainly
wouldn't pay for my own copy to use it at work like I do now.

If it is a relatively easy thing to make the project files compatable, then I say, go ahead
and do it. I have a feeling it won't be. I don't think that version 3 supported
multi-module projects. Backwards compatability would be great, but there are limits.

Hey guys,

Here is a silly(?) suggestion maybe, but I really believe would be neat,
so please don't slap me :)

Max or Dimitry, guys, what if ... Jetbrains will offer for free the 3.x
version of IDEA? Well, of course the user will have to register before
downloading it and the 3.x free version so you can keep track of real
users and this version will not be supported. But I remember very well
that 3.x version was rock solid so I am not afraid for the lack of
support, and anyways that's why we are here;) Mind you, I am a devoted
IDEA user since 2.0, so I kind of know what I am talking about.

I am sure there will be some whining when some of the 3.x-free users
will start to compare 3.x with the latest Eclipse distribution or
whatever else, but that will only be a prove of huge ingratitude and
nobody will really care about. We know to make the difference!

So? Is this a silly proposal? At least a couple of hundreds of users
still being forced to use old hardware, will have the pleasure of using
a great tool for Java development.

Thoughts?
-florin

__
mailto: florin.patrascu@gmail.com


Tim Haley wrote:

Michael Jouravlev wrote:

>> ... So I guess I will
>> stick to version 3 for some time.
>>
>> I might upgrade to version 5 or 6 on my desktop if I could
>> use the same project file(s) between version 3 and version
>> 5/6. Can I? I guess this is FAQ question, will go search for
>> the answer now.

I think that is the right answer. Folks who want, or need, to use older
hardware need to use older software. I have been in that boat more
times than I care to remember.

IntelliJ just can't be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator
over the last five or six years. If it was, it would become irrelevant
in the marketplace and I certainly wouldn't pay for my own copy to use
it at work like I do now.

If it is a relatively easy thing to make the project files compatable,
then I say, go ahead and do it. I have a feeling it won't be. I don't
think that version 3 supported multi-module projects. Backwards
compatability would be great, but there are limits.

Here is a silly(?) suggestion maybe, but I really believe would be neat,
so please don't slap me :)

Max or Dimitry, guys, what if ... Jetbrains will offer for free the 3.x
version of IDEA?

IMHO this proposal is not silly at all. In fact it is quite good. I also think
it won't affect the IntelliJ 5/6 sales, but on the contrary: it will increase them.
Having one free for everybody version of IDEA 3.x, would encourage much more people to try
it, love it, and later buy a new version for the new features (after one is addicted to the
good old functionality).

Will people compare it to Eclipse? Yes, but that would be positive cause it would show what IntelliJ
already did 4 years ago when Eclipse didn't even existed :).

Some more usage scenarios:

1. Many Universities don't have the latest hardware, or at least don't get every
year new hardware to be able to keep up with the higher computing power hunger each
new software version brings. In many universities I know this is the reason, students
still program (or learn to) with simple text editors or in some very happy cases with JEdit.

2. The "open source"/Academic initiative from Jetbrains is newer than IDEA 3.x, so it does not work
for those old versions.

3. Subnotebooks/tabletPCs: many very portable and lightweight notebooks are not powerful
enough to run the latest IntelliJ version smoothly, but sometimes one has only such a notebook
around, not a 3 or 4 Kg heavy one that would be able to run IntelliJ 4/5/6.


Ahmed.

Just a sidenote, but noted that overall performance in #5231 is MUCH more pleasant than in previous build. Still broken CVS support is annoying to workaround..

While waiting for the next EAP, I thought I'd share my top 3 pain points, for the hell of it!

- CVS blowups
- JSP blowups during editing (exceptions reported)
- Broken binaries with multiple clone methods which get in the way of fixing the TestNG plugin

Anyone have other pet peeves that routinely make you poke your eyes out, or try to?

I see the problem remains in this latest 5245 EAP build :( Any progres on a work around?

Failing that - any chance of emailing off-forum the source to ModuleBasedConfiguration which we could "port" into the TestNG plugin untill this can be resolved or moved into the OpenAPI?

Cheers,
Mark

I don't have a current IDEA license aside from the EAP key, and it would take a very great deal to get me to move back to vim or Eclipse. I have, however, had very few issues working on a largish pure-J2SE-1.4 project.

The only thing I've run into is performance issues when pulling up/putting away the package list and when switching focus back to the IDE from a terminal or Web browser. The project is ~1500 packages and ~10000 Java classes, plus ~3500 non-package directories, and ~60000 non-.java files, totalling over 2.5G; a bit of a slowdown here or there is probably okay, especially in a development version. ;)

Usually I try EAP on a test project...cannot really test it on production code..
the latest build was throwing some exceptions, so I've closed it and will check for a new build in 2 weeks...

I use it for production code. About the only pain point for me is related to VSS. Thankfully we're moving from VSS to Telelogic.

The problems are somewhat basic. VSS integration, however basic it was, used to work on or around build 4125. I'm now forced to use the VSS client for some activities where I used to use IDEA for that. I also miss the old File View where I could peek at the state of what files are "new" and what files are "modified". That was great stuff and very helpful.