Rant: please focus on fixing bugs for a while, instead of adding new features

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IJ has always been an amazing IDE, and I have been a loyal customer for years. However, over the last few releases, I've found IntelliJ to have gotten slower and slower, and buggier and buggier.

I run IJ on a 32 core Threadripper machine with 64 Gb of memory, and find it to hang in the editor way too often. For example, I just made a few changes that kept hanging my IDE for a few seconds at a time. Then, I tried to undo the changes, and each undo caused another hang, each of a few seconds. Yes, I've filed performance issues in YouTrack in the past (here is one: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/KT-27106, open for 6 months), but few things ever seem to get fixed. I can only imagine the issues people with slower machines are having.

On top of this, there are issues like this one I created two months ago: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/KT-29352. Because of this, my colleagues who use Windows can't even execute applications from within IJ -- this is not a minor issue! No action taken by JetBrains as far as I can tell.

I know you're trying to gain users with new features. But a slow and buggy IDE is more likely to turn users off of your product, features or no features. I'd really recommend taking a hard look at what your product team is focusing on.

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Sorry for the problem. I'll ping Kotlin team developers so that they can provide the status updates for the mentioned tickets.

Please note that adding features to IntelliJ IDEA doesn't affect fixing Kotlin specific bugs in any way. These are 2 different development teams working on different tasks.

It's also recommended to use https://discuss.kotlinlang.org/ for any questions/problems related to Kotlin support in the IDE.

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So what you are saying is that these issues are all Kotlin-frontend-related, and that the IDE as a whole is not actually at fault? Thinking back on all the issues I've been having, you might be right. I haven't done a lot of Java work recently, as I've moved everything to Kotlin, and its quite possible.

One of the issues I mentioned -- https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/KT-29352 -- doesn't seem to be Kotlin specific. It's also affecting Scala users. However, its quite possible vanilla Java run configs would work correctly in the same scenario.

Thanks for poking the team on these issues.

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I've got the feedback from the Kotlin project team lead, they are already working on the performance problems, windows run configuration fix is in the nearest plans.

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Here is another super-frustrating issue -- seems potentially related to Kotlin somehow, but not necessarily. Issues like this basically make the IDE unusable, and actually (gasp!) make me think I'd be more productive in vim.

https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-207243

 

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Thanks, we are investigating this problem, but it's very complicated case inside the JVM internals.

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Hey guys, another one here, also very happy with IntelliJ, thanks, but I also experience unexpected bugs since the last release+updates..weird ones, like stalled IDE, buttons not appearing and general performance issues (I will post individual items in the bug list when applicable).

Thanks anyway, just wanted to mention it, and I also think features are abundant, so focus on fixing bugs is defo a good plan.

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Congratulations on making the brave decision to focus on performance and bugs for 2019.3!

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Hey, glad to see this complains. I'm Mac user and has similar feeling about the IntelliJ Idea. it's buggier an buggier. Sometimes I'm even thinking to switch back to Eclipse. At the very least I'm thinking about end of my subscription to Pro version because I've found the premium functionalities pretty crappy. 

In general:

Database Extension - unusable crap

Method call hierarchy generation - damaged piece of crap which is able to get stuck in infinite loop and drain my laptop battery

Thymeleaf support - halfly-working crap

Spring framework support - sometimes crappy - I've had to turn it off rather

 

Hope JetBrains will be beack in the normal reliable development soon.

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It's not only a Kotlin issue. I've noticed the same on a not the newest, but performant MacBook Pro (32Gb). Developing Python has become a no go in IntelliJ.

Java is full of bugs: Spring working or not, indicating errors were there are none, indexing (and thus blocking some actions) all the time, Maven source download impossible,.... 

I'm really starting to wonder if I should not switch to a less featurefull, but free and performant IDE.

Nothing lives forever, but I'm sad to say this about the IntelliJ IDEA that I came to love.

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Dirk Estievenart Please contact support at https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/requests/new with the logs (Help | Collect Logs and Diagnostic Data) and more details about the issues you are facing.

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I add my voice here.

In java world, me and my teams noticed issue with artefacts which can become unreliable (artefacts with resource only, or classes only).

Also when upgraded in 2019.X release, we saw very very very slow "collect import" for import cleanup.


On the kotlin side, each version bring disapointment. The 2020.1release prompt memory increase on each use. I have to restart the IDE every 2 hours.

I often have to wait several second to get completion-popup open on small project.

And the hardware is not at fault regarding performance (Threadripper, 64go RAM, SSD, etc).


In my team at least, there is a shared perception of quality drop. 3 to 4 years ago, everyone would upgrade the IDE when new version release. Now there is a lot of reluctance, some saying "I've learned to manage the issue of this version, don't want to research workaround for bugs of the new version".


As developer we can all understand that you need bug reports, tests and logs to fix issues. But often we found our issue reported by other in your YouTrack and see no progress and people get demotived to try to help to track issue fearing that the time used to provide you data will end in a forgotten ticket. Also we can see new version fixing things when bugs are still open in youtrack and another new version later, the bugs is reintroduced.

The last month, when asking for YT vote on an issue, many said "lol, does it change something ?"....

After at least one year and half of perceived decrease in robustness & responsiveness ; trust towards JetBrains et JB products take a hard hit. And even good faith is questionned, I hear sneaky remark like "For Kotlin 1.4 they promised robusness and speed ; and what we got ? only langage feature ! They only want to get more people, not to keep the existing one !".

When I see the JB's team answer on this thread, I'm glad to see the effort for specifics issues, but I think you really have a systemic issue here. More tickets, more logs, more profiling can't be the only solution.

I still love you JB folks, but please :

- Make a major plan to ensure high quality release.

- Make this plan public to make it clear in everyone head that you acknowledge a deeper problem, that you are working on it ; this will gain patience, time and good will from your customers while you work on it.

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Thanks for the feedback. Our next 2021.1 release will be focused entirely on the quality and performance. Kotlin performance is also the first priority for us. We are taking the steps to make the fixes faster by moving Kotlin plug-in into IntelliJ IDEA repository and synchronizing the releases.

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This post of mine has nothing to do with Kotlin but with 2021.1. This has been the crappier release for the last 2 years at least, I've wasted a whole day to try to have maven and gradle projects to link and compile successfully and I'm still not happy.

* Had to wait 40 minutes to reindex all my projects. Public index downloading is enabled. This is an issue I've reported in the past without any sane resolution (even provided CPU profiling).

* I can't inspect classes (java).

* Project view no longer tracks the open file.

I must say I'm no longer updating to latest releases. My question here is: how do I easily rollback to the previous IntelliJ version?

Update: I manually downloaded a previous version. Hope this becomes a button on the UI for easier rollback one day.

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Sorry for the problems, please consider using https://www.jetbrains.com/toolbox-app/ which has a rollback option or you can have 2 IDE versions installed side by side.

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Hi Alex,

I can't inspect classes (java).

Project view no longer tracks the open file

If you could describe the problems that you encountered in more detail, I'd be able to try and track them on our issue tracker (maybe they were already reported/fixed).

This is an issue I've reported in the past without any sane resolution (even provided CPU profiling)

Can you share a link to the issue?

how do I easily rollback to the previous IntelliJ version?

By using the Toolbox App manager.

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Yeah I installed 2021.1 (Linux) and tried opening my Ktor app and had loads of problems. Kotlin not enabled message, errors showing in the source but compiled and ran fine (gradle), autocomplete and jump to definition mostly not working, and eventually the whole thing locked up and I had to kill the process. I tried everything I could think of to get it working including uninstalling idea and JB toolbox and deleting every associated directory I could find, then reinstalling, but had the same issues. Eventually just installed 2020.3 and it’s working okay.

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Mpittkin

If you find a moment to delve into it again, please try the following:

  • Restart the IDE after updating using the File | Invalidate Caches & Restart menu option
  • Close your project window (and IntelliJ) and remove all *.iml files and the .idea folder from the project directory.

  • Re-import the project into IntelliJ from existing sources.

You can also try deleting the IDEA system directory altogether, then re-importing your project.

If the problem remains please temporarily disable all downloaded plug-ins, remove the logs, restart the IDE, reproduce the problem and provide the logs generated by Help | Collect Logs and Diagnostic Data. You can upload them to https://uploads.jetbrains.com/ privately.

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I think 2021.1 is the most ugliest of IDE's since 2019.

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Simon-logic Could you please clarify the problems you have? How can we help you?

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Simon-logic : you know, you should try to upgrade....

So you can get regression on previously working part of the IDE, then wait more than 2 month for a fix in the ultimate/paid part of the product, then patch your IDE manually, and discover that the fix is half-baked ... like https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-273497

Sorry but with time, It become hard to retain sneaky remarks...

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Hello Jason Clark

I am sorry for inconvenience. I am ready to go through the log files to figure out what is wrong with indexing and report it to our developers. To do that I would need log bundle with indexing diagnostic folder included, could you please share it with me? If you have previously reported or voted for issues bothering you could you please point those issues out for me? As for git issue, please feel free to submit a bug report on our issue tracker so we could research it since there were no such reports in the past.

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I have been observing constant drop in the quality - even in basic functions and now strongly considering IDE switch. IntelliJ is becoming next Eclipse - unusable. That is a warning sign for the DEV team. Soon you may be developing product no one wants to use. You can be surprised how fast it can unfold.

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This weekend I got a notice in the IDE that there is an update available and since I was not really busy I said: sure, haven't updated the IDE in the last 4 months, surely they added some features that would make my life easier, right? Wrong.

Basically the IDE is straight up unusable. Not a single project I worked on in the last 4-5 months can be started, due to some missing dependencies? I'm modifying stuff in pom.xml (based on previous experiences, once you modify something, "M" button appears and it pretty reloads the maven dependencies, not anymore amigos, you have to invalidate caches and wait 5-10 minutes (depending on the project's size) in order to modify a version of a plugin, and after the dependencies were installed you cannot run the project because it's missing dependencies.

I'm quitting IntelliJ, honestly, I'm so fed up with all the stupid bugs that I encounter on a day-to-day basis that it's just not worth it. 

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Hi Stephen. I'm sorry for such an experience. I would like to help. Can you please file a request with the IDE logs (Help | Collect Logs and Diagnostic Data action) attached or upload them at https://uploads.jetbrains.com to check? Could you please clarify - does Build | Rebuild Project action completes successfully or it also fails to finish?

Please also try if helps to disable the Settings (Preferences on macOS) | Build, Execution, Deployment | Build Tools | Maven | Importing | Import using the new IntelliJ Workspace Model API (experimental) option if it is enabled. 

Thank you.

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I'm going to be fully honest Andrey Dernov, for the first 5-10 times I was fine sending the logs and whatever, but this is getting out of hand. How many times do I have to send the logs in order to fix an issue that's been going on for several months at this point? I'm just a developer so my $.02 are probably going to get ignored, but for the love of god try to focus on fixing stuff instead of adding new features. The so-called Java and Kotlin IDE's is supporting front-end frameworks and database tools even though you guys also sell applications specifically made for such usages.

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Upgraded to 2022.3 and got stuck again. This time it hangs on downloading prebuilt indexes. Reverting to 2022.4 as we speak (I've gotten so good with reverts now) and reindexing started successfully (gonna go out for a walk and wait for the mandatory 30-40 minutes of indexing). Jumping on the shit-posting-wagon once again to remind myself to stop upgrading.

"Do you want to enable the New UI?"

You can't be serious. It's a great moment for another IDE startup to step in and fill in the niche.

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Hello Alex,

Thank you for the report it is a subject to investigate. Could you please raise a request and share your IDE log files?

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A wide +1 to all what is shared here. These last months are partucularily buggy, all the times IntelliJ in crashing, indexes corrupted, etc.

Opening IJ today (not started to work yet) generated 5 auto-reports, and it's everyday the same. Working a lot with Kotlin for a few months now, it's a real pleasure, but yes, please, kill bugs :)

 

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Lovegiver 
Thank you for sharing the information. As this is a pretty old thread, could you please share more details about the issues you encountered recently on our issue tracker: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/newIssue?project=IDEA?

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