Fleet came at a time when intellij felt extremely bloated. iirc they had painted themselves into a corner where it was easier to rip the band aid and start anew.
Fleet was supposed to be that promised editor which was snappy and had the power of intellisense + all things we liked about Intellij editors ... but without the terrible glacial bloat. but in a stroke of bad luck and typical lack of focus from Jetbrains, Fleet just didn't get good enough quickly.
I say lack of focus because (like their multiple attempts at AI) Jetbrains also had a lite mode in the start but that didn't work great. then came Fleet. But it was not getting better quickly enough and they changed course to make Fleet their main cross platform editor ... but even that didn't take.
I really am worried for Jetbrains and intellij. In a world where even VScode is having its lunch eaten by Cursor, Jetbrains is quickly getting pushed out of the list of contenders. they've squandered away a lead they once had in a certain niche for code editors.
I personally only pull up Intellij these days when there's some platform specific tool that's built in (like the emulator in Android Studio) or certain Android specific profiling tools, or the debugger.
Otherwise I rarely find myself using Intellij. My usage has dropped precipitously.
Another example of their wonkiness with Fleet and focus was their whole "Kotlin Multiplaform stuff will be Fleet-first!" which they then (somewhat promptly) reversed to "actually it'll be IntelliJ/Android Studio first" ... and that's not even getting to the macOS-only aspect (also "at first").
Their matrix of features/capabilities across IDEs, platforms, plugins, etc is such a pitfall-happy maze to navigate.
but sigh. Jetbrains really just has no focus.
Fleet came at a time when intellij felt extremely bloated. iirc they had painted themselves into a corner where it was easier to rip the band aid and start anew.
Fleet was supposed to be that promised editor which was snappy and had the power of intellisense + all things we liked about Intellij editors ... but without the terrible glacial bloat. but in a stroke of bad luck and typical lack of focus from Jetbrains, Fleet just didn't get good enough quickly.
I say lack of focus because (like their multiple attempts at AI) Jetbrains also had a lite mode in the start but that didn't work great. then came Fleet. But it was not getting better quickly enough and they changed course to make Fleet their main cross platform editor ... but even that didn't take.
I really am worried for Jetbrains and intellij. In a world where even VScode is having its lunch eaten by Cursor, Jetbrains is quickly getting pushed out of the list of contenders. they've squandered away a lead they once had in a certain niche for code editors.
I personally only pull up Intellij these days when there's some platform specific tool that's built in (like the emulator in Android Studio) or certain Android specific profiling tools, or the debugger.
Otherwise I rarely find myself using Intellij. My usage has dropped precipitously.