Note: This post was written on April 1st, 2014 as an April Fool’s Day joke. While this was intended as fun, who knows what the future holds!
IntelliJ IDEA is nearing its 14th birthday. We’ve gone a long way, but what’s next? What will drive product development for the next 5-10 years?
To keep up IntelliJ IDEA’s success as a commercial product and determine its future direction, we decided to consult independent professionals for assistance. We hired a reputable agency to run a worldwide market research study that polled developers of all ages, genders, cultures and professional backgrounds. The results are already in, and the team is happily working on the next version based on this study’s key findings.
‘Develop with Pleasure’ stays
Any moral purists complaining about the sexual undertones in our company slogan should finally throw in the towel. As the study showed, it does resonate rather intimately with the majority of our customers, so we will all “Develop with Pleasure!” for years to come.
New Lite Edition with in-app purchases
We’ve been thinking about this and discussing internally for a while now, but just couldn’t figure out exactly how it should work. Well, we think we’ve finally got it.
IntelliJ IDEA needs a new edition. Yes, two editions are just not enough. The choice is too difficult for too many people. Beginning with the next version we are going to introduce a new edition of IntelliJ IDEA (and later other IntelliJ-based IDEs) — IntelliJ IDEA Lite.
Key to the new edition will be in-app purchases. Yes, exactly, this is so simple yet so brilliant, we’re sure you’ll love it. In-app purchases are something all of us and our children are so used to with modern software that it should be very natural for everyone.
Feature Credits and In-app Purchases
It’s going to be simple. While using the IDE or other JetBrains products (coming later in TeamCity as well) you will earn a virtual currency, JetBrains Feature Credits (JFC). The more proficient you are with the IDE and the better you know it, the more JFCs you collect automatically. You will need JFCs to unlock premium features of the IDE like even faster indexing, additional code analysis routines, fully-automated refactorings, new color schemes, or promoting your build on the build server. If you need more credit, you can purchase JFCs for real money right from within the IDE.
You may want to start learning the IDE productivity features right away, so you are ready when we go live. Here are three things to get you started:
- IDE Productivity Guide, open it from the Help menu to see your current progress and what else you can learn.
- IntelliJ IDEA Code Golf plugin, to check your grasp of IDE features and compete with others.
- IDE keymaps. Get them from the Help menu too and learn them by heart.
It’s important to note that 3rd-party plugins will also be able to implement in-app purchases. If you’ve got a killer plugin, we’re happy to share the profits!
Gaming API
What is more entertaining that creating great software? Well, games of course. We all play games, no matter our age or gender. Games are not just time-killers, they stimulate our brain and help us solve more difficult problems while we play.
Right now we are working on an IntelliJ Game SDK that will make it easy for everyone to embed their games inside IntelliJ-based IDEs.
The new EAP build of IntelliJ IDEA already includes two games that you can run when you need to switch context or relax and let your brain find the solution for you:
- 1. The never-dying classic
- . To run the game just select New File and start digging old-school.
- 2.
- , a fresh killer game by Gabriele Cirulli, a 19-year-old Italian web developer.
Sign in to your IDE
To make IntelliJ IDEA even more personalized, you will now have an online profile that you will use to log in to your IDE. You’ll be able to compare your progress and achievements with the rest of IntelliJ IDEA users around the world and compete with them.
Version Number
It was also a big surprise for us to find that so many people prefer to stay away from the number 13 whatever it takes. Not that we noticed any serious issues with upgrades or new license purchases, but we would like to offer everyone equal numerical opportunities. To that end, we’re renaming IntelliJ IDEA 13 to IntelliJ IDEA 14-1, effective today. The new EAP build is already using the new version number.
That’s the short version of the plan. We’ll be elaborating on the specifics in later posts. Stay tuned, and do let us know what you think!
Will JFC apply to the Ultimate Edition of IntelliJ or just IntelliJ Lite?
Kiean, Ultimate will contain the complete feature set with no in-app purchases needed. But you can earn JFC using the Ultimate edition too. It will be stored in your profile and you can spend it in other products.
Had me for a minute. Guess it’s already the 1st in Eastern Europe 😉
Nice april’s fool
Yeah, that’s how I read it too.
So sad it’s just Apirl’s fool.. I think that In-App purchases is the great idea for IDEA because Ultimate edition is expensive but not all features are used in companies. So, allow choosing own feature set it is a great way to improve usability of product, I think.
You never know. Things seem crazy at first but then…
+1
I kind of believed everything until I reached the games section.
Good one.
but I so dearly want those stats!
pretty please witch sugar on top.
Try the menu item Help > Productivity Guide
Pingback: IntelliJ IDEAの向かう先 | JetBrains ブログ
Oooohh, you almost had me! The games SDK did reveal the joke
Games *are* there in EAP build, check them out!
wait 3h47min for new build, or buy 50 Gems for 9.99$
+1
Pay only for what I need in the IDE is a great idea because because personnal licence for ultimate edition is too expensive.
You can lower your productivity by creating a text file named digger.txt … 😛
The other easter egg (that you don’t mention here, so I won’t describe it to keep the surprise for others) really had me stumped. I was up coding after midnight and initially thought I was hallucinating! It took me about 10 minutes to track down the culprit. Initially I was blaming it on a Linux VM I had running fullscreen behind the IDEA window (also fullscreen). Very subtle, well played!
Haha! Awesome! Thanks for the feedback
The 2048 thing pops up but does not take focus, can’t play
One more easter egg is… Just try not to move mouse for a while
Loved the smoke effect, but had to downgrade since “Go to Declaration” action (Ctrl^B) doesn’t work with mouse, which is very annoying for code reviews…
Yes, sorry about it. Should be ok when today ends.
It is funny, but how can I switch off 2048-popup-game and smoke effect?
Guys, I have just added feature request to Intellij IDEA bugtracker with “Intellij-IDEA feature-set as In-App purchase”. Don’t be shy and vote up please if you think that idea is really great: http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-123247
How to turn off the game popup and the smoke effect. Its very anoing. Thanks.
I can’t agree more… I’ve had it 6 times so far and it is really, really starting to get on my nerves!
Rob, Steve, really sorry to hear.
Just want to say it will all go away once today ends.
Maybe switching to the previous version for the rest of today will be a good idea for you.
Thanks!
Eugene: Nothing wrong with a little fun here and there but I’ve paid good money for this editor and it’s been throwing this in my face every half hour or so. I’m really trying focus and it’s just messing with my concentration. At least give people the option of “no more” or something with a prank like that in the future.
Point taken.
Please note that we on purpose did this in the EAP version only.
@Eugene: Leave the games in and introduce a “de-stress” option with a timespan on it. That way one can configure the editor to tell you to “go relax” and optionally play a little game (but make it dismiss-able! 😉 )
Heard similar ideas inside the team. Thanks, we may do something like this. We’ll see.
For those having issues you can re-download the ‘proper’ EAP at http://download.jetbrains.com/idea/ideaIC-13.1.1.exe or http://download.jetbrains.com/idea/ideaIU-13.1.1.exe
I found that control-click browse stopped working in the 666 build.
Looks like it somehow got released without the turn-off switch. If this is fixed soon, then no worries.
(Anyhow, great work in general, guys).
Thanks Rob!
All the “jokes” will just turn off tomorrow. No updates needed.
If you’re going do something like this every year, could you bear in mind that April’s Fools Day might actually fall on a busy working day for some of us, so include some way of turning off the ‘fun’ stuff?
Lessons totally learned.
Thanks!
This was a horrible day at work because the 2048 game kept popping up, stealing focus. I wanted some of the other changes in the EAP build. I had no idea it would be so annoying to use.
At least it’s not like I paid for this thing that I use to do my job and it’s actively sabotaging me…hmm…
We would never do this in a stable version but we underestimated the number of people who would download this Early Access build.
We’re sorry for making this too annoying and w/o a way to turn off.
I was terrified reading this before somewhere in the middle of the text I realized that it’s a joke. Phew!
I can’t wait for the Android edition in the Play store!!! I can’t tell you how many times I have been too focused at work… getting a headache… and wished for the interruption of a microtransaction. You guys are brilliant!
Love the smoke! Was already googling for No time to explain virus on Ubuntu;-)
Keep on rocking!
Thanks! Glad you liked it.
Really I would prefer if Idea provide a timer (Pomodoro) without downloading a plugin with TODO and all the Pomodoro features that will be Great..
Atleast by end of day or month we can see the progress of our work. Total time spent like if one pomodoro is over and still user is interacting with the IDE to count or not to be left on user but else it would be great to have feature.
Ram, thanks for the suggestion.
Also, there’s a couple of Pomodoro plugins in the repository – http://plugins.jetbrains.com/search/index?pr=idea&search=pomodoro
You may find them interesting.
I can understand how this might be fun for the dev team, or fun for developers for a minute, but this really goes to far. I have a release to cut and I’m trying to focus. I really don’t need the audio and this incessant game popup. The game doesn’t even work for me.
It’d be tolerable if there was some way to turn it off, but I there doesn’t appear to be. Again, it’s nice to have fun, but it’s like an annoying coworker trying to pull the same prank over and over again every half hour while I’m trying to meet a deadline. I hope you won’t do this again, or I hope if you do you put in a setting to turn it off.
I’m not understanding why this is only in EAP. I paid money for a professional editor. If you want to put it in the community edition, go to it.
Oh, I suppose I was mixing up EAP with Ultimate. Still though, annoying.
Hello Carl,
Please accept our apologies for making this too annoying and w/o a turn off switch. We’ve learned the lesson.
We also underestimated the number of people who would download this pre-release Early Access build.
Hi,
I vote for tetris .. (like emacs) …:)
Great work people
Thomas
How do you disable the smoke screensaver? It’s still affecting me today!
Hmm, thinking about it, “did you try turning it off and on again?” is something I’m yet to try. Since the 2048 stopped popping out, I assumed everything would be in order but the smoke continues to pop out.
Otherwise I’ll roll back to the previous release, which supported C-click correctly to navigate to the implementation of a function, but which is broken in this EAP.
Restart IntelliJ IDEA
Man, I was enraging with the in-app purchases!
April 1st joking aside… What I would like to see in near future from Intellij in IDEA (the one I currently use is v13.0.3) is Git support that makes IntelliJ+Git combination easier to use. IDEA seems to operate on some smart assumptions that are not so obvious. Here is a list of tasks I find challenging enough: 1) install IDEA onto a brand new Windows machine and then try to clone a project from a shared “public” remote Git repository. The immediate problem is that the IDE doesn’t fully open because there are no known projects and does not present any option to connect to remote Git repository and clone it – not only me, everyone in the team resorted to EGit plugin in Eclipse. 2) Synchronize your local workspace with remote “public” Git repository, see outgoing and incoming changes in a dedicated window, and be able to see the diff on individual files BEFORE I run “pull”, and [most important] allow to merge the conflicting files after the “pull”. None of this is possible with IntelliJ as of v13. I know that this may not exactly map to Git’s philosophy or commands, but EGit got away with it and won… So everyone in the team ended up using IDEA for coding – because of its blazingly fast, precise and predictable at it, and using Eclipse+EGit to synchronize with remote “public” Git repo (or command line git stash, git pull, git stash pop, manually resolve conflicts, git add). Just wish my favorite IDE to be even better.
Valeri, thanks for your feedback.
1) Choose Checkout from Version Control -> Git. You’ll be presented with a clone dialog, enter the URL and click Clone. After clone is completed, you’ll be asked whether you want to open/create a project from the cloned sources.
2) Use Update Project (or simply Git | Pull) to pull from the tracked branch, or skip the step and update before push automatically (happens if the push is rejected). Incoming/outgoing changes view is not implemented yet indeed: please vote: http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-24057
Jokes aside, profile/settings sync via sign-in would actually make sense.
Totally! So, there’s a grain of truth in every joke.
Thanks for the feedback!
Big things for me are the simple small things:
1. The ability to get latest update when one or more updates have been missed (one for managers). Sometimes get download even when just a few minor revisions up. Possibly we could have download just update file too as standalone file?
2. Front dashboard shows the “whole” path to the project. Once you select an item it then goes into the main IDE
3. When items are not mapped for Spring, Struts etc. would like to see a dialog come up with everything mapped as a suggestion. Usually get two things: click apply or some things or specify files are spring files. Want IDE to just give me one screen for this.
4. Possibly out of the box integration with The Dynamic Code Evolution Virtual Machine (DCE VM)?
5. Maven user settings path be read from environment (existing bug for that one of the three fields)
Darren, w/r to 3. : due to the highly project specific configuration/setup, this is more or less impossible to achieve. If you have any suggestions on how to improve the current configuration workflow, please file an issue. Thanks.
Hi Darren,
Thanks for the feedback! It would be much easier for us (and for you to track the progress) if you create separate issues in YouTrack (http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issues/IDEA) with additional details.
Plus when run IDE after extracting zip have the following:
1. Change path for Inteli files (idea.config.path=${user.home}) to ? usualy I swap with ${idea.home}
2. Ability to change memory settings in idea*.exe.vmoptions file
Plus the team have had issues with the JavaScript plugin we use with chrome. Various issues.
One key thing would be if worked with JavaScript which is in referenced files (good programming). We tend to have a mixture of JS in JSP pages and referenced as was originally offshore developed.
Pingback: Links for March 29th through April 4th
Hi,
I’m a PhpStorm user. At which version the “Sign in to your IDE” will be available there?
Probably some time around the next major version
I use WebStorm for JavaScript and TypeScript development and absolutely love it, but…
Please consider developing and online web-based IDE. A year ago Cloud9 was just an interesting toy — today it has per-project Docker Linux VMs and it’s starting to look like only a matter of time before it becomes a usable stand-alone proposition for Web development. Even MS is dipping its toes in the water with its VS Monaco Online.
I love using a Chromebook when away from the office (and increasingly in the office) the prospect of a develop-anywhere browser-based environment is and attractive proposition. Online platforms are also a natural fit for collaborative tools.
JetBrains has the tools (Kotlin to JavaScript compiler) and has already build a mini-IDE for the browser (the Kotlin Web Demo).
Damn, when you read these blog posts post-April-1st you really believe it especially if you don’t check the date. It’s not a bad idea though, I’d be happy to upgrade my Community edition to Ultimate just by using it for free.
Even the craziest ideas can become reality some day
“Sign in to your IDE” mentioned above is already available!
Also, it’s probably a good idea to add a note about the post being ‘April 1st’ joke.
Will do.