I'm not even being cynical --- this to me reads like: Sure, we will eventually shove it down your throat whether you like it or not, so there's no need to worry for the time being!
> The current UI will remain available for at least two years, and we’re not going to remove it until we’ve seen that the vast majority of our users have successfully made the switch to the new UI.
this sounds like you have to actively switch to the new UI if you already have an older version installed, and that they will be monitoring how many users have made the switch. Only after the "vast majority" (>80% ?) have switched will they "shove it down the throat" of the other 20%. Well, let's see how this promise will hold up...
What they have written is they are going to force a change. It's very clear. As soon as we have moved most people over, we will force you to move. You don't even have to read between the lines, it's explicit.
"We won't force it for two years". We are gonna force it in two years.
"We won't until the vast minority" we will as soon as most people have moved.
Software developers as developers: "Why does that random guy still pay for v1??? It's 20 years old, using Java 5 and old crap, let's force them to upgrade!!!!"
Software developers as users: "Don't force me to upgrade"
The hypocrisy is tangible and close to mind boggling.
As Devs: “I don’t want to maintain the old version. Don’t force work on me.”
As Users: “I don’t want to upgrade to the new version. Don’t force work on me.”
It’s not hypocritical to want your cake and eat it too. It’s only hypocritical if you think it’s wrong for companies to force people to upgrade and then doing that. Not liking when your parents forced you to eat vegetables and making your kids eat vegetables isn’t hypocrisy.
Sounds to me that it will not be the default. And their is a time-honoured trick in our industry of hiding an option deep in the menus, to drive down adoption, to preclude removal of a feature.
Not to mention how many bug reports with be followed up with "Try in the new UI" as their only reply. We've seen this with Firefox, LibreOffice, KDE, Gnome, and so many other once-useful software.
> The current UI will remain available for at least two years, and we’re not going to remove it until we’ve seen that the vast majority of our users have successfully made the switch to the new UI. Also, very few of the design decisions you see now in the new UI are final, and we’re open to revisiting them based on your feedback.
I smell the Reddit moment of "well, we see that you hate it so we won't remove the old one, we will just subtly break it in more and more ways till we brownbeat you to move. After all we can't say we wasted money on redesign to our bossess" moment.
to be honest, not sure why they have to explain themselves. started using JetBrains products when Eclipse became a monstrosity. this is not the first time the UI has changed. and it has always been gradual, with options to customize.
True, but people will also not have to explain themselves when they eventually switch to VS Code because VS Code is free, has the same UI, and get more feature rich by the week.
IntelliJ is incredibly feature rich. Eclipse fell behind, because its corporate backers like IBM, I assume, didn't fund it as massively anymore. Who's sponsoring VSCode for Java development in a way that competes with the weight that JetBrains is throwing around in that space? I don't use VSCode, so this is part honest question (and part presumption).
