2. had lots of fun with similar we should chain / tunnel this to this it can’t be done easily projects
3. fond memories reverse engineering JNI 1.0 to let Java only devs use C libs, get C# 1.0 to pipe via C++ to call C serial port driver for early drone microcontroller etc
all to say / nice work / keep building / like that it solves your very specific AI anywhere problem in JetBrains even tho it seems like wait where to even start! It can’t be done! Like Microsoft once told me re: C# 1.0
Its extremely fun to have a clear requirement that is not supported by a piece of software that you use and then work around it until it works
timeframe was circa 2002-2004 give or take, the C lib we had to use was closed source
Has it gotten better since, or did I just do it wrong from the beginning?
Their choice of which LLM to use is probably related to those earlier, more cautious stances.
It is still slowish, but the quality is definitely getting there.
1) It has been doing a good job reviewing my code, and could suggest some interesting performance improvements in the past.
2) It is good to generate things such as simple REST endooints, that sort of thing. Saves you a bunch of typing, even if you have to do some finishing touches yourself.
3) I think it generally does a decent job writing tests as well.
4) Current models have gotten really good at helping me explore libraries I am not very familiar with.
The AI hype may be very annoying, and I am skeptical that in the long run it makes financial sense, but it is a productivity boost once you get the hang of it.
It pops up a little input inline, rather than a chat or autocomplete.
Have you seen LiteLLM Gateway before? As a bonus it supports a lot of different providers.
But instead of hitting each provider's API separately, managing their keys, etc., it may be easier to go through OpenRouter, which is a single endpoint, has hundreds of models, and doesn't add any cost on top of public prices from the providers.
So once money is loaded on your account you pay the same as if you used the LLM provider directly but you pay a premium to load money onto your account, it's effectively adding a 5% fee to the base LLM API prices (and $0.35/per reload, depending on reload amount this might be negligible but on a $10 reload it means you are effectively paying a 9% fee).
Does that imply using OpenAI/Anthropic/Gemini API/Grok/Copilot for anything but the most trivial jokish personal uses ought to be considered a serious breach of fiduciary duty because it exposes your business to potentially massive legal costs?
Jetbrains and existing IDEs are much more focused for exactly what it is, manual code writing/inspection. How they integrate AI should be done meaningfully to improve the IDE experience. If they want to be in the business of reinventing code-writing, then you have to scrap the IDE altogether.
It’s an interesting question whether we’ll need an IDE at all in the future. I used to program in Vim with minimal help. Maybe one day I’ll program in Vim with maximal help from an AI. It would be nice to say "find where authentication happens" and it pulls up all instances of auth code. But that’s also another example of a feature that can go into an IDE: case sensitive search, regex search, natural language search. So I’m skeptical we won’t be using IDEs in the future. And if all of this is a part of an IDE, then that’s squarely in Jetbrains’ wheelhouse.
I was specifically looking for companies that required IDE integration with Cursor, not companies that require developers to, at minimum, seek AI counsel in a browser tab while they're developing in their IDE.
They do support offline models: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/ai-assistant/switching-to-off...
I also used the Continue.dev plugin for a bit which worked nicely with Ollama but was buggy when it comes to the UI, their AI Assistant feels better in that regard: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/22707-continue
Sadly seems like their Junie tool doesn't support that yet, would be pretty cool to have that convenience instead of needing something like Aider or other tools for more complex multi-step edits: https://www.jetbrains.com/junie/
yekanchi•9mo ago
Stream•9mo ago