Equivalents because VSCode and its forks are not an equivalent.
TL;DR Jetbrains is getting worse, more like VSCode. I want out to something as powerful but not VSCode like (which is worse).
Jetbrains has been chasing VSCode’s popularity to the detriment of its own product.
The modal commit dialog is now opt-in, behind a nearly hidden, advanced parameter and will be removed in the not so distant future. This was part of their effort to make the UI “leaner” and more like VSCode so now Jetbrains IDEs look more like it.
Some keyboard shortcuts have also had to be changed to be more like VSCode.
Jetbrains used to have a good docker integration, but that’s either unmaintained or undergoing work to support dev-containers better - something that jetbrains practically had nearly a decade ago, which allowed you to code on another server (remote development).
AI Assistant and Junie (their coding agents which I have to use for work) have consistently been behind the curve and just keep getting worse. They have 2 separate products for agentic development and can’t decide which to keep, so they duplicate efforts and fail at both. Now I’m asking my employer to just give me Cursor like the rest of the team, so I don’t have to put up with this Jetbrains crap.
Privately, AI it’s non-starter anyway, but my guess is that Jetbrains is also focussing more development efforts on that than actually fixing existing bugs.
I’ve been using jetbrains for many years. I believe I have cursed at their products over 1000 times, opened or tracked issues, seen bugs take many years to be fixed, lived with other bugs.
I’ve seen how their adaptations for AI broke many things that worked; I’ve learned, over many years, to subscribe, but use products that are released in the fall or winter because there are too many bugs earlier in the year. So often my copies are not new.
Yet I never have found a replacement I like better.
I am afraid that even with all the bugs, it may unfortunately be the best we have at the moment. I would gladly pay a subscription to an opensource alternative that focused on being on par to old Jetbrains IDEs. Maybe it’s time to just use my perpetual fallback license and call it a day with Jetbrains.