> without existential risk

To do nothing is to die. I've been a JetBrains subscriber for over a decade. Nobody is going to use their tools in five years. I certainly don't need my subscription anymore.

> on some "also ran" LLM sinkhole.

They can't do Junie. It's a dead end. They can't do the same thing everyone else is doing either, or they're exactly as you put it: an "also ran" in a very crowded field.

The only way for JetBrains to survive is to figure out their Garmin play. They either find some niche within the existing product or - maybe (and very improbably) - they can innovate something wild nobody else has figured out yet that provides a path to new fertile pasture. But that's more the startup path than the thriving incumbent facing innovator's dilemma path.

But no matter what, if they stay the course, they're dead. Just like half the people expecting to still be writing code by hand.

I think they are trying new things even with "nobody writes code anymore" in mind. Their IDEs are now MCP servers for agents to reason about the code. Imagine your agent will stop wasting tokens using grep to find symbol usages if he can just ask IDE where it is used. They are not the best option for vibecoders right now but who knows what will happen in 1 year.

Integration with other developer tools, code reviews etc. are better than ever. Ideavim is probably the best vim plugin and it gets new features every month. They are also investing a lot in the AI.

I would bet they will survive just fine unless we would write software in slack only using emoji :-)

> They either find some niche within the existing product

They should stay in where they started, dev experience and IDEs custom for each language. Entering the AI coding was a mistake in my opinion, I’m sure one can argue that AI coding would have better tooling without their IDEs, but AI coders (Cc and codex) don’t use IDEs anymore so it’s a lost battle before the start

I have been Jetbrains subscriber for over a decade and stopped using them last year. Visual Studio Code did LLM integration better. And now I am using VS Code less and less with AI-native control plane like Paseo. I can literally develop on my mobile phone.

I disagree on to do nothing is also to die, I'd love to continue paying if they prioritized bugfixing, speed, remote/container editing and having an open AI ecosystem, as well as supporting any new language features without degenerating into an "always online" editor like vs.code.

I could not care less about "new paradigm" editors, UI reworks and AI lock-in offerings, the only AI I want is let me bring my own local model, or interface with claude / codex / ...

I love their tools and am keeping my subscription for now, but would have to agree.

VSCode has been eating at their users for years now. Jetbrains tools still were much better in my opinion but they are competing with “free” and “good enough”. With AI getting better, the main advantages of Jetbrains are gone.

I don’t need a massive IDE anymore. I still need an editor, but there’s hundreds of better tools for quick edits than a massive IDE.

It’s a company at the end of the day, but I hope they find a niche or pull a Garmin play like you said, otherwise I don’t see them being relevant.

> Just like half the people expecting to still be writing code by hand.

I know this is not your main point, but common.

If this is true, AI would be the first tech impossible to learn 5 years after it appeared.

> I certainly don't need my subscription anymore

Sure. I still use mine though; privately and at work.

> Nobody is going to use their tools in five years.

> they're dead. Just like half the people expecting to still be writing code by hand.

Hyperbole much. Leave it on LinkedIn man.

Who knows?

5 years is a long time.

They're trying to navigate the AI era just like everyone else.

You know what we got told at work? “Scrappy AI startups are snapping at our heels, we need to move fast so the competition doesn't over take us”

…but if you ask: what startups? Silence. If you ask, why are we scared of some teenager vibe coding a platform and stealing our customers? Silence.

Dont question the narrative.

Of course AI is an existential threat. Of course there are vibed startups trying to eat our market.

Have you not seen our share price?

Such hyperbolic BS. Ffs. Calm down.

> Nobody is going to use their tools in five years.

What will replace it? The dumpster fire called Eclipse, certainly not. The even larger dumpster fire that is Electron based VS Code, also not. And "vibe coding", "agentic AI" etc. will also be a thing of the past once the VC money spigot selling tokens for far below actual cost dries up.

The JetBrains portfolio is here to stay.

(One might even see a total ban for American products in the EU or a significant push in sovereign technology on the horizon, and JB stands to profit from both options!)