JetBrains Fleet drops support for Kotlin Multiplatform
44 comments
·February 11, 2025hadrien01
solardev
I think Fleet's their hopeful answer to VSCode. IntelliJ is powerful, but so, so messy, with a convoluted UI from the 90s/2000s. Even the simplified one is much klunklier than VSCode, especially for everyday/every-hour tasks like NPM scripts, debugging, etc. Every essential function is hidden in tiny competing side panels triggered by some obscure icon in a different part of the screen.
I love and use Jetbrains IDEs every day, but after a decade I still only find their UIs merely tolerable. Many of my colleagues try them out for an hour or two and then jump ship back to VSCode just because the initial "wtf is going on" factor is so high =/
I'm guessing Fleet was their answer, an opportunity to develop a greenfield UI for a new generation of devs raised with UX (vs the old guard of IntelliJ users from past decades). It made sense, until AI suddenly took over everything and nobody cared what your IDE UI is like anymore.
homebrewer
You forgot to add "IMHO". IDEA has fantastic UI, it's fully configurable and 100% usable through pre-assigned hotkeys. For example, fuzzy search is available everywhere, in every tool window, in the database window, in search results, etc. The same key combination (ctrl+alt+arrow up/down on my instance) can be used to jump between search results, symbol usages, TODOs, linter results, and so on. They thought through and implemented countless convenient features, most of which I will not be able to remember, but do use every day purely through muscle memory.
They're also now intent on destroying them in favor of the "new" primitive UI by trying to cater to new users (who are seemingly fine with never becoming power users). The good UI is still available through a plugin, but it's obvious it will be dropped in the next few years. I'm pretty sure they will lose the old guard like me right after that.
solardev
I mean, I did start the post with an "I think"... it's pretty clearly an opinion, no?
I also don't think that's some obscure hypothesis on my part. It was just the zeitgeist at the time Fleet first came out (https://developers.slashdot.org/story/21/12/04/1655249/jetbr...)... seemed obvious that it was to counter VSCode. Fleet's own homepage says "We envisioned Fleet as a coding tool with a clear minimalist design that doesn’t overwhelm and helps keep you focused."
I'm not trying to convince anyone that one look & feel is better than another, just point out that there IS a generational divide (my guess) or at least a divide (of SOME sort) between those who prefer dense UIs and those who prefer simpler ones. My younger coworkers especially seem to struggle with the full-blown IntelliJ – it's just a trend I noticed, not some deep scholarly analysis. It's part of a generational fashion trend towards more whitespace and less information density.
Jetbrains already risked quite a flame war when they launched the "simplified UI" for IntelliJ, to a very mixed love-it-or-hate-it reception. They realized they couldn't change the existing UI too much without alienating some % of their existing users. So Fleet was a way to instead make an alternative, sharing some of the same backend but with a different enough UI for those who want it.
I doubt it's ever going to replace the traditional IntelliJ UI, especially now that they're refocusing efforts on AI stuff instead of minimalist UIs.
tommica
Yep, I'm glad for their "Classic UI" plugin - I really dislike working with the new one, it's too VSCody for my liking.
nprateem
Please don't post flamebait. Jetbrains seem intent on dumbing down their UI as much as possible so we have to hunt through useless hamburger menus instead of just looking in pinned panels, etc.
MattPalmer1086
I see no flamebait. Your own post is much more flamebaity.
gf000
I believe they are heavily reusing the non-UI part of Intellij and the like, so it's not really 2x the development.
vips7L
Yeah I think they're just trying to get out of Swing by developing a new ui, Swing isn't that fun to develop.
tadfisher
Unfortunately they started building Fleet before Compose Multiplatform was ready, so now they support three UI technologies. Granted, Fleet uses the same rendering base as Compose (Skiko), but that's got to be a dead end ultimately.
malkia
I've been long user of JetBrains' products - and love them. I even use ReSharper in Visual Studio (which I still consider better IDE, but for Linux / Mac - JetBrains is my choice, and heck, sometimes even Rider/CLion/RustRover/GoLand on Windows too - especcially GoLand).
But... but... I've always wanted (and willing to pay) a single IDE with any plugin that works in it - not just so many different versions...
I'm a multiple programming language user - mostly C++, but also Python, Go, Rust, C#, etc.
arwineap
In jetbrains paradigm you should install IDEA and install python plugin, go plugin, etc. You only have to do it once
That should get you within 90%+ use cases
malkia
I think there was no C++ (ahem native) debugger in IDEA... but I'll check again, could be wrong really...
teh64
Sadly not, as Clion is not available as a plugin like almost all other IDEs: https://www.jetbrains.com/products/compare/?product=idea&pro...
deergomoo
I would happily pay through the nose for their language and refactoring features as some sort of LSP or plugin for other editors.
I use their products because that aspect is best-in-class for many languages, but the actual applications themselves leave a lot of be desired. Core text editing is pretty good, but so many Byzantine nested menus and odd Java fully-modal locks-out-the-background dialogs.
ok123456
> Byzantine nested menus
crtl-shift-a
wiseowise
Have you tried Zen mode?
bastardoperator
They can't build the mothership, that means they only have one product. The problem I have is that they build these editors to their benefit, not mine. I had the same problem despite liking the tools initially. Between nvchad and vscode, I have all my bases covered for any situation/language.
NomDePlum
It is possible to install the Python and Go plugins into IntelliJ. That's the setup used wildly in my current place of work.
It wouldn't surprise me if that was the case with Rust, C++, and possibly even C# too.
I'm sure there is some loss of UX and related features in this setup but there are always trade-offs.
teh64
No both C++ and C# need to be bought as separate IDEs:
Only Clion includes C++: https://www.jetbrains.com/products/compare/?product=idea&pro...
Only Rider includes C#: https://www.jetbrains.com/products/compare/?product=idea&pro...
jayd16
Rider handles C++ but it looks like that's only for MSBuild projects.
NomDePlum
Thanks. I don't use either but good to correct my guess.
codingwagie
Personal opinion is that JetBrains products have gone down hill the last few years. Tons of memory leaks and performance issues. They are also way behind on the AI front, borderline obsolete in some areas. This is coming from someone who has used jetbrains daily for over a decade
ta988
I have the exact opposite experience same thing almost a decade. They were great then there was a phase of really bad performance around 5-6y ago and in the last 3 years it has been much better improving with each version. It is especially much more reactive when indexing large projects or just navigating them.
endofreach
Interesting. I have had the opposite experience. And i am happy that they're behind on the AI front.
Way too many tools force their shitty AI (API wrapper) upon me already. And i have yet to see any benefit.
laerus
Agreed, RustRover is by far the best IDE for Rust atm. I also use the AI Assistant which is so toned down that it's actually useful and not full of spam.
lallysingh
RustRover and PyCharm keep my jetbrains subscription going. The AI assistant on pandas APIs is a godsend.
realityfactchex
What would you suggested instead of JetBrains tools for AI-assisted development?
(I don't just want to hear what everyone says; I specifically I want to hear what JetBrains lovers think about this.)
I was about to go all in on JetBrains becaue I can't stand VSCode, and about to transition from ChatGPT only to trying out in-IDE integrations... but if there's a better thing to try first... all ears.
surrTurr
JetBrains is WAY behind VS-Code and its forks (e.g. Cursor) in terms of AI features.
Their own offering, "Jetbrains AI" absolutely SUCKS (just read the reviews, you'll see why).
Third-party AI plugins are pretty basic. Most just offer inline completions and a chat sidebar. For example, GitHub Copilot for Intellij is a shell of itself: No agent capabilities, or even model switching (although that seems to be coming in a future update).
Generally speaking, Jetbrains seems to have missed the AI code editor revolution, and are now trying to play catch-up. The problem is that their plugin API seems to offer less capabilities than VS-Code when it comes to implementing advanced AI features (think of cursor like features). This, combined with the fact that Intellij products are closed source and can't simply be forked by someone who requires additional capabilities, makes it hard for third parties to build advanced AI features.
PS: I also tested their new "Agent" plugin called Junie (invite only beta). It's really basic (like 30% as good as cursors agent mode), but since it's still in invite only beta this should be taken with a grain of salt.
kuschku
> This, combined with the fact that Intellij products are closed source and can't simply be forked by someone who requires additional capabilities
https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community is Apache 2.0
Only some of the language plugins are proprietary.
nprateem
Aider. Just add the files you need in the terminal, disable git autocommit and you're done. Tell it to do something then check the diff.
konradkissener
I'm happy to see JetBrains focussing on IntelliJ / Android Studio instead. I was really scratching my head when they announced a standalone KMP IDE based on Fleet just 4 months ago. [1]
[1] https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2024/10/kotlin-multiplatfo...
techwizrd
This is definitely surprising given they announced a KMP standalone IDE only a few months ago. For now, Flutter still seems to make more sense than KMP while the KMP world is still maturing.
vips7L
Dart is an amazing and underrated language too. It compiles to native assembly, has pattern matching, async/await, and null safety. The only thing it's missing in my opinion is some form of checked errors, currently they only have unchecked exceptions.
kiawe_fire
Oddly, I’m conflicted on Flutter so far, but I have loved working in Dart.
So much so that I ended up writing a queueing app for scheduling batches of sequential tasks on the server in Dart just to see how it could work as a NodeJS replacement, and thought the whole dev experience was great.
geodel
> The only thing it's missing
I think biggest thing it is missing is any kind of Google commitment on its long term usage.
NeutralForest
I just don't trust Google with a programming language. I feel like Golang has escaped the orbit of Google and could survive without it (I might be wrong). But for Dart I'm pretty sure it would die fast and I don't want to invest time into it as a result.
tadfisher
The modern language landscape is backing away from checked exceptions. Funnily enough Kotlin eschewed them as well, converting checked to unchecked exceptions on the JVM.
vips7L
The modern language landscape has not backed away from checked errors. Rust is praised for its checked errors, countless posts on this forum praise Result<T> in multiple languages. Swift has checked errors and Kotlin is implementing them via union types in the near future.
Checked errors, via results or exceptions have never been the problem. It has always been Java the language that hasn't provided the syntax sugar for handling checked errors effectively.
There is no difference between:
A doIt() throws B
fun doIt(): Result<A, B>
robertlagrant
I always thought a really good use of KMP would be in writing shared non-visual code, e.g. a library that interacts with your API(s) and any non-visual like that. Then paint a dumbish, platform-specific frontend over the top and link together.
toprerules
I'm a Vim user, but I occasionally try JetBrains/VSCode to see what I'm missing out on and RustRover, CLion, Goland etc. are by far the most sluggish pieces of software I've used. I am demonstrably slower on them than using Vim with my fuzzy finder, LSP, and AI integrations.
I thought Fleet might add the "magic" to something more VSCode like, but I also don't understand the long term vision.
wiseowise
Good riddance. It is almost like the decision to build a "standalone KMP IDE" came from some Reddit thread with 5 upvotes. Android ecosystem is built around Android Studio, in what world millions of devs would suddenly switch from free (subsidized) Android Studio to a paid Fleet developed by a third party (third first third party?) is beyond me.
null
I still don't understand where Jetbrains is going with Fleet. Is it a platform to prototype ideas for their IDEs? Is their long-term goal to replace their IDEs with Fleet? Is it just a standalone product?
So far, it seems like they're very slowly recreating their IDEs from scratch in Fleet while continuing development on the IntelliJ Platform and related IDEs, doing twice as much work for nothing.