Re:Introducing Atom-IDE
by kllrnohj on Tuesday September 12, 2017 @07:23PM
(#15233962)
That's an unrealistically forgiving outlook on this.
You're forced to upgrade when the language you're using upgrades. Or the ecosystem around the product evolves. The IDE doesn't live in a vacuum that will work in perpetuity.
It's realistically much closer to renting than buying as once the updates stop it's not that much longer until the product is no longer usable in a modern environment. Simple example would be if you want to use Kotlin 1.1.4 (latest stable) you must be using Intellij 2016.2 or newer to get the corresponding 1.1.4 kotlin plugin. And if you use an older plugin, the IDE will complain at you and things will be buggy and not work right. Similarly since gradle support is built into the IDE at some point that will fail if your IDE is no longer being updated.
It's not realistic to avoid updating the IDE for long. That's why Jetbrains prominently features subscription and yearly renewals - because you're very nearly forced into it.
You're forced to upgrade when the language you're using upgrades. Or the ecosystem around the product evolves. The IDE doesn't live in a vacuum that will work in perpetuity.
It's realistically much closer to renting than buying as once the updates stop it's not that much longer until the product is no longer usable in a modern environment. Simple example would be if you want to use Kotlin 1.1.4 (latest stable) you must be using Intellij 2016.2 or newer to get the corresponding 1.1.4 kotlin plugin. And if you use an older plugin, the IDE will complain at you and things will be buggy and not work right. Similarly since gradle support is built into the IDE at some point that will fail if your IDE is no longer being updated.
It's not realistic to avoid updating the IDE for long. That's why Jetbrains prominently features subscription and yearly renewals - because you're very nearly forced into it.