May 18, 2026
Love, lag, and a messy rebound
No More JetBrains Products for Me
Fed-up coder dumps JetBrains as commenters cheer, mock, and declare the old-school coding era over
TLDR: One developer is leaving JetBrains for Zed because the older tool felt too slow and frustrating to use every day. In the comments, people turned it into a bigger fight about speed, software bloat, and whether coding tools are being replaced by artificial intelligence assistants.
A programmer just announced a full-on editor breakup, ditching JetBrains after years of paying for its tools and moving to Zed instead. The reason wasn’t some tiny annoyance — it was pure rage at waiting. Slow startup, slow project switching, random reloading, huge storage use, and enough lag to make simple typing feel like a chore. The post reads less like a software review and more like someone finally packing their bags after one too many broken promises: I want to work now, not after a loading screen.
And the comments? Absolutely feasting. One longtime user basically nodded along and said, yes, JetBrains has the fancy features, but it loses badly on speed. Another commenter admitted to a little smug joy from the sidelines, with an Eclipse fan savoring the suffering like it was a revenge arc years in the making. Then came the real chaos: one hot take declared that “IDEs are dead” because artificial intelligence assistants now do so much of the work. That sparked the biggest vibe shift in the room — not just “JetBrains is slow,” but “maybe the whole category is getting replaced.”
Still, not everyone signed the breakup card. One defender pushed back hard, saying Zed is basically a lightweight text editor while JetBrains is a full-service machine with powers Zed may never match. So the drama is deliciously split: speed and simplicity vs. heavyweight power. In other words, the community didn’t just react — it turned one coder’s frustration into a mini culture war.
Key Points
- •The author tested Zed after its v1 release and decided to use it as their primary editor.
- •The article says Zed works well for daily use on Linux despite a recently fixed Wayland flickering bug.
- •The author has used JetBrains CLion for years and says they pay about $85 annually for the IDE.
- •The article identifies CLion’s main problem as slow performance rather than poor features or interface design.
- •Specific complaints about CLion include slow startup, sluggish file creation, project switching delays, remote development disconnects, repeated re-indexing, and a large disk footprint.