For episode number 50 (not 51 Alex!), Angular GDE and JetBrains DevRel Jan-Niklas Wortmann joins the show. Together with Michael and Alex they dive into Jan-Niklas' angle of being a DevRel, how framework communities are different and why people should give WebStorm a try. Beyond that, Volar and LSPs are also covered, as well as some new announcements!
Links marked with * are affiliate links. We get a small commission when you register for the service through our link. This helps us to keep the podcast running. We only include affiliate links for services mentioned in the episode or that we use ourselves.
Chapters
Welcome to DejaVue
Guest Intro
Difference of Framework communities
The Ups and Downs of DevRel
Advice for people doing DevRel
What is JetBrains?
Reluctance to change Tools
Why one should check out WebStorm
TypeScript and AI in the IDE
A web-dev newsletter for your coffee break
Where can people follow you?
For episode number 50 (not 51 Alex!), Angular GDE and JetBrains DevRel Jan-Niklas Wortmann joins the show. Together with Michael and Alex they dive into Jan-Niklas' angle of being a DevRel, how framework communities are different and why people should give WebStorm a try. Beyond that, Volar and LSPs are also covered, as well as some new announcements!
Links marked with * are affiliate links. We get a small commission when you register for the service through our link. This helps us to keep the podcast running. We only include affiliate links for services mentioned in the episode or that we use ourselves.
Creators & Guests
Host
Alexander Lichter
Web Engineering Consultant • Founder • Nuxt team • Speaker
Host
Michael Thiessen
Full-time Vue educator
Guest
Jan-Niklas Wortmann
Developer Advocate at JetBrains & Angular GDE
Editor
Niki Brandner
Audio Engineer and Video Editor
What is DejaVue?
Welcome to DejaVue, the Vue podcast you didn't know you needed until now! Join Michael Thiessen and Alexander Lichter on a thrilling journey through the world of Vue and Nuxt.
Get ready for weekly episodes packed with insights, updates, and deep dives into everything Vue-related. From component libraries to best practices, and beyond, they've got you covered.
Michael Thiessen:
Welcome to DejaVue.
Alexander Lichter:
It's your favorite Vue podcast, and you just don't know it yet. Or you probably do because, I mean, this is the fifty first episode here, and, it's almost a year. It's,
Michael Thiessen:
almost a year.
Alexander Lichter:
With all the special episodes, we we're almost to 52, and I think the year has fifty two weeks. We're almost at the year. And I think the very first episode we recorded, which will probably never come out, maybe as, like, a little special at some point so people close to it. It was chaotic, but, well, things changed. We improved.
Alexander Lichter:
And, yeah, have have a lot of fun every week here. If you don't know who we is, because maybe it's your first episode joining or you saw an amazing short out there, I mean, like, okay. Well, let's listen to the episode here about, I don't know, Volar and Angular and and JetBrains and WebStorm, then you're right here in this episode. And, well, I'm here with my lovely cohost, Michael Thiessen, who is a full time content creator around the Vue and Nuxt ecosystem. Michael, how are you doing?
Michael Thiessen:
I'm doing pretty good. And, yeah, I'm here with Alex who's on the Nuxt core team. He's not the Nuxt core team. That would be
Alexander Lichter:
that would be too much
Michael Thiessen:
a lot to put a lot to
Michael Thiessen:
put on one
Alexander Lichter:
True.
Michael Thiessen:
Person.
Alexander Lichter:
True.
Michael Thiessen:
And, yeah, creating content on YouTube as always. How are you doing?
Alexander Lichter:
Fine. Fine. Actually, pretty exciting day so far. A lot of things on the plate as usual. And, of course, as in so many episodes, I mean, some it's the two of us.
Alexander Lichter:
We have some more technical topics, like some deep dives. But, every now and then, quite more regular recently. We also get amazing guests, and we have one here as well. We have the lovely Jan Niklas Wortmann with us. It's you.
Alexander Lichter:
How are you doing there, Jan Niklas?
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Pretty good. Pretty good. Cannot complain. I I can't complain. There's actually snowstorm going on in Kansas City, so it's pretty cold.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
And I don't
Alexander Lichter:
So typical German thing. Oh, the weather. It's,
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Yeah. It's the worst.
Michael Thiessen:
Well, if it's anything like what we've been having up here in Canada, it's pretty insane. We've had so much snow. I think, like, I don't know, forty, fifty centimeters in the last
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Wow.
Michael Thiessen:
Week.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
It it's not that bad.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
But
Michael Thiessen:
There's nowhere to put it anymore.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Yeah.
Alexander Lichter:
Yeah. I can shovel it on top of the other snow. Like, crazy. But, yeah, Jan Niklas, tell us what's what are you actually doing when it comes to work? How did you come to this episode here?
Alexander Lichter:
And, yeah, a little bit about yourself.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
So how I came to this episode is quite easy. I just slipped, like, this envelope with a little bit of money over to you at a conference, and here I am. I don't know how that happened. Oh, sorry.
Michael Thiessen:
Wait. There's money involved?
Alexander Lichter:
Did this happen to me?
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Well, that is how you
Alexander Lichter:
Cut it out. Cut it out.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
No. So, about myself, Jan Niklas Wortmann, developer advocate at JetBrains for JavaScript and TypeScript. So I try to connect with all the JavaScript framework communities out there pretty much. And I in a former life, I used to do consulting primarily for Angular applications. I did also, at some point, do a bigger React project.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
So I had this background. And at some point when I started there, I was like, well, where can I improve my skills primarily to connect better with those communities? And Vue was a quite obvious choice. So and the first conference for me was VueJS Amsterdam where we had we had a booth, and I think that's where we met for the first time.
Alexander Lichter:
I think so.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
You were also doing a talk at the meetup before?
Alexander Lichter:
Yeah. It was not in another talk. I was in the fishbowl, like, discussion with, like, Guillaume, I think, Eduardo, Evan, and so on. Vanessa and so on. Yeah.
Alexander Lichter:
Yeah. Exactly. The in the JetBrains office, where the the pre meetup was last year. But, yeah, that's that's correct.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Yeah. So that's how I got into the Vue community. And since then, the the Vue community has been very open and welcoming, so I feel quite comfortable here.
Alexander Lichter:
So maybe a place to stay after seeing React and Angular, time for some joy, so to say.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
In terms of, like, community dynamics, I'm always surprised how very different those communities are.
Alexander Lichter:
Why are they so different? Now now I'm curious because as you've been through through some of them, please let let So the
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
the thing that I always loved about Angular, they have this Angular team embraces that slogan a lot is that mantra of, like, come sit with us. Right? Like, they're very approachable at conferences. They're always out in the hallway, like, talking to people. So it's just a very welcoming and open community and just, like, this cozy feeling in a way.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
And I had very similar vibes at the Vue conference that I attended so far. So I just like that I felt right at home. The thing that I like a little bit more about Vue than about Angular is the openness change. And that is you can look at it how however you want, but the Angular community has some very strong opinions, and they're very strongly hold. And I would wish that there's more of an open the team actually embraces that a lot these days, which is kinda surprising where it's like, oh, the the other communities are implementing signals.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Maybe we should start looking at that.
Alexander Lichter:
Angular Renaissance.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Yes. Don't get me started on that. I probably need to you need to get an explicit mark or something on that podcast then. But, I would wish the Angular community was a little bit more in that sense. And the React community feels, to me, a little bit like this typical high school scenario where you kinda have, like, the cool kids, and and it feels a little bit like that.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Mhmm. So a little bit not quite as open as I was hoping for. To be fair, I also just attended a handful of React conferences so far, so that might have just been bad picks on my end.
Alexander Lichter:
I mean, besides conferences, you also, like, talk to people online, I guess. So it's not only like, hey. Here are the three conference I visited. I mean, in general, you're you're quite active online based on being a dev rel. But also before, I guess, you were, so that also comes into play.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Yeah. It's just a great way to connect with various communities unrelated to, like, country boundaries, basically. So I like it. Yeah.
Michael Thiessen:
I said before on the podcast, but I I haven't gone to any conferences outside of Vue. So I I'd like to at least broaden my horizons a little bit, go to, like, a broader web development conference. And so
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
There's that's KCDC, if you're up for some good barbecue.
Michael Thiessen:
Okay.
Alexander Lichter:
Not too far away.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Not it's still surprisingly far away. But
Alexander Lichter:
But not not as far as Amsterdam, for example, or
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
True.
Alexander Lichter:
Or Tokyo, I guess. So Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Alexander Lichter:
Actually, I I would love to apply, but unfortunately, I'm already booked there, so possibly next year. Yeah.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
You should. The barbecues would be good.
Alexander Lichter:
I wanna come for the barbecue and the conference, of course. Right?
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Alexander Lichter:
Of course. Of course. No. But I'm I'm really planning on on doing that still. Oh.
Alexander Lichter:
Yeah. We'll be fine with Michael. Yeah. Maybe you you'll find the time. I think the the CFP is open until four or five days when we record.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Yeah. Something like that. Something like that.
Alexander Lichter:
Yeah. So when you listen to that
Michael Thiessen:
Just enough time.
Alexander Lichter:
Yeah. Just enough time to apply for our people listening. So try it next time, I guess, because next year, that's, today. But a lot of other conferences open as well, looking looking for some, call for papers or some meetups around, like, your your local area. That's always a great way to start.
Alexander Lichter:
I went to Vue.js Hamburg, actually last week, someone that come out couple weeks ago, giving a talk there and seeing, like, people I have never seen before talking about Vue, feeling like a nice community. It's it's always lovely. So definitely visit your local meetup or even better.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
And meetups have, like, a, like, this cozy vibe that I mentioned before. Meetups are, like, peak for that because you have, like, this you're just, like, a smaller group. It's it's great. I love going to meetups.
Alexander Lichter:
Wish there would be there would be more around here. Oh, well, after COVID.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Amsterdam is not bad, isn't it?
Alexander Lichter:
Amsterdam has a few. Yeah. I mean, it's not like, I know before COVID, it feel like every, like, German city had one. I remember when I was there, like, no problem. But nowadays, like, the Vue mup ineet Hamburg just started again very happily.
Alexander Lichter:
Thanks to thanks to Zoey from the community who, just said, okay. Hey. Let's do that. Let's let's bring it on. Then we have Berlin.
Alexander Lichter:
There is Leipzig every two months, I think, and that's, I think, almost it with the VUE meetups.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
You're originally from Leipzig. Right?
Alexander Lichter:
I am actually, but I I'm not affiliated with the meetup there, funnily. That's, was total coincidence, but I was there a couple of times, of course.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Great to see.
Alexander Lichter:
Yeah. Lovely. But, in terms of meetup, I really think, like, you're getting even with the the JavaScript meetup, I think we had CJ here quite some episodes ago from Syntax and Coding Garden who talked about how the Denver Vue meetup basically got merged into, like, Denver JS and how how that all happened. And it's also totally fine because a JS meetup, like, everybody can bring in, hey. There's this cool framework or what's new and this and that.
Alexander Lichter:
It's also it lives from the plurality, so to say. So if if that's something, yeah, go for it. We all I I feel like I say this so often, but I can't repeat it more and more, like, enough. We need more content out there for your favorite framework out there, which probably Vue. But if it's not, still we need more content out there.
Alexander Lichter:
If you like, if you buy a proficiency, but, your your actual first love is swells or solid, then, yeah, bring out some content because the people will be really thankful on that.
Michael Thiessen:
So you you're super awesome dev rel at JetBrains.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Exactly.
Michael Thiessen:
So I would like to know
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
That's my job title
Michael Thiessen:
oh, okay. That's I think we're better. Does that come with a a pay raise?
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
No
Michael Thiessen:
We can talk about that later.
Alexander Lichter:
Except the the the little envelopes at the conferences I heard. Yeah. That's the benefits.
Michael Thiessen:
So I've got a question about DevRel. So in the last couple years, it seems like DevRel as an industry or, I guess, as a profession or trade or skill or how whatever word you wanna use, it's kinda had some ups and downs. How is that feeling, like, right now from your perspective? Like, currently, like, you obviously have a job as a DevRel, but, like, how how is the
Alexander Lichter:
How long?
Michael Thiessen:
How is it? How long?
Alexander Lichter:
Sorry
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
So so the the thing is DevRel is definitely a little bit tricky because it's hard to prove your direct value. Like, it's not that you can say, oh, I shipped, like, 15 features and there's the revenue was increased due to those features by x percent. DevRel is not like that. If you're depending on the kind of DevRel you do, you might get into a position where you can be like, oh, I landed this big deal, but that's not the kind of defer that I personally enjoy doing. So it's very hard to prove the value.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
And, therefore, DevRel is very often the first position at in terms of layoffs or downsizing and those kind of things. It's like that's just a harsh reality. It's difficult to measure, and therefore, very often, people don't see its value. Even though the origin high afford that, which is very arbitrary, but whatever.
Alexander Lichter:
Is it a bit, like, comparable to let's say you have a project, and you have less time or money, and the first thing you cut is docs and tests? Is that, like, the same idea in a way?
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Yes.
Alexander Lichter:
Okay.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Yes. It's not directly generating value in that sense, if I'm super brutally honest with my career choices.
Alexander Lichter:
But yes. Wait. You said that it's not directly generating value. So you means where, like, it's not measurable as I said before? Because, I mean, in the end, like,
Alexander Lichter:
if you, like, I don't know, show off a company's product or explain certain things, release, I don't know, blog post or whatsoever, the value is it's not like, as you said, a deal, but it's still something that people might connect with the brand.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Oh, absolutely. And I 100% agree. But then the thing that happens quite often is, well, why why why do we pay marketing then? If if that's the line of thinking. Right?
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
If it's, like, brand awareness, that's a marketing thing.
Alexander Lichter:
Would you agree with that?
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
So the thing that I would agree with, and that's how we try to do it at JetBrains, is marketing tries to do brand awareness. Yes. Marketing takes care. And, I mean, JetBrains is very good for DevRel because we have a very clear who are our users and who are our customers or developers. That's not always a direct case for people that work in the Defra industry.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
But in our case, from my perspective, marketing takes takes more care of B2B, whereas me as a developer, I take my care of our developers. I don't care at the end. And that's the thing that I often say, like, ideally, I want you to be better in what you're doing. If that happens to happen without tools, great. If not, I still feel successful in my role.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
So therefore, I try to connect with developers, and and that's pretty much for how we distinguish that. I take care of developer to developer communication. Marketing takes care of big businesses and suits. That's at least the way that I like to look at it, and that works for us pretty well, particularly because we have a lot of big clients and stuff. And that's a little bit the other thing with DevRel that is kinda difficult is I've not talked to another DevRel who had exact same circumstances.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Like, defro is a very fluid position, very flexible in a way. And even within JetBrains, we have different DevRel people tackle the task very differently. Like, I I personally enjoy very much connecting with the community, so I'm very active on social media. Other people in at JetBrains are fantastic writers, so they decided, oh, I should write a book. I would never write a book.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
So there are just very various way how you can achieve the same goal to connect with developers in that sense. To your original question with the ups and downs, COVID was definitely very hard for that for all as an industry from my perspective, and it's still particularly here in The US where a lot of the VC money is coming from, like, the general job market is not great right now, I would say. And I feel that I was also, like, this big bubble around developer tooling that was entirely backed on VC money and promises.
Alexander Lichter:
Do you have specific examples there?
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
I will not name names. Absolutely not. But, so that's for definitely as an industry has been pretty hard. I know a lot of really talented folks that are way smarter than I, maybe not quite as good looking, but definitely smarter and probably also more hardworking that lost their job due to just, like, the circumstances. So there's definitely a risk for the industry.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Part of that is also that definitely not necessarily has the best name that sometimes there are just, like, fancy marketing people and lose touch with, like, actual development. That is definitely a risk if you consider at some point going back to a normal developer job. So that was one of the things that was super important for me is that I still code on a regular basis.
Michael Thiessen:
I can see it also being, like, a lot of fun in that. So one of the things that I like about what I'm doing now is that I get to do a whole bunch of different things. And it's not just like, okay. Next ticket, work on this feature, work on this feature, work on this feature just writing code. But I can actually, you know, do some videos, do some podcasts, do some conferences, you know, do some writing, and I get to, like, mix it up.
Michael Thiessen:
And so there there's that, but then this race, like, for me, because I'm basically, like, doing DevRel but for myself. Right? And so there is, like, this thought of, like, okay. But I still have to be writing code because at some point, there might come a time where I don't wanna do this anymore, and I wanna get a job somewhere else. Right?
Michael Thiessen:
And so, like, I don't wanna be, like, have have completely lost touch with everything and then not be able to jump back in. And so
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
I also very much feel like in the content you generate, it's very noticeable if a person is in constant touch with code or not. Like, the the general tone is very different. The topics are very different and, like, how relatable and pragmatic and then it is. Like, how much can I actually use this or is this more like a theory conceptual thing?
Alexander Lichter:
I mean, also, like, from my perspective, being not, like, in an official DevRel position anywhere, but, like, the DevRel for for Nuxt and maybe to some degree also Vue. But, like, yeah, just doing it because being part of the core team and then starting to, okay, explaining things, triaging issues, and just also getting in touch with the people, be that in person at meetups, conferences, but also in the community itself and making sure, okay, what problems do they have? What questions are there? So I might not be the best one to answer them, and that's totally fine. I think my job is more like, hey.
Alexander Lichter:
Which questions are there? Which repeating ones are there? How can we make sure they can be answered the best way? And then the answer being made available and accessible as easy as possible.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
That is actually one of the things that I'm quite happy to tackle this year because I connect with a lot of people on Twitter or something when when they're saying, like, oh, I have performance issues here, and the best thing I can do is developer or, like, our developer. Someone is having an issue, can you help them? Because I have no idea how to troubleshoot performance issues. So one of the things that I started this year, I started to get frustrated with that. Be like, okay.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
I can connect with the people very good, but I cannot concrete help them. The The thing that we started now, and that is a very luxurious situation at JetBrains, is that 20% of my time, I work on the WebStone code base. So every Friday, I basically code in the project. I'll get boxes signed. Hopefully, not too many.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
And this way, I just get direct exposure. I learn a little bit of Kotlin, which is nice.
Alexander Lichter:
Just wanna say, it's no JavaScript there. It's all Kotlin. Yep.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
It's all Kotlin. Well, you you do need to, like, connect with LSPs and stuff that execute JavaScript, but different conversation.
Alexander Lichter:
Yeah. But we get we're getting towards the way of working towards JavaScript there. Yeah. Okay.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
But that was the thing that I was quite excited about because it helps me connect with the community better, sharpen my skills directly, and also influence the product. Because that's the other thing that I like to do at Stafrel is, like, okay. How can we make sure that the product that we're offering fits the need of our users? Because right now, I can say, like, oh, this is a super important ticket. We should really do that.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
But if the PM doesn't feel like it, slightly exaggerating, then I'm, like, kinda like staring a blank there. Whereas when I can just code it and file the merge request, then people are more inclined to just merge it.
Alexander Lichter:
Because Here's here's the solution. You can just take it or wait for someone else to click the button. Absolutely.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
This is actually, by the way, how the Nuxt project template happened to happen because someone at a conference mentioned that we don't have that. I wasn't aware of that. So I was, like, kinda out of spite. I was like, oh, we should really have that.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
So Yeah. Now we have it.
Alexander Lichter:
But when did it get released? I I think I was talking
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Should be released already?
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Yeah. I I hope. Okay.
Alexander Lichter:
I I didn't I
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
I was I have to miss that. Second week of maternity leave, so I'm still catching up a little bit, but I think it should be released. Okay. Because I assume it is released.
Alexander Lichter:
Someone asked, like, you said, like, was there, like, something that's with with, like, an Nuxt template? But maybe I don't know. There was, like, not the the latest version or whatsoever.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
We had some issues, I remember, because there's an actually, I forgot to create a ticket for that. If you're in the nuxi say create or, like, the package manager if you pass that, you don't maintain that information in the package JSON. So WebStorm is like, what's going on here?
Alexander Lichter:
Yeah.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
It just tries to use npm.
Alexander Lichter:
So, like, filling out the package manager field in the package JSON when running that. Yeah. It's a great idea to write an issue. Someone might, might tackle that. That's good.
Alexander Lichter:
But
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
it's not merged yet, apparently.
Alexander Lichter:
It's not merged. Yeah. That that that fits with what I heard at least, but we're getting there. Yes. Maybe.
Alexander Lichter:
When this episode is out already, there's a link down below where you can see how it works and here are the release notes. Or maybe not. But, of course, like, things take time, but as you mentioned, I think if you're having a more, let's say, holistic approach and it's just saying, okay, I'm the one connecting people, understanding problems. If I can solve the problem or at least give a few more pointers, I also try it in the same way. It's like, okay, if there's a question that I can solve, happy to, like, I don't know, update the docs, just ask ask people straight away, write a a blog post, which is more rare video nowadays, if it's usually built more context to practices whatsoever.
Alexander Lichter:
But very often, it also could happen as, like, I don't know. But if more people, of course, ask or there's some specific things that I'm also curious about, like, I don't know how do you how do you bundle a whole Nuxt application in a single file? Like, how do you set up your your bundle settings for that? This is not something that most people do. Yeah.
Alexander Lichter:
And because usually you don't want to, but in some cases, like, working with embedded systems, whatsoever, like, I need this one file.
Michael Thiessen:
So I have one more question for you in the, the DevRel vein of things. So you you mentioned one of the things you should do is focusing on engaging, connecting with other developers. If you had to give a piece of advice to someone else doing that same sort of thing, what would be I mean, maybe your best piece of advice or just a piece of advice because it's kind of hard to figure out what what the best one might might be.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
The best one is definitely find out where your community is by by far. It's extremely difficult to build a community, particularly around a paid product. It's just very difficult. And this is brutally honest, the whole reason I'm still checking Twitter every day because that's where a lot of our users still are. I don't wanna make political endorsements on your podcast platform here.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
But I personally, for my own beliefs, would not use Twitter, but it is the place where our community is. The same way Discord is very actively used. I literally talked with Alex about that earlier. I'm way too stupid for Discord. Not organized enough to get proper overview of what's going on, but that's where a lot of our users are, so it makes sense for me to figure it out someday.
Alexander Lichter:
On that note, by the way, Daniel Roe, who was also here a couple of times, actually built just himself a little bot, so called roebot. I even have a thing for that here.
Michael Thiessen:
I think
Alexander Lichter:
no. It's not this one. Wait. We we get it. We get it.
Alexander Lichter:
There we have it. There we have it. A little sound soundboard I never used until now. But, yeah, he built a little robot for Discord. Just like, hey.
Alexander Lichter:
Let's gather the, like, most interesting topics from this this this service. You can do it, like, as a self bot. So to say they're not fully recommended because, well, every action they take are just well, it's your account. So that's that. But that's could be something especially if you like a lot of servers, I also have that with, like, I know, the Nuxt, the Vue, the Veeds, the Tailwind, the the this, that, and tons of servers.
Alexander Lichter:
All amazing communities, but you you can't read them all. But that could be interesting in terms of catching up there. But, yeah, I mean, I I also am a big fan of of Blue Sky. I feel like right now Justin Schroeder mentioned that earlier today on Twitter is, like, dev Twitter is just very different. Generally, like, deaf social media changed a lot with, like, people being fragmented and not having a central place and not like, nowhere that, like, interaction level that you had before.
Alexander Lichter:
Maybe there will be better times. Fingers crossed for that. Let's see.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Quite honestly, it might also be depending on the actually, a friend of mine who is in death row and turned out a couple weeks after we met at a conference, it turned out that he lives, like, right across the street. Oh, fuck. So he is in, like, the fintech sector. Like, those people are not on Twitter. Those are, like, massive conferences where they meet, like, once or twice a year.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
So though this is the place where you're coming. Yeah. It's not like Twitter or Reddit. And this depends on the product that you represent. It depends on the vibe of your community.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
And for WebStorm, which is mostly web dev, it happened to be very fragmented. Yeah. True. And and that's the thing. If we want to connect with, like, the open source projects and stuff that's more like blue sky right now for me, if it's, like, with our actual users, we see a lot more engagement on Twitter and those.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Yeah. So depends a little bit.
Alexander Lichter:
Now circling back to, as you said, like, finding the where your community lives, I think this is so key and that even depends, like, things outside of tech. If you're, like, into, let's say, bird watching or, I know, kite surfing or whatever, There are old school forums about it where people are still around posting a lot of things. Just, like, find out where it is because that's an interesting space. Of course, it can also be a Reddit, which can be very nice even though we heard differently in the episode of Aaron Francis, earlier. It can also be some results in a nice place, but I've seen a lot of very lovely subreddits with mostly happy people.
Alexander Lichter:
I'm not So
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
I have actually a funny Reddit story that I'm still mildly terrified by. When we and I mean, people it's all publicly available, so it's not The links are the show notes. When we first published our AI assistant web store on JetBrains IDs, we had some design decisions that our users were not quite happy about. We changed them, and part of that was just miscommunication as it often is, but some of them were also just not well designed. Well, it turned out that we had, like, YouTrick, our buck ticket manager.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
People were, like, going ape shit of, like, we're stealing data and, like, I don't wanna slightly tinfoil hat territory of, like, all the evil things we're doing, whereas on Reddit people were, like, well, it sounds like a bug. They should just fix it and end of the story. And then I was, like, okay, if Reddit is less toxic than your own butt shrinking, that's a problem. Yeah.
Alexander Lichter:
True.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
So
Alexander Lichter:
Agreed. But that that's that's a very nice, lovely Reddit story. I expected a different outcome here.
Michael Thiessen:
Yeah. Me too.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Yeah. No. That wasn't
Michael Thiessen:
Don't post it at Hackernews
Alexander Lichter:
Oh, Hackernews Oh oh, yeah. Let's not get into that territory here. By the way, if anyone out there has a funny Reddit or hacking story, share them in the comments or on social media with us. We'll definitely have a look.
Alexander Lichter:
Like, Aaron, but it was not that funny last episode, but it was still something we hope will come back to the Vue Reddit in the future when a new version of of Fusion is out.
Alexander Lichter:
But talk going back to Jet JetBrains, we we've mentioned JetBrains a couple times now. And maybe for the people who may be new to development and have not heard of JetBrains itself before, maybe you could just briefly talk about what what JetBrains is and this thing like WebStorm and why that will maybe especially for the dev community and your company's aspect is, a bit different than maybe from others.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
So JetBrains actually celebrated out twenty five years last week or two weeks ago. Correct. Thank you. So we are completely privately owned developer tooling company. Our most known product, our IDEs, WebStorm, IntelliJ, PHPStorm.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Rider has a pretty big community. We now have one for Rust. And so we basically have different IDEs for different languages. That is the way that people look at it. The most obvious that all of those are in a mono repository and you have basically, like, all the web support and the other products available.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
So we do developer tooling. We also have other than our IDEs, which are our, like, most known products. We have bug tracking tool. We have a static code analysis tool. We have AI tools.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
We have DevOps CICD tool. So the thing is and I'm not quite sure about the history, but for some reason, we have an aversion to buying software. So we develop them ourself, and then we sell them.
Alexander Lichter:
Interesting.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
And this worked really, really well for IntelliJ.
Alexander Lichter:
Yeah.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
This works really, really well for Kotlin, which is the programming language that we do. This could work better for our less known product, but different. Sorry. So so that's what we do. We are, like, I think we're, like, 2,000 something people working on
Alexander Lichter:
It's very interesting that, like, in a way that also resembles, I think, the average developer. That's just like, oh, I I would not pay x euros a month for, like, as a one time payment for the software. I'd rather take hours and weeks to build myself, but then you go to them and say, okay, we can sell it because it's a good product. So that's Yeah. Step people are missing out sometimes.
Alexander Lichter:
It's it's a little bit I I like
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
to kinda compare our products to MacBooks. Right? Like, you're getting a MacBook because everything just works. You don't wanna deal with, like, WSL or whatever the Linux thing on Windows is. And the Windows devices are still slow.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Tools don't work well. So and and that's kind of the idea of, like, our tools. Ideally, it should just work and you shouldn't bother about it so that you can drive more.
Alexander Lichter:
Interesting. Michael, did did you ever try out WebStorm or PHPStorm or IntelliJ in the past? Yeah.
Michael Thiessen:
It's it's interesting because I was just thinking, like, I've heard about JetBrains. I've, like, seen it around, obviously, like, so like, my entire career, but there for whatever reason, there was never that, like, push to try it out. Maybe it's just, like, I I find that I'm very reluctant to try tools and things like that and, like Yeah. You know, even, like, the Nuxt dev tools, it was, like, you know, a couple weeks ago, then I was like, k. I should probably dig into what this like, I've looked at it, but I never, like, learned it enough to actually use it regularly.
Michael Thiessen:
I'm still, like, you know, console logging things out into the the dev tools. And so I was like, okay. Re recording, mastering next, I should probably include, you know, dev tools in there. Let me figure this out for this course. And so I'm, like, finally doing it.
Michael Thiessen:
You know?
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Changing tools is definitely a huge cost. Yeah. I and master memory is a real thing.
Alexander Lichter:
Yeah. Just getting used to stuff again. Like, this is crazy even though it will possibly boost productivity. Same with, like, using debugger instead of console log.
Michael Thiessen:
Yeah. In a
Alexander Lichter:
lot of times, it's super helpful. But if you do, I was like, okay. What now? Here, there. It's just like that.
Alexander Lichter:
Some is just like this. The hard part of getting started is actually getting started with getting started. So Yeah. Like, it's it's tough. But yeah, it's it's really interesting in that sense that, like, I I think with a lot of developers, it's the same of, like, okay.
Alexander Lichter:
Here's a new tool. Cool. But we have something that works. So instead of changing that and, like, taking hours to relearn shortcuts or remapping stuff or configuring things, why not stick with what we have, which I guess works at least 80% as good or better who knows because it didn't try out a new tool.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
And that was partially also on us because our software is coming from a more traditional background with, like, twenty years ago. It was, like, very common to pay for professionals. Tools. Like, no one and still to this day, for if you're, like, in testing or database tools, like, no one best an eye at throwing thousand dollar at a license. So we always charge for our products because at the end, we need to pay salaries like mine, which I'm sure you're glad about.
Alexander Lichter:
It doesn't only work with envelopes at conferences, I heard. Yeah. I hope it'll be running again. I'm sorry.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
So we always charge for our product. And last year, we made the decision to offer WebStorm free for noncommercial usage. And this way, if you decide, hey. I want to look into what the deal is, if it might be able to boost my productivity without, like before that, we had, like, thirty day free trial or something like that. You don't have, like, this time pressure.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Okay. I need to learn this now and then make the decision do I need to pay or do I want to pay for it now? So this was a, I think, good thing, particularly in the web ecosystem where I'm glad we made that change.
Michael Thiessen:
For people who are more familiar with VS Code or in Cursor
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
What what?
Michael Thiessen:
Whatever fork
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
what? Never.
Michael Thiessen:
It's just that, you know, some people use it, and I I like to use this app.
Alexander Lichter:
Here we go.
Michael Thiessen:
I write it. I actually use pen and paper, and then I take photos. And, anyway,
Alexander Lichter:
An AI will then transform. Yeah.
Michael Thiessen:
It actually works surprisingly well.
Alexander Lichter:
That explains a lot of your code, Michael, that I've never seen, but it must be horror like, horrific terrific, I mean, still.
Michael Thiessen:
You have to really think through what you're doing. It's it's a benefit.
Michael Thiessen:
Like, what are some of the reasons that I might wanna check it out and and see?
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
If we talk on a high level basis, like, the most obvious thing is VS Code has a massive ecosystem of plugins, which is great if you exactly know the plugins that you want and need, which is less great if you don't know what plugins you might want or could be helped. Mhmm. There's a reason that there are, like, 500 the best 10 Versus code plugin block post out there. So WebStorm has a little bit of a different philosophy here where it's more like, on a technical level, all our products are basically a mix of plugins too.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
So technically, it's the same, but we develop a lot of those plugins and pre install them. So if you install WebStorm, you can develop Vue applications right away. You don't need to install anything additional. There might be something like rainbow brackets or something that you want just for, like, or themes that you like that you can install, but to develop Vue application, we want to have you everything out out of the box. That's, like, a big thing for us.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
We come with git tools. We come with day to day based tools. We come with testing tools, debugging. Everything just works, ideally. I'm I'm saying intention ideally because obviously there are sometimes bugs and it's still soft.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Right. That's just the way it is. But the idea is we want to get you started right away, and we don't want you to set up everything. If we talk more on a technical level, we have a different way how we look at code. VS code usually primarily just uses language servers, which are maintained by library authors or other teams.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Usually, they're also some are maintained by VS code. It's a little bit more complex. But language server are basically protocol that defines how the current file that is open, how you would want to interact, basically. So on a very high level, it it tells you how you want to resolve symbols, for instance. Right?
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
If you say go to definition on a TypeScript symbol, like, go to that file where that's coming from. And those kind of features offered by a language server. We do that a little bit different. It's a little bit more complex than that because what we do is we write our own lexicon parser usually, so we know a lot about your your code base. And we also integrate directly with tools like Beat and stuff to know where those things are coming from and can therefore offer features on top.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Now the thing where it now gets tricky is particular Vue is pretty complex and a very fast moving ecosystem. So in the case of Vue, we decided to go with we have an official name now that I just forgot. Again, back from maternity leave. But We basically have something like a hybrid mode where we use the language server for some things, but still use our own lexicon parser under the hood to be able for instance, one thing that we now added, which I can now shamelessly promote here, is if you go and rename Nuxt component, it will rename all the instances in the templates. A language server itself cannot do that because there's no hook that you get triggered.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Hey. A file has changed that you might be interested in.
Alexander Lichter:
Also auto imported ones. So, like, you don't even have to okay. That's very sweet. Yeah. Because, like, I remember with auto imports, a lot of people, like, what's with refactoring?
Alexander Lichter:
And then people, like, maybe some kind of, yeah, extension for the IDE could solve that and some tooling. So that's
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Theoretically, yes.
Alexander Lichter:
If that also works with, like, composables and utils, then, well
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
I don't know. I need to check that.
Alexander Lichter:
Yeah. I mean, if it works for components, then probably, like, implementing the for the same way shouldn't be, hopefully, sort of difficult. I would love to see that.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
And language server itself are usually pretty bad at doing things across languages. I mean, if you look at Vue, you have this always this composition of HTML, CSS, and TypeScript. Hopefully, TypeScript. Let's say TypeScript. Possibly.
Alexander Lichter:
Possibly TypeScript.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
And, like, things to change in your TypeScript file might affect your HTML and even vice versa. We have, like, you can rename classes in CSS. Like, those things just work in WebStorm because we use our, language support and provide that on top of what the language server already provides. So you get those added benefits.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
And then there's this IDE aspect of, like, okay. If you have v test set up, it will automatically just work, and you can run debugging and all those things. You don't need to, like, figure out the debugging config or launch JSON thing that I've heard someday about. So so that is the big philosophy we want you to get started. We don't want you to mess with tooling, ideally.
Michael Thiessen:
Yeah. Your comparison that you mentioned before of, like, a MacBook versus, you know, a Linux machine or something like that makes a lot of sense. Or, like
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
I don't know why our whole marketing team doesn't use that as
Michael Thiessen:
iPhone versus Android. Like, that makes sense to me of, like Yeah. You get the iPhone because you want it to all work, and it's highly sandboxed and that you can't do a lot of things and, you know but that's kind of the point is that it's kinda figured out for you. Whereas yeah. Let you get Linux because you wanna tinker with things and and screw around with it.
Michael Thiessen:
And
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
I think it was a while ago where Anthony was treating Anthony Fu, why he was using Versus Code and the customization aspect of that is a big thing. And, I mean, he writes, like, 15 Versus Code plugins.
Alexander Lichter:
Yeah. In JavaScript or TypeScript, not in Kotlin.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
So so I'm I have I'm absolutely convinced that Versus Code is the best choice for him. But I'm also very much convinced that WebStorm, if you're developing a B2B application for a big corporate, is probably the better tool. So it it depends on, like, what you're doing from my perspective and also how much fiddling do you like.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
I mean, in my former life, we're not on record. Right?
Alexander Lichter:
No never
Alexander Lichter:
It is just the three
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
I I've used VS Code too. I mean, I've probably talk recordings out there for me where I use VS Code. But every so often, I then had that had it that some plug in doesn't work anymore or it's not compatible with something else, and then you're, like, you can yell at the cloud or add a GitHub ticket that something is not working. Whereas when you pay for software, you can yell at a company, which feels a little bit better. And yell at the company in that sense with me me, which is not so nice.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
So maybe maybe we cut that part out.
Alexander Lichter:
Just just a nice, like,
Michael Thiessen:
nice message.
Alexander Lichter:
Yeah. Yeah. Niklas, this feature doesn't work, and I have performance issues. Can you help me debug it? Here we go.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
If you have an envelope, like, I can help you all day long. Yes.
Alexander Lichter:
Or good brew of coffee, of course.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Yes. Yes.
Alexander Lichter:
But it's it's very interesting. So I I remember in in my early days when I started university, I was a lot into PHP, and we covered it also a couple of episodes ago there. And people are like, okay. What kind of IDE you use? And people are like, PHPStorm.
Alexander Lichter:
And I remember I was sitting in, like, UniClausify. Okay. So how to get, as a student, PHPStorm for free? And I was thinking of various ways until one of my friends was saying, like, what are you doing there? Why why like, you know, you can just get a free student license because of, like, some corporations.
Alexander Lichter:
They're like, oh, that's sweet. So yeah. Well, since then, I I started using PhpStorm and and WebStorm. And I remember when when I then went to conference, everyone's like, oh, VS code is so fast. And to be fair, it took a while to to boot up certain things because, of course, everything comes with all things included.
Alexander Lichter:
Yep. That's in a way the price to pay, especially, of course, with bigger projects, but it's especially PHP projects was sometimes, I don't know, 2018, say, or 17, something like that. So also a while ago. And then I was also like, okay. I used it I used PyCharm for a while as well.
Alexander Lichter:
So the Python Editor works very lovely. I really enjoyed how much, customization in terms of formatting, for example, was possible to say, okay. This bracket should be definitely there, but only if the function is still long. There were a lot of options.
Alexander Lichter:
But somehow, it was also really difficult to align, at least back then. Right? This probably has changed a gazillion times with the default like, not the default. I think the format is called black or something. Not entirely sure or, like, it's like it doesn't matter too much.
Alexander Lichter:
It's like, okay. Let's format it this way. Save. And it's a bit of what what VS code does was like, prettier and ESLint fighting, it was a bit similar there. Yeah.
Alexander Lichter:
So actually, I raised two tickets. I was like, hey. I was like, you know, I wanna I wanna make this work. Why why not? And I think one of them got fixed, like, pretty quickly.
Alexander Lichter:
And every now and then, I can still, like, an info about one of them because it's also, like, not an important and a critical bug. And if people wanna use a formatter they can just disable formatting in general. But some years ago, me, it was like, that should work together.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
So yeah. No. I I fully agree. And that's I mean, if you come, like, from the I mean, original, our main product, IntelliJ, was for Java development and, like, they were till not even sure if there's a format for Java out there right now that is like that, like, the community agrees on. So, like, coming from that mindset and shipping a product with a formatter totally makes sense.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
And even every now and then when I'm, like, just scribbling something myself where I'm like, okay. This is just for me. I don't even need to bother about setting up e s l m p two because I don't make mistakes. Then, like, having the formatter built in is nice. But I've honestly, like, in most application I worked in, the format is the first thing that I disable and just say use.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Because at the end of the day,
Alexander Lichter:
Or ESLint if there's some some some people disagree here, though. So,
Alexander Lichter:
So it's not a, not a format I heard multiple times from Josh Goldberg, for example.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Yep. I, I have to agree with Josh on that.
Alexander Lichter:
I, I understand that. I still like the stylistic rules and I'm happy that Anthony kept him an extra package.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Yes. I mean, it's nice for the people that use it, but I agree with that.
Alexander Lichter:
Yeah. Fair. Fair. I mean, there are also tons of other formatters out there. But, in a way, it's also understandable that, first of all, tooling is so much more than just formatting, and formatting is so much bike shedding.
Alexander Lichter:
So just, like, if there is a community option
Michael Thiessen:
Mhmm.
Alexander Lichter:
Using it. Like, it can be prettier. It can be whatever, like, format that you use and rules apply, but why not? So I I get that even though sometimes the results are not looking nice, but that's, part of following a standard formatter, so to say. Yeah.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
But one of the things that I actually really like about our integrate you you mentioned it is slower because the the thing we're collecting at the beginning about your code base just takes time. Think about it like we basically built the AST for your entire project and also AST across language, kind of. So if you have, like, the view file, we know all the HTML references and TypeScript imports that you use.
Alexander Lichter:
So Oh, super handy. Yeah.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
And that and that's the thing. Like, it takes time at the beginning, but you usually ideally, there are projects where you switch between projects 500 times a day. But, ideally, you work on one big project. You started once at the beginning of the day or my MacBook is running for months at a time usually. So then that happens at the beginning.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
And, yes, that takes time, but then, like, go to definition for instance. It's much faster worse than Versus Code At the time when you say navigate to symbol or go to definition, I don't quite know how they call it. At that time, they will traverse the AST three to figure out where is this coming from. So it's a little bit of like a a chicken act kind of like, okay, how do I look at that? Use code time.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Kinda like that.
Alexander Lichter:
So to say. Mhmm.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Yeah. But this allows us, for instance, to say so one feature we have also now recently is show usages. So if you're in, have a Vue component and the HTML part, you say, hey. Show me all the references. And even if you're like, next and use, like, auto import, that just works.
Alexander Lichter:
That's really cool.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
So
Michael Thiessen:
That's really nice. So we are getting close to the end of the the time we have here. Are there things you wanted to is there something you wanted to mention before we do our wrap up and everything so we can So
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
there there are actually two things that, I think are worth mentioning. Let's make let's make a two and a half. Okay.
Alexander Lichter:
I'm curious about the half. Yeah.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
So the first thing I would like to mention here, even though we use Volar and the Vue language server, and you've probably seen that, we still had typing issues sometimes where, like, types are not properly resolved for some parts because we still use our own type engine that is data backed with TypeScript what zero point eight and iterated over that.
Alexander Lichter:
Oh.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
And we never achieved, like, particular with the pace that the TypeScript team moves and the crazy things they do sometimes. We never achieved, like, 100% compatibility. We had, like for a lot of things, we were faster, but we had, like, probably, like, five to 10% where we just returned utter nonsense for the type resolution. So we are changing our TypeScript engine to use the TypeScript language server. And that is going to be pretty interesting from a implementation perspective because that's a project that's going on for one and a half years at this point.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Because Even though you might just think, oh, TypeScript, TypeScript files should be easy enough. TypeScript literally use everything in WebStorm is powered by TypeScript, and that even goes to HTML files.
Alexander Lichter:
Oh, wow.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
So Okay. All every quick documentation uses TypeScript. Literally every feature in TypeScript you in WebStorm uses TypeScript in one way or another. So therefore, it's just like getting the compatibility right, very tricky. The thing you can do to that for that to help us, and that is now the shameless plug, is go in the settings and view and there it says TypeScript language server or TypeScript server, something like that.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Hopefully, it says also something experimental because it's still in development. But turning that on can help us find still, like, gaps that we might have. That would be very appreciated because the project should end, hopefully, at some point. Oh.
Alexander Lichter:
It should be shipped and not only in the experimental. Yeah. On that note, do you have, like, a little blog post or tutorial somewhere where we
Alexander Lichter:
We can link to people
Alexander Lichter:
just in case?
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Yes. I can send you one that we wrote, like, one and a half years ago when we first Mhmm. Published at Slack. Yes. I'll I'll provide that.
Alexander Lichter:
On the show notes, help the JetBrains team out there and use TypeScript, from the TypeScript server default.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Yes. That would be pretty nice, if we can make more progress there. The other thing that I want to shamelessly look like here, because we see that quite often that people use Cursor and WebStorm at the same time, Cursor for fantastic AI features, and WebStorm for fantastic refactoring features. One thing I would highly encourage you to do is check out Junie. Great name.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
It is basically our answer to an agentic take AI approach. So, like, editing multiple files at the same time and being more conversational than, like, a chat might be. It uses cloud under the hood, so the results that I've seen so far are very, very promising. And that is another thing that I would recommend you checking out, particularly if you're in that situation of, like, I like WebStorm, but, of course, it just makes me more productive. This might be a good answer for that.
Alexander Lichter:
So, basically, you're also, like, catching up in the AI race, so to say.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Catching up is such a harsh word.
Alexander Lichter:
I'm sorry. This just sound like, hey. We use Cursor, but we have that as well now. And I'm not even saying, like, are catching up to the same level, but maybe also catching up and passing over.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
So so just on the catching up team, like, our machine learning team has been they have showed some pretty cool things about, like, semantic search. I mean, you you know that pro in VSVersus Code, it's command p, I think, to go to a symbol. Hopefully, in a future version of WebStorm, you'll be able to say, hey, take me to the logout form and, like, more, like, conversational.
Alexander Lichter:
So I I'm just saying that's Yeah. Okay. There's some there's
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
some sweet Yeah.
Alexander Lichter:
Good stuff coming there, especially if you, like, have the whole AI capabilities that you're Yes. Power plus the code base and the ASTs that are generated. So that's the other thing.
Michael Thiessen:
And they're really good for huge code bases where you're Just
Alexander Lichter:
wanna say yes.
Michael Thiessen:
I know that I can see I, like, I can get to the feature in the UI, but, like, where is this code? And you could just describe it, and it'll be like, oh, there. That file.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
And, like, with having everything built into our products, we can also run, like, sanity checks on the results of the IDE. That's another nice thing that language server is not really possible. We can say, like, hey. Does the code compile?
Alexander Lichter:
Yes or no? Yeah. Yeah. Fair. Fair.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Oh, that is okay. So those were the two points. And the half point is some people get slightly frustrated by filing tickets in YouTrack, which I get is not the best experience, but it's very beneficial for us. So if you have issues and even if you I would highly encourage you rather to create a ticket than looking for if there's already an existing ticket or something. It's better to have something twice than having it not at all.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
So that would be the half thing if you have issues right now, would like to see things improved, or have any ideas for us, we really appreciate that kind of input because that's a little bit of the problem with WebStorm in particular. Our developers are Kotlin developers, so they develop Kotlin. Some of them have a background in JavaScript, but it's not that they are developing Vue application on a day database. So the feedback that you have for us is very, very valuable. So if you have any ideas or complaints, either shoot them my way or YouTrack.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Either way.
Alexander Lichter:
And also links to that, of course, in the description. Both or the show notes, so to to your Jan Niklas DM straight away or to to the huge rack. Yep. Nice.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
That works.
Alexander Lichter:
Great. Cool. Yeah. Let's let's wrap it up here, Nicholas. Maybe there are there are, like, two last questions.
Alexander Lichter:
And the first one is, is there anything besides, JetBrains Junie and, the experimental TypeScript server feature that you wanna plug?
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
I I do. You're you're such a great host. I do. So well, I I feel a little bit, mean to do that now, but I'm Alex, you mentioned before, I'm a huge coffee nerd. And if you think like, oh, you probably get Starbucks every day.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
No. No. No. No. No.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
No. No. I'm a huge coffee nerd. So if you're at a conference and don't feel like talking about tech stuff, I can talk about coffee way too long. But one thing that I'm working on right now is publishing a newsletter, and hopefully by the time that this episode goes out, the newsletter is live.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
So it's Weekly Devs Brew. Think about it kinda like I wanna, like, create a curated list of, like, good content that I think is very valuable to know. I don't wanna, like, tie to a niche because a lot of newsletters are like, here's what's new in React, here's what's new in Angular or something. I want it to be, like, across the ecosystem. And the other thing is often blog posts are very click baity, where it's like, here are the 10 best things you should know about.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
I want to go for, like, a very chill vibe. Like, kinda like you're drinking the first cup of coffee in the morning or you're working on the coffee shop. Right? Like, I want you to relax, read a little bit, educate, and and that's a vibe that I'm going for. So if you wanna do me a personal favor and subscribe to that, I would very much appreciate.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
I will put the link in the show notes.
Alexander Lichter:
Yeah. We will have it there for sure. Even if it's not out, then there will be, like, sign up wait list. Then we'll pay it for server. So people do it there down there.
Alexander Lichter:
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that here. Officially, it's, basically, the other people might know it already if it's out already, but you said it's your first, so to say.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Yes. That's very true.
Alexander Lichter:
On the lovely DejaVue podcast. And, yeah, Niklas, last but not least, I know, time is running. So where can people follow you? Not only to ask all the questions about WebStorm, but, also for just chatting with coffee.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
Blue Sky. So it's wordman.dev, which is a joke on my name, which is, like, German for word and man. So I just use the English word and man, because explaining that that it's it sounds similar, but it's not quite an English name, got kinda tedious. So it's Wortman.deaf.
Alexander Lichter:
Perfect. Henrikas, thank you so much for coming on there. We have so much more to cover. We didn't talk much about Volar. Just a little bit about LSPs or Angular and Vue altogether.
Alexander Lichter:
I think there is just just one way to solve it. We have to get you back on here in the future.
Jan-Niklas Wortmann:
That sounds great. Anytime. Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it.
Alexander Lichter:
Yeah. And for everybody else, if this is not the latest episode, then, you know, just continue listening. Stay tuned. And if this is the latest episode, then check out the older ones as well. We had we already talked about some episodes in here.
Alexander Lichter:
We only talked about DevRel as well earlier, almost a year ago, in episode seven with Marc Backes. And also well, yeah. Check out all the rest. So hope to see you in the next episode or previous one. Stay tuned, and until then, bye, folks.
