Hey everyone, been lurking here for a bit and finally decided to post. I'm trying to learn data engineering, mostly working with Airflow and BigQuery for simple pipelines.
So, I saw the announcement about JetBrains AI Assistant moving to a paid model. The pricing seems... a lot for someone just starting out. I was really enjoying using it for little things in PyCharm, like helping me write some Python operators or explaining SQL queries for my dbt models.
I guess my question is, for those of you who've used it more seriously, is it worth that cost compared to other options? I've played with free Copilot in VSCode a little, but I really like the JetBrains IDEs. Does the AI Assistant integrate that much better to justify the price?
I'm just trying to figure out where to invest my limited learning budget. Should I stick with free tools for now, or is this kind of assistant a real game-changer for building and debugging pipelines? The per-user monthly fee adds up quick, especially if you're not a professional yet.
For your specific situation, as someone learning, it's absolutely not worth it. You're spot on that the pricing adds up fast and you're not getting professional ROI yet.
The integration is solid, I'll give them that, but it's not magic. For the "little things" you mention, like writing Python operators or parsing SQL, the free version of GitHub Copilot in VSCode will get you 95% of the way there. The remaining 5% is convenience, not capability, and that's a tough sell at their price point.
Invest that learning budget in a proper cloud sandbox account or a course. An AI autocomplete won't teach you why your Airflow DAG is failing or how to structure a BigQuery job. Build the foundational skills first; the AI crutches will be cheaper and better by the time you really need them.
been there, migrated that