Advocacy and spin doctoring

Geertjan Wielenga: Would you see yourself as a spin doctor in any way?

Trisha Gee: Interestingly, we've had a similar conversation about this inside JetBrains recently with all the advocates.

We've got about 12 advocates for the different products and the different languages, and we actually don't work that closely together because we're all in our own independent communities, with our own independent languages.

A core element that pulls us together is that we really want to be honest about things. That's not to say that we're not going to try and present things in a positive way, but there's no way I'm going to say my product supports Java 12 when it doesn't support Java 12.

"I need to be honest about the weaker points of the product."

—Trisha Gee

I need to be honest about the weaker points of the product. We won't be able to improve functionality...