About charisma, bugs and big-eyed birds. The story of a bug tracker

Last year, we began a series of behind-the-scenes posts, opening the curtain over the internal life of JetBrains. This time we will tell you about the history of YouTrack product creation - no less interesting than the previous one about AppCode .

JetBrains bug tracker added to the company's portfolio in 2009. Initially, his proudly styled Charisma. Unfortunately, it was not possible to register this name - the trademark was busy, as it often happens. In connection with this, a whole series of brain storms took place in order to find the most appropriate name reflecting the essence of the new product.

But Charisma has relieved developers of the burden of choosing code names, and since then, the product team has taken character qualities and human emotions as the basis for choosing code names. More about codebooks we told here . And although the official name has long been found, some of our developers continue to affectionately call the bug tracker "Charisma."

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What's in a name?

The process of discussing and choosing the name was very funny and memorable, and the JetBrains team sometimes with a smile and excitement recalls those times.

The first round of discussions was unsuccessful in terms of finding and approving any name. The flow of variants of names bordered on fantasy, incredible options were offered: Periscope, Switchman, CtrlWhatever, Bugyard, Stalker.

The team and the sympathizers went over a good part of the world of insects and birds, trying to beat the ideas of “caught bugs” and “something that bugs these bugs” among all the terrestrial biological diversity. Encyclopedias and reference books were not left without attention. Among the options were: hummingbird, woodpecker, yaffil, InsectiJ, BugBear, Colibri.

The name was found suddenly when one of the members of the YouTrack team proposed to start from the verb “attract”, consonant with the “track”. As before, the team went through a large number of options, including Attracktion, Trackoo, JackTrack, TicTrack, Trackit. But the winner was determined immediately, as soon as the simple and concise name sounded - YouTrack.

Soon, a slight inconvenience was discovered: at first, developers noticed that with the advent of YouTrack among their tools, they had to get used to the additional set of letters in the address bar of the browser - otherwise, instead of YouTrack, they landed on YouTube. Fortunately, this did not create serious obstacles for our bug tracker.

YouTrack takes shape

When the product name was officially approved, designers began to actively work on the product logo. Like many existing JetBrains products, the YouTrack logo was originally based on the letters Y and T. As, for example, IntelliJ IDEA and ReSharper . But during the creative process, designers, probably inspired by the process of choosing the name, suggested to consider the idea of ​​a non-letter logo.

The starting point for creating the logo was the idea of ​​tracking, catching and destroying bugs during the development process. For more than 60 years, errors in a program or in a system called bugs (that is, insects, bugs) have been called. In connection with this, the following all-seeing eye design solutions were originally proposed: a magnifying glass, an eye, a combination of a magnifying glass and an eye, a bird-binoculars, a big-eyed bird.



A magnifying glass helps to keep an eye on the bugs, but not to catch them and, moreover, not to destroy them. But the "big-eyed bird", which looks for bugs and catches them, quite accurately embodied the idea of ​​the YouTrack product itself. Therefore, the idea of ​​a bird seemed to designers more interesting for further development than variations with a magnifying glass.

When the "big-eyed bird" became the clear leader among other options, the designers began to choose the optimal combination of colors. Mandatory was orange - the pass-through color of the company used in the logos of all products. In addition to it, blue eventually won over gray because it was much brighter. See for yourself:


At the last stage, the designers needed to determine the position of the bird: standing on legs, a bird in motion, a bird in flight:

Working through the idea of ​​an “all-seeing product” even more deeply, the designers stopped at a bird hovering in the air, which precisely tracks all the bugs in flight and eliminates them.

Here's how, in the end, turned out the big-eyed bird named YouTrack, which quickly settled down and got accustomed to the company JetBrains. Admire the embodiment made by the hands of one of the developers of the YouTrack team:


And here is one of our latest exclusive punk bird t-shirts:


The history of YouTrack is just beginning. The charismatic big-eyed bird will still delight you in the future.

Be creative with pleasure!
- JetBrains team