>> Really? I don't see IntelliJ Idea suffering much from NOT being Open Source
Yeah definitely. Idea & Visual Studio (among others) are top quality products, and yet both nothing more than a chapter 11 filing away from being vague memories.
Contrast adoption of Idea vs Eclipse.
Consider when Windows is no longer relevant, VS will necessarily degenerate to being a niche product (even though it is arguably one of the finest IDEs available at any price today).
Every Idea product I've used, with the exception of Rubymine 3.0, has been top notch. PHPStorm, ReSharper and IntelliJ are great. Some times there are benefits to having a small closed source, private paid team of professionals writing software. Some times it's beneficial to opening it up to the whole world and saying "what do you want to see added?"
I don't think anyone's disputing the quality of the products, Idea's ItelliJ, Microsoft's Visual Studio, ST2 - they're all quality software.
I just wanted to pick a bone with something you said though:
>> Some times there are benefits to having a small closed source, private paid team of professionals writing software
This is a comment about development methodology - the Cathedral and the Bazaar. Take out the words "closed source" (e.g. think Chromium browser) which have no baring on your statement, and then i agree.
Yeah definitely. Idea & Visual Studio (among others) are top quality products, and yet both nothing more than a chapter 11 filing away from being vague memories.
Contrast adoption of Idea vs Eclipse.
Consider when Windows is no longer relevant, VS will necessarily degenerate to being a niche product (even though it is arguably one of the finest IDEs available at any price today).