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A marvel of engineering, really? In find using bloated browser tech and napkin-designed language to build a barely functional IDE as "impressive" as building a mile-long pedestrian bridge using Popsicle sticks and chewing gum.

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To be fair, a (stable, used by many for many years) mile-long pedestrian bridge constructed out of popsicle sticks and chewing gum would be a fairly impressive feat.

Right tool for the right job.

I'll take browser tech + JS based IDE over a streamlined ASM based one that updates at a glacial pace any day. Which is why there aren't really any other great options, traditional IDEs can't keep up. Even MS' own original visual studio product - there's no point to it anymore.

What is the nature up these updates you're speaking of? The core of the IDE is the editor and a plugin system. Editors are pretty much a solved problem, some people still swear by 40 year old vi and that doesn't seem to make them less employable. Drawing to a GUI instead of a console isn't much of a challenge nowadays either. Whatever updates are required will be for the plugins, and that's not technology specific; Delphi (25+ years ago!), Eclipse and IntelliJ all have that. Visual Studio or XCode painting themselves in a corner by being so rigid is no excuse for using the mushiest language to control the most abstracted platform to design a new IDE.

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