The problem is that tacking on to an existing product, while the ideal approach, limits just how creative you can get. I believe this is one of the reasons Cursor had to fork VSCode. Simply being an extension limited the features they could build.
So far I've had all the vscode extensions just work in cursor (including devcontainers, docker, etc.) I hope it continues like this, as breaking extensions is something that would take away from the usefulness of cursor.
My hunch says that IDEA should be worried a lot. If I am on the edge evaluating other tools because of AI assisted programming, lot of others would be doing that too
IDEA has "AI Assistant"[^0]. Is it not usable for you (I might have missed your comment mentioning it)?
None of these points seem to apply..
They're still selling their yearly subscription even if they can't upsell me on an AI subscription
I find a lot of teams are so focused on their vision that they fail to integrate their tool into my workflow. So I don’t use them at all.
That’s fine for art, but I don’t need opinionated tools.
What I want in a product comes from customer interviews. It’s not “my opinion” other than perhaps our team’s interpretation of customer requests. A customer can want certain pain points addressed and have friction to move to a particular solution at the same time.
Or does wanting a product that meets customer needs too opinionated?