Right now, I’d say the “AI IDEs” like Cursor or Zed are ready to replace less Java-centric environments. I’d put VSCode in this “not really Java centric” bucket. I see VSCode as a “fancy text editor” for Java, i.e., better than an editor like Neovim, but, not by much. So, an AI IDE is more likely going to gain traction on people who have been using VSCode or Neovim than anyone using Eclipse or IntelliJ.
Recently, my company has tried to introduce a “cloud IDE” (the development environment runs in the cloud somewhere). Initially, it only supported VSCode. The only engineers that bothered using it were junior; once people had about 5+ years of experience, they just found it tedious. Once the company included IntelliJ for that cloud IDE, usage spiked massively. (To the point they are restricting usage due to cost.)
These “classic Java IDEs” just launch with features useful for understanding large systems, like, fast navigation and debugging capabilities. Things like “where is method used” or “what implements this interface method” is fast and accurate - i.e., not based on text search. Or the interactive debugger that lets you inspect stream state, track objects, etc.
JetBrains probably won’t be focusing on using AI simply for writing code, but for enhancing all of these other capabilities. This is where I’m not sold on Cursor or Zed replacing these truly language-specific IDEs… yet.
These new upstarts need to improve the ability to navigate and understand. Right now, they only seem to focus on writing, which I don’t think is what’s going to gain traction. I also don’t see any of them doing much other than just fancy autocomplete, which can be awful on a large legacy codebase. So… we’ll see.
This could be generational, I’ve definitely seen poorer DevEx win simply because they gained the attention of younger engineers and lasted long enough.