Really? This stuff is mandatory for those who are dependent on it. Many people still just look at the code in a separate browser tab and make a meaningful decision of if they want to pull something in or not. Why even use an IDE is the better question. What exactly is an IDE for if the AI will search and determine where to add/remove code? I don't think Jetbrains needs to lose focus on their product to compete with products that are masquerading as an IDE but have no intention of fulfilling the role of an IDE. They want to re-invent it, so it's better they simply stay in their own lane as they will be cannibalized by their own genre as there are no rules in that wild-west. For example, why does my automatic code writing genie look like a fucking IDE? Is there a reason? Cursor and the like will have their own competition and they'll struggle to keep up with a blank screen that just magically outputs software with no visibility into the code. Then they'll be stuck trying to sell people why it's better to let magic be written inside of an IDE, both competing with new magic and old hard tools (like Jetbrains). Cursor is not the future, it's dead on arrival.
Jetbrains and existing IDEs are much more focused for exactly what it is, manual code writing/inspection. How they integrate AI should be done meaningfully to improve the IDE experience. If they want to be in the business of reinventing code-writing, then you have to scrap the IDE altogether.
Some companies are mandating the use of Cursor or other tools like it.
Huh?
That seems like a false dichotomy. AI doesn’t decide what kind of code to write. That’s still up to the human (for now). Jetbrains also has to have some kind of AI offering, if only because otherwise users will migrate to competitors that do.
It’s an interesting question whether we’ll need an IDE at all in the future. I used to program in Vim with minimal help. Maybe one day I’ll program in Vim with maximal help from an AI. It would be nice to say "find where authentication happens" and it pulls up all instances of auth code. But that’s also another example of a feature that can go into an IDE: case sensitive search, regex search, natural language search. So I’m skeptical we won’t be using IDEs in the future. And if all of this is a part of an IDE, then that’s squarely in Jetbrains’ wheelhouse.