Sad Day for Polite Software like IDEA

IDE Showdown - Evangelists duke it out at Cologne JUG

My hats off for organizing this meeting. However, based on the conclusion that the article has drawn, I mark this as a sad day for the polite software like IDEA. Apparently we still live in a society where the quantity of the work, i.e. feature list and 'advanced features', rather than the quality of the work, i.e. how you implement the same feature in polite way, matters.

And I am also annoyed every time someone says "Eclipse is more than just a Java IDE", or "Eclipse is more than just an IDE", as if it is a good reason for it to be poorly designed and most annoying to use. You know, that is not even a good excuse.

I can rant on for days. But I have been ranting for so long since Borland decided to stop the development of JBuilder purely out of fear for Eclipse (hence my reason to quit) several years ago, that I am just tired. All that I feel up to do right now, is to quote Alan Cooper in his great book “The Inmates Are Running the Asylum”:

It is abundantly clear to most of us that common folk don't know the difference between a token ring and a mood ring. We need these creator of "faster, stronger, better" innovations to be sure that the creations actually improve our work and lives -- not simply drive us crazy. We need the technology to work in the same way average people think. We need a revolution to restore our sanity.

Update: I also think that IDEA is wrong by trying to fight on the open source battle ground. Of course you are going to lose! What is so wrong by saying

Our business model is to produce a killer softerware full time and get paid well enough for it to be sustainable. Because of our business model, we have the purest agenda and vision for our IDE, i.e., make Java developers do their own job in the most efficient way. If any other FREE IDE can beat us in this market, we will cease to exist. But so far, it looks like we are the best. And we ARE supporting open source in our own way, by giving out open source licenses.