Indeed seems very uncommon where I am, even the IntelliJ’s are more often pirated than paid for.
From my perspective it is very weird to expect to beat MS (who produces two great IDE’s, not one) on their own game with this approach to dev.
I’m not saying it’s impossible to have the most important features replicated, but, c’mon, this is software, it breaks as it builds and some things are not possible
Overnight even if you have the worlds top top top talent around.
But, you also have to be better than what’s freely available by enough to get someone to pay for it. Having a good product isn’t good enough, you have to be significantly better.
Dev tooling is a notoriously difficult space to make money. Free tools tend to win because if a tool costs money, a developer is just as likely to write their own version. (For better or worse)
From my perspective it is very weird to expect to beat MS (who produces two great IDE’s, not one) on their own game with this approach to dev.
I’m not saying it’s impossible to have the most important features replicated, but, c’mon, this is software, it breaks as it builds and some things are not possible Overnight even if you have the worlds top top top talent around.