I think the primary reason why IDEs are generally better than maximally customised editors like vim, emacs, sublime or vscode and whatnot is pretty simply put: money.
People buy IDE -> money goes to improving the IDE -> IDE gets better
People download one of 6 competing open-source plugins -> a couple of people improve it a little -> 3 years pass, the author loses interest -> someone else else reinvents the wheel, there are now 7 competing open-source plugins 3 of which are good but not maintained anymore.
Great features require time, I just don't see non-commercial work succeeding here.
Doesn't mean it's not possible to create commercial fantastic open-source standalone language tools, it's just not happening for some reason. Probably just because most businesses are still hesitant to open-source their core business?
"Commercial open-source" will always be oxymoronic to me, despite all
the kumbaya naysayers. There's a basic law of nature at work here which
US patent law and a fictional character ("if you're good at something,
never do it for free") understood. To a programmer, opening the source
essentially renders the product gratis, some custom integration work
notwithstanding.
Yeah I get that, and I think that's the primary reason it's difficult to do well.
I think there _are_ ways to do it right. For instance, open-sourcing a Windows application is not necessarily problematic if 99.9% of your user base has never ever compiled something from source. Heck, my father is the kind of person who doesn't know the difference between "Windows" and "gmail". He has purchased software for his business once, it would've made no difference to him whether it was open-source or not.
Despite my believing that it's possible, I can't really think of any examples other than redhat and Qt from the top of my head...
> open-sourcing a Windows application is not necessarily problematic if
> 99.9% of your user base has never ever compiled something from source.
What a fatuous remark. I publish the Coca-Cola recipe to Pepsi
drinkers. I'm fairly sure the recipe will eventually get around to a home
brewer who's sick of paying the Coca-Cola company for its product.
People buy IDE -> money goes to improving the IDE -> IDE gets better
People download one of 6 competing open-source plugins -> a couple of people improve it a little -> 3 years pass, the author loses interest -> someone else else reinvents the wheel, there are now 7 competing open-source plugins 3 of which are good but not maintained anymore.
Great features require time, I just don't see non-commercial work succeeding here.
Doesn't mean it's not possible to create commercial fantastic open-source standalone language tools, it's just not happening for some reason. Probably just because most businesses are still hesitant to open-source their core business?