25 Years of IntelliJ IDEA: The IDE That Grew Up With Java (#91)

In this Foojay Podcast, we're celebrating a major milestone in Java development history: 25 years of IntelliJ IDEA.Think about it: IntelliJ IDEA launched in 2000, and since then, it has become the go-to IDE for millions of Java developers worldwide. From its revolutionary code completion and refactoring tools to AI-powered features and the recent unified Community and Ultimate release, IntelliJ has shaped how we write Java, and keeps reinventing itself to stay ahead.For this episode, I'm joined by three people from the JetBrains team who know this story inside and out. Marit van Dijk, developer advocate and contributor to the Foojay community. Anton Arhipov, also a developer advocate at JetBrains. And Dmitry Jemerov, who has been part of the IntelliJ IDEA story for a very long time.GuestsMarit van Dijkhttps://foojay.io/today/author/marit-van-dijk/https://www.linkedin.com/in/maritvandijk/https://mastodon.social/@maritvandijkAnton Arhipovhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/antonarhipov/Dmitry Jemerovhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/dmitry-jemerov-3a59b43a5/LinksWebsiteDocumentationBlogYouTubeLinkedInBlueskyTwitterFoojay Podcast #81: Maven 4 – The Future of Java Build AutomationVideo: IntelliJ IDEA: The Documentary | [OFFICIAL TRAILER] | Coming March 5thIntroducing Mellum: JetBrains’ New LLM Built for Developers Mellum: Explore code-intelligent large language models for IDEs, AI assistants, research, and educationBirthday game websiteGame plugin in IntelliJ IDEAYou’re Invited to IntelliJ IDEA Conf 2025!The Unified IntelliJ IDEA: More Free Features, a Better Experience, Smoother FlowVideo: Troubleshooting Spring Boot Applications with the Spring DebuggerSpring Debugger pluginPlugin for IntelliJ IDEA (and other IDEs) created by Frank: Recent Projects OrganizedContent00:00 Introduction of topic and guests01:36 Now JetBrains started02:31 Licensed software in an open-source world06:37 Other JetBrains IDEs07:46 Why Kotlin was created08:50 The challenge of maintaining all the tools10:36 How the guests joined JetBrains14:03 IntelliJ versus IntelliJ IDEA, history of the name15:10 Most important ongoing changes in IDEs17:55 Unified distribution of IntelliJ IDEA and the history of the open-source version21:28 The number of people at JetBrains23:31 the "business model" behind Kotlin24:39 The impact of AI, LLM, Chat interfaces,...35:49 Upcoming evolutions in IntelliJ IDEA38:07 About shortcuts and the many features and plugins in IntelliJ IDEA46:36 Announcements: IntelliJ IDEA Conf 2026 and Documentary Trailer48:35 The IntelliJ IDEA Birthday Game49:24 Conclusions