[ivanjermakov]

I wonder where Java would be today without superb tooling and smart student programs from JetBrains.

[pjmlp]

Java has enjoyed powerful IDEs since late 1990's, some of them are even free beer!

[tsimionescu]

The Java world had plenty of student programs without Jet Brains. There is even a student-focused IDE, BlueJ, with plenty of visual representations to help people new to programming get their bearings - and this existed since 1999.

[jen20]

Sadly BlueJ teaches people almost exactly the wrong things about object-oriented programming.

[Onewildgamer]

Java was thriving during the golden age of Eclipse Foundation and IDE. JetBrains is very much recent.

[stevoski]

> JetBrains is very much recent.

JetBrains is 25 years old, almost as old as Java.

[szatkus]

IntelliJ use wasn't that widespread until about 10-15 years ago. Java was thriving before that.

[jen20]

It was in heavy use in London investment banks in 2005. Even resharper was commonplace by the following year.

[TheFreim]

Around 10 years ago Eclipse was still the primary editor in the circles I was in.

[pjmlp]

Still is on my circles, and at home I have been always a Netbeans fan.

I am an IDE guy since Borland products for MS-DOS, yet I was never sold on InteliJ anyway, and Android Studio made me dislike it even further.

[karmakaze]

I was using Eclipse back then, but indeed Wikipedia says IDEA 1.0 (Jan 2001) predates Eclipse IDE (Nov 2001).

NetBeans was bought by Sun in 1999 and opensourced on Jun 2000.