IntelliJ's Biggest Change in 16 Years Just Dropped!

In this podcast, the speaker discusses JetBrains' decision to merge IntelliJ Community and Ultimate editions into a single distribution starting with version 2025.3. This change means users will download one IDE with all features included, but some will be locked behind a subscription. The speaker notes that previously free features will remain free, with some additions like Spring framework support. The speaker theorizes that this shift is driven by the rise of AI coding tools, which may diminish the value of traditional IDE features like intelligent indexing. The speaker also touches on JetBrains' suite of language-specific IDEs and questions their relevance in an AI-driven development landscape, predicting a potential future move towards a more universal IDE strategy.