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.

Guests
Marit van Dijk
• foojay.io/today/author/marit-van-dijk
• linkedin.com/in/maritvandijk
• mastodon.social/@maritvandijk
Anton Arhipov
• linkedin.com/in/antonarhipov
Dmitry Jemerov
• linkedin.com/in/dmitry-jemerov-3a59b43a5
Links
• Website (jetbrains.com/idea)
• Documentation (jetbrains.com/help/idea)
• Blog (blog.jetbrains.com/idea)
• YouTube (youtube.com/intellijidea)
• LinkedIn (linkedin.com/showcase/intellijidea)
• Bluesky (bsky.app/profile/intellijidea.com)
• Twitter (twitter.com/intellijidea)
• Foojay Podcast #81: Maven 4 – The Future of Java Build Automation (foojay.io/today/foojay-podcast-81)
• Video: IntelliJ IDEA: The Documentary | [OFFICIAL TRAILER] | Coming March 5th (youtube.com/watch?v=TwMXi6tDzLE)
• Introducing Mellum: JetBrains’ New LLM Built for Developers (blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2024/10/22/introducing…)
• Mellum: Explore code-intelligent large language models for IDEs, AI assistants, research, and education (jetbrains.com/mellum)
• Birthday game website (jetbrains.com/lp/intellij-idea-25)
• Game plugin in IntelliJ IDEA (plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/29801-ide-survivors)
• You’re Invited to IntelliJ IDEA Conf 2025! (foojay.io/today/youre-invited-to-intellij-idea…)
• The Unified IntelliJ IDEA: More Free Features, a Better Experience, Smoother Flow (blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2025/12/intellij-idea-…)
• Video: Troubleshooting Spring Boot Applications with the Spring Debugger (youtube.com/watch?v=XWoivKnqsyo)
• Spring Debugger plugin (plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/25302-spring-debu…)
• Plugin for IntelliJ IDEA (and other IDEs) created by Frank: Recent Projects Organized (webtechie.be/post/2025-09-18-jetbrains-intelli…)

Content
00:00 Introduction of topic and guests
01:36 Now JetBrains started
02:31 Licensed software in an open-source world
06:37 Other JetBrains IDEs
07:46 Why Kotlin was created
08:50 The challenge of maintaining all the tools
10:36 How the guests joined JetBrains
14:03 IntelliJ versus IntelliJ IDEA, history of the name
15:10 Most important ongoing changes in IDEs
17:55 Unified distribution of IntelliJ IDEA and the history of the open-source version
21:28 The number of people at JetBrains
23:31 the "business model" behind Kotlin
24:39 The impact of AI, LLM, Chat interfaces,...
35:49 Upcoming evolutions in IntelliJ IDEA
38:07 About shortcuts and the many features and plugins in IntelliJ IDEA
46:36 Announcements: IntelliJ IDEA Conf 2026 and Documentary Trailer
48:35 The IntelliJ IDEA Birthday Game
49:24 Conclusions