Hi all.
There is a lot of chat about what should be in the next release. Every one is always ready to remind us how N Tracker items have yet to be addressed; how there is still some micro feature they really can't live without; or how there are all sorts of bugs that should be fixed before any new feature is implemented! And don't get me wrong I am one of those people quite often!
... BUT ...
What's going to be the next big thing! I mean back in the days of IntelliJ IDEA 1.x,2.x it was all about the refactoring revolution... and if I am not mistaken this is what brought most of us to IntelliJ. That, and closely related ideas like intentions/inspections which only can work if there is a powerful refactoring engine behind it.
So I ask you all: Forget anything that's in Tracker for a second... and tell me what's the next BIG thing you want in your favorite toolbox.
The hurdles I can see:
-More framework integration and tools: Do for vendor specific platforms like WS(and other J2EE), Hibernate, Velocity, XML, and others, what IDEA has done for POJ, ant, cvs etc. Which ones?
-Maybe help define a path for real Model Driven Development. I find at the moment all the tools out there are huge and require that you fully buy in to their approach. They have already started with such elements as the GUI plug-in, it seems.
-How about some support tools for design patterns. It seems to me that it would be great if there was an engine in IDEA similar to live template engines that could do multi class constructions based on templates and known/defined patterns.
these are just few ideas to get things stirring! It's even possible that these have been mentioned in tracker and forums...
I am just trying to start some conversation about big new features we need to take us further in the coming years. I am not even sure I like the things I put above... but they are worth discussion!
Florian Hehlen