> They either find some niche within the existing product

They should stay in where they started, dev experience and IDEs custom for each language. Entering the AI coding was a mistake in my opinion, I’m sure one can argue that AI coding would have better tooling without their IDEs, but AI coders (Cc and codex) don’t use IDEs anymore so it’s a lost battle before the start

I remember around 2019 or so they shipped their first AI feature and there was a huge backlash for it. Did that change their direction in anyway? Obviously 2026 is a way different landscape than back then.