Foojay Podcast #91: 25 Years of IntelliJ IDEA: The IDE That Grew Up With Java

IntelliJ IDEA launched in 2000 and grew into the daily workbench for millions of Java developers. Twenty-five years later, the IDE still drives how we refactor, debug, and now pair with AI assistants. To mark the anniversary, we sat down with Marit van Dijk, Anton Arhipov, and Dmitry Jemerov from JetBrains for Foojay Podcast #91.

What we talked about

The early days of JetBrains and how IntelliJ IDEA got its name
Running licensed software in an open-source world
The other JetBrains IDEs and the creation of Kotlin
The unified Community and Ultimate distribution
How AI and LLMs change the way we write code
Where the IDE goes next
IntelliJ IDEA Conf 2026
A birthday game to close the episode

What stood out

We covered a lot of ground in one conversation, from the first releases to the unified distribution and the AI features shipping today. The guests share why JetBrains keeps investing in both the open-source and commercial sides of the product. We also get a preview of IntelliJ IDEA Conf 2026.

See the Foojay Podcast #91 for all info, shownotes, links, etc.