They clearly are the state of the art of IDEs for most mainstream languages nowadays.
It's easy for young developers to overlook the power of intellij IDES, and to use the "sexier" vscode.
But clearly for any medium to large project, learning to master intellijs are one of the highest ROI that a developer can get.
I generally prefer JetBrains' IDEs over vscode. However, vscode's remote editing capabilities just tipped the scale for me.
Not too long ago I bought a "powerful" laptop (expensive!). It still chocked frequently when running multiple vm's, docker machines and/or multiple "auto-compile watchers".
Then I tried vscode remote editing. I just run the browser & vscode in the laptop, and everything else on the desktop. It makes for a much, much nicer experience overall.
JetBrains, if this somehow gets to you: please copy vscode's remoting abilities and I'll be back. Until then... I had a great time with you.
What's the point of tribalism? It's a natural human tendency to be protective of what's close to your heart and reject things you're unfamiliar with.
Every single HN post about either Emacs, IntelliJ, Vim, VSCode, or Atom always gets riddled with disingenuous comments of people who liked one thing more than other things. Things they either haven't tried or had some cursory experience with them.
These tools are very individual [just like toothbrushes], for someone Emacs offers something that IntelliJ or VSCode can't, for others - nothing is better than Vim.
To truly achieve mastery, one has to try and learn them all and choose a tool that works well for the situation or the one they like (for objective and subjective reasons). Some might say: "that's a waste of time", try saying that to musicians. Go tell James Hetfield of Metallica that he shouldn't be trying all sorts of different guitars because Gibson is hands-down the best.
I'd go so far as to say Intellij and eclipse are one of the biggest reasons for Java and python's success. Those two languages came about during an IDE revolution and it made them so much more accessible.
It's easy for young developers to overlook the power of intellij IDES, and to use the "sexier" vscode. But clearly for any medium to large project, learning to master intellijs are one of the highest ROI that a developer can get.
Of course, it should be mixed with ideaVim.