mhoffmann thank you for sharing your perspective so clearly. Your long term experience with Axon Ivy is very important to us as we navigate this transition.
We fully understand that moving to a web-based IDE represents a significant change, especially for developers who have grown with the Eclipse environment and rely on its maturity and flexibility. However, Eclipse has seen very little innovation in recent years. While it's still maintained, active development has largely shifted toward platforms like Visual Studio Code and its ecosystem of extensions. To provide a more modern, maintainable, and extensible development experience, we're aligning with technologies that have stronger future support.
Our goal with this shift is not to take a step back, but to modernize the development experience by enabling potential features such as cloud-based collaboration, AI assisted development (e.g., Copilot integration), improved platform consistency and alignment with modern development tooling.
And just to clarify, when we talk about a “web-based IDE” we don’t mean something that runs only in a browser or requires constant internet access. It will also be available as a locally installed application (just like VS Code), offering a native-app experience with offline support, while optionally enabling cloud-based workflows for those who need them.
That said, your concerns are absolutely valid. We are carefully evaluating how to ensure the new IDE delivers tangible improvements without compromising the maturity and flexibility you are used to. We're also committed to preserving essential features and are actively collecting input on the current pain points in the Eclipse based Designer, so that it can be part of the roadmap or considered in our priorities.
This is why we’re conducting this survey. Your feedback will help guide us in making this transition smooth and practical. So please feel free to share more detailed feedback through the survey.
