There is ample evidence that the rising market for IDE's is producing cruddier software, and I think your position is a fair one for anyone with any experience

There is ample evidence that the rising market for IDE's is producing cruddier software, and I think your position is a fair one for anyone with any experience in the industry to hold, given that there is ample history of the subject to support the fact that the first-line of attack for any platform vendor is in the developer tools realm. No system worth its salt ever shipped without some form of development environment - and the slicker, and easier to use, the better. Anyone can pick up Visual Studio these days and bang a few things together to make their computer operate; whats sad is that its not just a built-in feature of the OS, though, and is instead guided as a product by marketing people whose desire really is to gain impressions, capture mindsets, and lock people into their brand. Your average editor doesn't do much of that; your average IDE does a hell of a lot of it. Yours is therefore a valid argument, in my opinion ..