Dgold: I believe we got to your question during the show, but to summarize and/or clarify: the original and long-running functionality of the plugin was more of a convenience to obtaining and displaying custom fields. The basic capabilities had already existed in core, but the plugin provide a single template tag that simplified usage (sparing a few lines of code). So for the longest time it was about convenience.

However, recent releases (particularly the just recently released v3.0) of the plugin make its usage more compelling as it introduced more template tags (to access custom fields outside of the loop, getting random custom fields, getting template tags for a particular post, etc) as well as the introduction of the widget and support for a shortcode, so now the power of the plugin is easier to use, customize, and embed in posts.

Especially given the new functionality, I doubt the plugin or similar functionality would get subsumed into core. I could foresee some additional custom field helpers being added to core at some point, though.

Btw, hope you enjoyed the show!

John Myrstad:
A1: I'm not targeting 100 plugins as a goal in and of itself, but I'm aware I'm getting close. I have a handful of plugins yet to release, and ideas for many more, so at some point I'll likely get there.

A2: I make plugins for any number of reasons, including: personal need, curiosity, bugfixes for bugs in core, changing/customizing core behavior to my liking, personal challenges, and as requested by commercial clients.

I appreciate creating things that can make things easier for myself and others, and bending WP to my will :)

A3: I develop on an ancient Powerbook G4 laptop, obviously running OSX, with Textmate as my editor. I run Apache2 and MySQL locally. I use Sequel Pro to graphically inspect/interact with the db when necessary. I maintain code using git.

Basically, I create a new plugin directory and file in a local test WP install and code away. I do have a plugin template of sorts (which I'll probably extract more fully as a framework at some point) that I often use as a template when starting out.