The new version of IntelliJ IDEA supports J2SE 5, the new refactoring system and other enhancements.
IntelliJ IDEA 4.5 Released
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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i have yet to use an IDE for any language that even comes close to the experience of developing with IDEa. free trials for the big three operating systems, i highly recommend this to any developer working with java.
I’m curious, what other IDE’s have you tried?
I agree with Matt. I have tried Eclipse 2.x and Eclipse 3, JBuilder X and other not-really-an IDE editors like TextPad and JEdit. And IDEA is still my first choice. IDEA has so many features that you would still say “AHA” after you use it for a month. And nice features are added in every release.
Yes, it has weakness, like it has no capability to do multi-projects and it costs. Here, Eclipse is a very nice player. But after Eclipse 3, Eclipse is, in my opinion, too bloat. It eats 72 MB memory just to open my HelloWorld. And under Linux (SuSE 9 Pro using XFce), it is slower than ever. It is just too unresponsive. I dont know where the problem is, if it is the GTK or SWT, but it needs some works here.
IDEA also has a very good on-the-fly code checker. It cathes the would-be bugs without the need to compile the code first (by Eclipse, somtimes I must compile it first and than it cathes the failure).
For JBuilder, I am sorry, it is out of contest. It has wide range of features, so wide that every feature is not really good. And It is very pricey compared to its capability.
Just my 2 cents….
for java ive used jdeveloper, jbuilder, eclipse, idea, and while at school forte for java. forte was by far the worst, idea the best, i would say followed by eclispse.
(im a java developer by profession, so ive used these alot)
ides in general i have used ms visual studio 5, 6 and .net, komodo, kdevelope(just played with it, havnt done anything remotely serious), and sharpdevelop.
the only ide i would find comparible to idea is vs.net, which has many, many great things in it and is a joy to use.
I’ve only used the trial version after hearing a friend rave about IDEA and while I didn’t use it for anything too serious, I definately noticed the thought that went into this product. Its the little things, like how the entire IDEA is designed so that you don’t have to remove you hands from the keyboard. Everything can be done with shortcuts. Not only that, but it seemed fast considering it is written in Java, and on top of all that, it is easy on the eyes. (I know people always claim its not how the tool looks, but how it works that counts, but I say look and feel are a big part of usibility).
I think the power of IDE higly depends on time u spent using and learning it. I can’t belive there is a way to test Eclipse, IntelliJ and more in few days and say “this one is better”. Yes, price is good argument. Even whorst IDE can be more powerfull in developer’s hands if he knows it well. I mean all features, plugins (only needed), keyboard shorcuts (it’s very important).
Well I concur with Matt on this one. I’m also a Java developer and IntelliJ IDE is by far the best, most intuitive cross-platform Java IDE. I’m using it @work with Mandrake Linux 9.2, @home with Mac OS X and some colleagues use it with Windows 2000 or XP. Eclipse under Linux is just too slow (GTK2 version).
I’ve stopped using Netbeans a long time ago although I promised myself to give it another go sometime (waiting for some less busy schedule at work really). JBuilder never appealed to me. The main point with IntelliJ is that it doesn’t get in your way and you can get up to speed really quickly. It is only thanks to IntelliJ IDE that I moved away from text editor to an IDE and that says a lot in my book.
Yes it’s not free but if you’re using it @work and your company can’t afford to spend a few bucks on a decent development tool then it’s time to find a new job
For personal development obviously it’s a hurdle and I understand people looking at free alternatives.
Having said that, I will seriously consider Eclipse on Linux when the speed has improved. I may try it in Mac OS X actually, just to see how it compares.
> I’ve stopped using Netbeans a long time ago although I promised myself to give it another go sometime (waiting for some less busy schedule at work really).
NetBeans 4.0 that is due for release soon will be really good, give it a try, chances are you might like it. NetBeans 4 looks real good on any platfrom (something I can’t say about Eclipse) and can provide fairly snappy performance at the same time. The old days of clunky slow NetBeans are long behind, it definitely deserves a look.
IDEA is an insane IDE. Its probably 2-4 years in front of any other IDE for any language right now. This includes Eclipse and VS ( i haven’t tryed netbeans but i’m told its Eclipse in swing ugg ).
IDEA is to date the only IDE i’ve used with a working vim keys plugin. that alone makes me not want to use anything else. but besides that, IDEA’s got much better dot completion than eclipse. that’s what still to this day keeps me away from eclipse every time i use it. i download eclipse every so often to see if they’ve fixed their dot completion to be as fast and intuitive as IDEA’s, but they still haven’t.
I have been using IDEA since the 2.x days.
Where I work, most use either JBuilder 6 (I’m not sure why) or Eclipse 2.x. I have used JBuilder 6, 9, and 10, Eclipse 2.x, 3.x and IntelliJ’s IDEA. Of all the environments I have used (not tested), IDEA wins hands down.
None of the other products come even close to all the things that IDEA does for the developer. It practically writes the program for you!
One drawback to all the features in IDEA, it’s a memory pig. We have 256MB systems here (again, I’m not sure why) with either NT 4.0, 2000, or XP. I started with NT and couldn’t even get IDEA to finish building the project without going into swapping hell. Under Win2000 I am at least able to build the project. It takes 20 minutes for a full build, but fortunatly, I don’t have to do a full build often. At home with a real computer, the same project takes only 1 minute and 35 seconds. Much better. (We are supposed to be getting new systems here in a couple of months)
IDEA is also a HD hog. It cache’s all the information it’s going to need when working with a project so that using the IDE doesn’t slow you down. The down side to this is the cache can take up more than a Gig of storage. The project I am working on here takes just over a Gig of cache space. However, usage searches take only a second or two instead of the minutes it typically takes to scan a large project for usages.
Eclipse takes the same 20 mintues for full builds too. Setting up projects in Eclipse seems way more complicated than it should be. Has some of the code analysis features that IDEA has, but lacks a bunch. At least Eclipse is free.
JBuilder is slowing joining IDEA as well with code analysis features, but it’s project structure is even more bizarre. It does take less time for full builds, but (in our projects) I have to do a command line build first to get the JAR’s necessary for the project. Since the project doesn’t contain all the java files that Eclipse or IDEA builds. To top all this off, JBuilder is *WAY* to expensive!
I have “looked” at other environments, but I always return to IDEA. It’s also one of the most reasonably priced products out there! $500. Plus Intellij frequently offers personal versions for only $250! That’s the price I paid. No limitations on what can be built with the personal version. Just has to be purchased by an individual instead of a company.
Idea is the best editor.
It is a joy to type in code and use the various completions. It is also quite fast, looks good, especially on MacOSX and made me change my mind about java GUIs.
It’s terrific for code navigation: I have used Juliet, but could never totally trust its results to be complete and ended up checking ‘by hand’. I trust Idea and this saves me time.
It’s well worth the money spent
But for some tasks, I go back to other GUIs such as JDeveloper: Tasks such as:
-create various J2EE deployment descriptors, which is a royal PITA even if you have XML schema driven editors. JDeveloper (and jbuilder etc) provide screens that allow you to create those files without syntactic drudgery
-debugging and profiling, with screen that show you the hogs in your software. JDevelopper has this special VM that allows you to pinpoint those nasty memory allocations.
In any case, you should have tons of memory or you will suffer thrashing. An above post mentioned a company having 256M machines as a standard. They are wasting precious developer time and nerves. They would recoup upgrades within a day or 2.
The great thing is that you can actually try all of these for yourself. Heck, Eclipse is free, JDevelopper is free (you have to pay for support).
As a consultant I’ve used JBuilder, WebSphere Studio Application Developer, and IntelliJ on a number of projects for longer than one year.
Originally JBuilder had everything you needed, but nothing really jumped out at you as being very impressive. In the past few years, though, they have really made an effort to drop in loads of new features that a lot of developers may want. JBuilder was around $1000USD last time I checked.
WebSphere Studio Application Developer is based on Eclipse. V4 was buggy, unpredictable, a memory hog, and disk hog. Again, it works OK but nothing jumps out at you as being good. It was pretty irritating that you couldn’t control the code formatting or color-highlighting. V5 was faster, allowed you to change colors, and control code formatting, which obviously I care about. It is also less buggy, which helps. Still I have to laugh: we ran it on P4 2.4ghz with 1gb of ram, and WSAD really pounded the hardware. List for WSAD is around $3000USD.
I had used IntelliJ Idea 2.6, 3, and now 4.x. It does what you expect, but then it does so much more that really makes your day to day coding job easier. That is why people “love” it. It does the little things that just make your life easier. The current version is around $500USD.
The Eclipse IDE is a real joke. The only thing they are good at is duplicating features of other Java IDEs. That is really half true, too, since they take nearly 1 year to copy whatever they deem to be the “essential features”.
It’s pretty outrageous when people complain about spending money for an IDE and good hardware on which to develop. These are two things which offer immediate results without even trying in the form of faster build cycles and increased productivity. If you work at a place like that, than quit and work somewhere where they take the job seriously.