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Java Programming

Java Development: Eclipse or IntelliJ IDEA? 122

Posted by Cliff from the decisions-decisions dept.
Java_Good_COBOL_Bad asks: "For Java development, would most people recommend using Eclipse or IntelliJ IDEA? I am currently using Eclipse and it took a long time to get the environment set up. I understand that Eclipse is a framework that can be used for many things, not just Java development, but all I really need is an IDE for Java. So, I wonder if Eclipse is more complex than I need. I have never used IDEA before. Is it more straight-forward? Has anybody here migrated from Eclipse to IDEA? How steep was the learning curve?"
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Java Development: Eclipse or IntelliJ IDEA? More

Java Development: Eclipse or IntelliJ IDEA?

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  • Let me see if I've got this straight... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Fished ( 574624 ) <amphigory@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Saturday January 14, 2006 @10:51PM (#14473753)
    You've spent a great deal of time and effort to get Eclipse setup, and are apparently using it with at least some success. However, you are debating whether to switch to something with less features because you're not sure if you need all of Eclipses features. Therefore, you are proposing to go to a very different, but very feature rich programming environment that will cost money?

    Huh? If it's working, why switch?

    I bet you were one of those "vi" types back in the day, weren't you? No editor can ever have too many features: Emacs all the way!

    • Re:Let me see if I've got this straight... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Otter ( 3800 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @11:04PM (#14473789) Journal
      I think his point is that he's still fighting with Eclipse, and is wondering if switching to something simpler might require less effort than continuing with Eclipse is going to demand.

    • Hey! It is a reasonable question. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by klahnako ( 209184 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @11:11PM (#14473809) Homepage
      I use CodeGuide5, which's interface is optimized for dealing with Java and it's refactorings. I also have Eclipse installed, but I find it tedious to use because it is too generic. I keep Eclipse for it's most robust CVS client so I can access some temperamental CVS servers.

      I find it a valid question that IDEA is worth the few hundred dollars it may cost in order to have a more streamlined experience.

      • Same here.

        Eclipse is cool for having a lot of add ons. However for most of them I would prefer to have a solitair application instead.

        Like my parent I use CodeGuide from www.omnicore.com for my serious work and Eclipse for CVS/Subversion access. Eclispe lacks a lot of features and in my eyes its in some areas very brainded ... e.g. the distinction between "navigatgor" and "Java perspective" .... I wan't all commands I can do on a Java "class" in the "file navigator" and not in a seperate perspective whre I
        • I wan't all commands I can do on a Java "class" in the "file navigator"
          I find you can do pretty much everything you need from the Java perspective, e.g. you can create, rename, repackage and delete Java classes. If you need more flexibility there's a bash shell.
    • i dunno i always found eclipse to be tricky.. I never fully liked it. Then i got employed at my current employer and the senior people said I should try Intellij.. I fell in love. Does everythin I want it to, is pretty well customizable, has plugins ect ect.. I do not miss eclipse (or the few days I used net beans for that matter)
      • As a long time Eclipse user, I really enjoy its refactoring help
        and configurability...

        I imagine that starting to use Eclipse is no harder than starting to use
        any other IDE, but maybe IntelliJ is more streamlined?

        What are the tricky parts with Eclipse? What wasn't clear?

        I can imagine that checking out code from a repository (cvs or other)
        as a first task may be a bit tricky? You might need to install a
        plugin, and then select between some options on how to check out
        the code?

        Anything more? Just interested...
        • > Eclipse allows you to use the GUI to specify library dependencies, or you can save time by editing an Eclipse file called .classpath. The .classpath file is in XML format. Sometimes when I make a minor change it tells me that my changes are "not valid XML". I can't for the life of me figure out why. They sure look valid to me. Eclipse has the concept of "views", which are visual panels. There is a "package explorer" view, which you use to browse your Java packages. Eclipse seems have two differ
    • > I bet you were one of those "vi" types back in the day, weren't you? No editor can ever have too many features: Emacs all the way!

      Actually, it sounds more like he installed Emacs and is wondering does he really need a whole OS running inside the editor when he just wants to change some text...

      Vi / Emacs aside, what about eclipse is hard? I've just recently installed it for Java development and found it pain free and pretty simple. I know there are features I don't know about or know how to use, but t
    • Idea has MORE features if anything than Eclipse when it comes to smooth Java development. Intellij IDEA is hands down _THE_ development environment for Java! That said, I do use Eclipse for all my Python development, and even then Komodo is prefered to Eclipse.
    • I bet you were one of those "vi" types back in the day, weren't you? No editor can ever have too many features: Emacs all the way
      What do you mean, "back in the day?"

  • don't forget netbeans- "ide religion" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by acomj ( 20611 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @10:55PM (#14473764) Homepage
    If your doing java development netbeans is an option. Eclipse has forced it to become much better. Although it doesn't use SWT. I prefer eclipse, but have friends who swear by net beans. Unlike most people in this situation we still talk to one antoher (java ide's seems to cause religous battes, like vi vs emacs.. etc..). This kind of battles are silly.

    http://www.netbeans.org/ [netbeans.org]
    http://community.java.net/netbeans/ [java.net]

    than there is sun's java studio...what is this?? I don't know , but its free now and seems to be yet another ide.

    http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/devtools/free/i ndex.html?cid=16052 [sun.com]

    • Re:don't forget netbeans- "ide religion" (Score:4, Informative)

      by junkgui ( 69602 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @11:46PM (#14473916)
      Sun java studio creator is netbeans 4.1 with some added propriatary plugins for drag and drop JSF coding... And eventually it should pull in nebeans 5.0 features as well. Drag and drop JSF is very important if you work in a shop that is constantly teatering towards ASP.NET because it is basically the same product. If you work with people who don't have the greatest skill set this can make them productive at building web gui, and netbeans/swing will always be better at building stand alone swing apps then eclipses attempts. Netbeans is much better then it used to be, but it is still occward in a lot of ways. The one standout feature that I like about netbeans is that ant is integrated into the IDE much more completely, there is no way to build a netbeans project without haveing a working ant script that can also be run on the command line. Other IDE's don't force your hand the same way, and I really hate projects that are not written in such a way that you can just check them out of CVS and build them/deploy ear files... Also netbeans 5.0 has a profiler that is still not working very well, but when it does work it will be a very nice addition. On the other hand eclipse is really very easy to work with, and works very well. The GUI is very nice and very consistent, but I think that swing has the possibility of being much better then SWT, so feel free to ridicule spelling errors in this post and call me an idiot.

  • Easy (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Eclipse == free
    IntelliJ == NOT free

    That's enough for me right there.

    (Netbeans == free, but Netbeans == sucks)

    • Why does netbeans suck, please elaborate... I really had no problems with Netbeans at all. It got me going with mobile phone java development. I started using Eclipse about three years ago and loved it immediately, now I had a similar experience with Netbeans. Especially because Eclipse is a little weak on the GUI side. Mostly what I would suggest is to see what you will be developing for, what types of apps you want to maken, and then decide what IDE you require. Sometimes vim is enough, even for java de
    • Well, I mostly agree, but as someone who codes for a living, the cost of IDEA is more than worth it. I've used them all, and while Eclipse has gotten better, and is now (at least for me) actually *usable*, I find that I can just fly with IDEA.

      But this really is a Religious War (tm), and as such there's no Right Answer (pat. pend.)
    • Whoa, now. !(Netbeans == sucks). Rather, Netbeans \subset sucks. Likewise, Netbeans \subset sucks.

    • Re:Easy (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nacturation ( 646836 ) <nacturation AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday January 15, 2006 @03:01PM (#14476557) Journal
      Eclipse == free
      IntelliJ == NOT free

      That's enough for me right there.

      Is that how you make all your decisions?

      No condoms == free
      Using condoms == NOT free

      Cost/benefits analysis... more than just a buzzword!
       
      • "Cost/benefits analysis... more than just a buzzword!" Relax junior, this is not a Project Management problem. Eclipse is free, bugless and extremely scallable; That's enought for me. Your story about comdom is quite idiotic. Since 1998 I have use Symantec "Visual cafe" (was good), IBM (Visual Age) (really sucks), JBuilder (ok but buggy), NetBeans (quite heavy, Sun stuff...), IntelliJ (excellent for refactoring), Eclipse (excellent) and now I am using WSAD (Eclipse extension, 'ok'). I really prefer Eclip
        • Relax junior, this is not a Project Management problem.

          Gee, thanks Pop.

          Eclipse is free, bugless and extremely scallable; That's enought for me.

          Fair enough, but your decision came after trying out many differing IDEs. But to base your entire decision on nothing more than "Eclipse is free, so that's all the consideration that's necessary" is rather naive -- and that's the issue I was addressing. Maybe if you're a student on a tight budget, price is the only relevant factor. However, if you use it daily for
          • Yea, I agree. But Eclipse is not only free, it is also a good IDE. Also there a lot of plugins (buggy or not, free or not, I must mention) you can use for several kind of product developement (Hibernate, Tomcat, Spring, to mention theses). If Jbuilder was free, I would not use it anyway. And yea, IntelliJ is a very good product. But for a starter kit (entry product to learn java) I would choose Eclipse. Tks Etienne.
      • This one is easier.

        A condom is cheaper than child support, but is that really an issue for the common slashdotter though?
        (Disclaimer: I am married, and there's a prescription that handles this that is probably cheaper than buying condoms in bulk.)
      • "Cost/benefits analysis... more than just a buzzword!"

        True but "free" as in speech programing tools have some hidden benefits.
        A good example I ran into was a spell checker. My company found a very handy spell check library that supported many languages and had all the features we needed. It cost around $1000.
        Okay fine. A few year later and it starts having some issues with the latest version of MSC++ and WindowsXP SP2. We call the company and they let us know that they are ending the product and no updates

      • Re:Easy (Score:3, Funny)

        by orasio ( 188021 )
        Free as in Freedom.
        The sexual metaphor is:

        Girlfriend: you can get them for lots of money (nice car, good clothes, Kenzo parfum, drinks), or no upfront cost, but it has hidden costs all over. You _will_ get screwed.
        Drunk girl at the bar: FREE

        Condoms are not optional.
    • Eclipse == free
      IntelliJ == NOT free

      That's enough for me right there.

      (Netbeans == free, but Netbeans == sucks)

      Food found in a dumpster == free
      Food ordered from a restaurant == not free

      That's enough for me right there. And remind me never to let you treat! Not saying that Eclipse == dumpster food, but that the core arguement is very lame.

      IDEA is a great,great IDE. Very full featured and if it doesn't have something in particular, there's scores of helpful user created plugins, or make your own...I w

  • I've been using IntelliJ for over a year now. Trust me when I tell you that it is by far the most productive IDE I've ever used. There's not even a question between the two. Spend the money on IntelliJ and you won't be sorry.
    • I agree with IntelliJ IDEA being the most productive IDE. It has features like code flow analysis, saying things like "if statement is always true" or "value assigned to variable is never used". This may sound like a small thing, but it actually constantly prevents bugs, because most of the time I get some warning like that, it is because I used the wrong variable or something. And IntelliJ has hundreds of these inspections, and hundreds of little details that make it the best IDE.

  • IDEA all the way! (Score:5, Informative)

    by avalys ( 221114 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @11:05PM (#14473791)
    IDEA is the best IDE I've ever used. It automates pretty much every mindless code navigation/generation/refactoring task, but stays out of your way otherwise. Really, it's not so much an IDE - more an souped-up, heavily-Java-specific text editor. There are no wizards, and it never hides code from you. It just takes a lot of the tedious tasks out of coding.

    It's not hard to use, but the sheer array of features can take some time to discover and learn to use. It is very definitely "straightforward".

    Eclipse is not bad - IDEA is expensive, and Eclipse is a decent free alternative. But if you have the money, there's no reason not to use IDEA. Eclipse has always seemed to me like a poorly-executed IDEA clone. Similar to most open-source desktop software, really.

    And don't listen to the masochists who will tell you a text editor and the command line is all you need.

    IDEA has a 30-day free trial - why don't you download it and give it a spin?

    • Re:IDEA all the way! (Score:3, Informative)

      by dubl-u ( 51156 ) *
      Eclipse is not bad - IDEA is expensive, and Eclipse is a decent free alternative. But if you have the money, there's no reason not to use IDEA. Eclipse has always seemed to me like a poorly-executed IDEA clone. Similar to most open-source desktop software, really.

      I'd agree. I have used both extensively, and IDEA has always had a much better UI. For something that I spend many hours a day using, that's very important to me. It's sort of like the difference between the iPod and Brand X MP3 player. It's not th
      • I have sworn by IDEA for the past three major version releases. Now I find myself swearing at it sometimes. While the feature set has continued to grow impressively, the product is started to feel slow and bloated. In particular, the editors have impressive error checking features that are always on but wind up hindering you if your files start to get big or you start to do unusual things like create a JSP page that generates Javascript (for an AJAX application).

        While one can refactor for better modularity
      • If you want to do the comparison with Eclipse 3.1, this could be useful:

        F2 (or hover mouse) * Ctrl-Q: show definition (and docs, if any) of symbol under the cursor
        F3 * Ctrl-B: jump to definition of symbol under the cursor
        Alt-LeftArrow * Ctrl-Alt-Left Arrow: back to previous location (like back in your browser, it has a stack of visited edit locations)
        Ctrl-Shift-T * Ctrl-N: find class by name
        Ctrl-Sh
  • To throw another IDE in the mix, try out Netbeans [netbeans.org]. Last I checked 5.0 is in RC1. I have used it for a few pet projects, and find it quite useful. Especially for GUI development, they use a new component called matisse [netbeans.org].

  • Tough Call (Score:5, Informative)

    by GOD_ALMIGHTY ( 17678 ) <curt DOT johnson AT gmail DOT com> on Saturday January 14, 2006 @11:41PM (#14473891) Homepage
    Depends on what you need to do, which frameworks your using. I've found IntelliJ integrates with a standard IDE-neutral build xml and custom tools like XDoclet much better than Eclipse. Eclipse demands that your project be built inside Eclipse to use any Eclipse tools. The default Java editor in IntelliJ is nicer than Eclipses as well.

    If you're supporting multiple developers, Eclipse can be easier to get people to standardize on, making debugging the dev environment easier. If your doing JBoss work, the Eclipse based JBossIDE might be nicer than IntelliJ, just because everything is setup already. Avoid Rational Application Developer at all costs though, it probably needs a couple of revisions before the IBM over engineering gets out of your way and lets you work.

    It's been a while since I've tried to do web framework stuff in IntelliJ, although it's always handled this a lot better than the plugins for Eclipse that I've seen, it never handled XDoclet integration well enough to deal with tag library and struts tags. That always made some nice features useless. Eclipse is just as bad, I've yet to see a good set of plugins that handle all the tools I use in a standard Java dev environment. Many of the plugins seem to expect things done the Eclipse way, or they become useless. I wouldn't mind doing things the 'Eclipse way' if that were synonymous with IDE-neutral, but until then, the Eclipse way won't cut it.

    The thing that annoys me the most about all these IDEs is the lack of imagination in tool-building. Very few graphical tools handle the IDE-neutral environment well, the wizards and syntax highlighting engines tend to be extremely inflexible. If my project needs JUnit testing, why wouldn't I do an automated nightly pull and generate a public report everyday? Wouldn't my IDE only be helpful if I could do the Unit tests outside the IDE, without figuring out a boatload of crypticlly stored dependencies?

    Anyway, I'd try each of them out with the particular features you need, and make sure to check that they will easily integrate other tools you'll need. Java IDE's could be a lot nicer. Both Eclipse and IntelliJ have made great improvements, but this is more a half-way point than anywhere near a victory lap.

  • After downloading the JDK and Eclipse and setting the CLASSPATH and JAVA_HOME vars, all I had to do to get Eclipse running was type ./eclipse. So what's your idea of "a long time?" Why don't you just try IntelliJ and see if you like it? Nobody else's opinion is really going to be much help in a "what's better?" debate anyway.
    • seriously, eclipse has to be the easiest IDE to get running. When I first tried it I wasn't too sure about the whole perspective thing, but once I started using Eclipse I realized that it has tons of features, is as easy to use as any other IDE I've used, and is Free. No downside, really, except I wish it came with more syntax highlighters, for things like Xml, JSPs, and SQL.
    • After downloading the JDK and Eclipse and setting the CLASSPATH and JAVA_HOME vars, all I had to do to get Eclipse running was type ./eclipse.
      You don't even have to set CLASSPATH and JAVA_HOME. As long as there is a usable java executable in the path, Eclipse will Just Work (tm). I have no idea how it could be difficult to set up, just unzip the downloaded archive and go. No install. Nothing. Zilch. Nada.

  • Java IDEs (Score:5, Informative)

    by Khanar ( 470617 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @12:12AM (#14474045)
    You should also at least look at NetBeans [netbeans.org].

    Anyway, I have used all three of the big Java IDEs.

    While they all share the same basic functionality, like great refactoring, ANT, and JUnit support, each has some areas it excels in. I would say IntelliJ is slightly better than eclipse (the free version, I have never used IBM's eclipse based environment), and both of these I prefer over NetBeans.

    The main reason I prefer IntelliJ (if you can afford it) is that it has more useful shortcuts, more intelligent formatting capabilities (if you press enter while in a quoted string it will automatically insert the needed quotes and plus sign and place the rest of the string on the next line, and back again).

    One feature I really like, that from what I remember is only in Eclipse, is incremental building. The other two require you to hit a build button before hitting the run/debug button. Not that I'm lazy, but you really get used to it building automagically when you hit save. One thing I find kind of annoying about Eclipse is that it doesn't include support for say, xml editing, which the other two support out-of-the-box, instead requiring you to go to their site and finding web-tools plugin. Also the internal parser used for error marking often requires saving the file before it will refresh the markings on the page.

    The reason I put NetBeans last, is that it doesn't include quick fix suggestions. Its nice to be able to hit a couple of keys and have the IDE suggest and fix simple problems without having to look at a reference, or moving a bunch of code around.

    From my experience all three of these IDEs take about the same amount of setup when you get passed simple applications, so if you had trouble with Eclipse, I don't think IntelliJ or NetBeans will be much simpler.

    There is always javac I guess.

    • Re:Java IDEs (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Westley ( 99238 )
      One thing to note: Eclipse has had the "press enter while writing a string" functionality for a little while. I think it came in the 3.1 series. That's one of the problems of comparing these IDEs - I know that Eclipse develops pretty quickly, and I'd imagine the other two do too. Keeping up with what each can do would leave little time left for coding!

    • Re:Java IDEs (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Flwyd ( 607088 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @04:20AM (#14474775) Homepage
      One feature I really like, that from what I remember is only in Eclipse, is incremental building. The other two require you to hit a build button before hitting the run/debug button. Not that I'm lazy, but you really get used to it building automagically when you hit save. One thing I find kind of annoying about Eclipse is that it doesn't include support for say, xml editing, which the other two support out-of-the-box, instead requiring you to go to their site and finding web-tools plugin. Also the internal parser used for error marking often requires saving the file before it will refresh the markings on the page.

      For me, this is perhaps the nicest feature of Eclipse. Most of my day is spent making changes to one file at a time, then testing to see if it worked. Our enterprise application consists of a server run out of a servlet container (Tomcat usually) and a Java client. It often takes half a minute to start Tomcat and the server and it takes a minute or two to launch the client, log in, and get to where you want to be. Incremental building and hot code replace mean that I can fix five bugs and try fifteen solutions to another problem without a single process dying. On some days the productivity gain is more than a factor of two.

      And I agree with another commenter -- if you've already spent a lot of time setting Eclipse up, why switch now?

      (Having just created a branch workspace, I'm rather disappointed with how few settings travel with you when you say "Export All Settings" in Eclipse. Why would I not want my annotation and text coloring to be the same? Why would you not remind me I need to export my code formatter? Why would you not export my code templates?)
      • I just copy the whole workspace, then delete (or omit in the first place) the projects I don't want. This works really well if you have to work on two CVS branches at the same time.

        You can try exporting preferences, but this has never worked to my satisfaction. Throw in badly-behaved plugins (like Jalopy) and all hope is lost.

        Copy the whole workspace -- it's the only way to be sure.
  • This is by no means an ad. Just a helpful bit of information. Bluej [bluej.org] and Dr. Java [sourceforge.net] have worked well for me in the past. Bluej has more (in my estimation unneeded) frills then Dr. Java, bu that's a personal preference. Dr. Java has a very shallow learning curve, and setup is simple: run the installer, and point it to your tools.jar class path. Both are free; Bluej was "developed and maintained by a joint research group at Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia, and the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK."

    • Re:Try these... (Score:3, Informative)

      by owlstead ( 636356 )
      Dr Java has a shallow learning curve because it is simple. TOO simple. I would never use an IDE anymore that only does syntax coloring. All three main Java IDE's (IDEA, Eclipse and Netbeans) parse the text you type by default. This means you can easily see what's a local variable and what's a field. See if your application contains unreachable code, bad switches, bad expressions and of course on the fly refactorin.

      Especially Netbeans will support additional code checks in the future (think checking if your

  • I migrated, haven't looked back (Score:3, Interesting)

    by slick_rick ( 193080 ) * <rwrslashdot.rowell@info> on Sunday January 15, 2006 @02:23AM (#14474517) Homepage Journal
    I used Eclipse originally and then migrated to IDEA because Eclipse kept crashing on me (to be fair, this was probably Debian Unstable's fault, not Eclipse). To be honest I really prefer the IntelliJ enviro. At the time it did a lot of things out of the box that Eclipse did not (like show me errors in my Javadoc comments, integrate extremely smoothly with Tomcat, gracefully handle JSPs, etc). Eclipse could probably be bent to do all these things with various plugins, but my IDE is one thing i really don't want to futz with all that much.

    That was two years ago, and to be honest I haven't had much urge to check on how Eclipse is doing these days. I liked it when it wasn't crashing, and for the price you can't beat it... But when your company is picking up the tab and you just want it to work, you can't beat IntelliJ with a stick :-)

    • I migrated, haven't looked back-GMF (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "That was two years ago, and to be honest I haven't had much urge to check on how Eclipse is doing these days. I liked it when it wasn't crashing, and for the price you can't beat it... But when your company is picking up the tab and you just want it to work, you can't beat IntelliJ with a stick :-)"

      Well Eclipse isn't "crashing", but it can be a royal pain sometimes to update and resolve dependency issues across plugins. I'm currently trying to find .org.eclipse.emf.ecore so I can install GMF.* No luck so f
    • You can now download the latest Eclipse 3.1.1 stable including "web" support. This means XML, HTML, schema's, application servers, WDSL, various levels of compliancies with servlet standards, and well, a lot more that I have not found the time to explore. It's 186 MB's big (ugh!).

      Note that this is a pretty early "stable" release from the Eclipse Tools. So most things work, but they have not been smoothed out as best as they can do. Another problem is to keep the complexity out a bit. Eclipse does a fair job

  • Alternates to background assumptions (Score:4, Insightful)

    by iaminthetrunk ( 945825 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @03:04AM (#14474623) Homepage
    I am currently using Eclipse and it took a long time to get the environment set up.

    Respectfully, in addition to asking which IDE to use, you should be asking yourself why this is. Particularly if you do not work in soloist isolation, collaborating with a colleague is in your best interests - you should have asked a college with expertise to assist you. If you are not fortunate enough to be in a master-apprentice relationship with a more experienced colleague, you ought at least shift your automatic frame of mind towards the collaboration of a working group. You could later repay with collaborative expertise in a particular subset of specialty you possess. Even in open source projects, such instincts for teaming and efficiency will serve you well. Your question has been good, but it's basis is suggestive an compartmentalized perspective or environment that may be at least as important to ponder as the finer points of IDE efficiencies.

    Has anybody here migrated from Eclipse to IDEA?

    I work with both simultaneously. Both are adequate workspace environments, relatively easy to migrate and setup(*). However, I find it more interesting to redirect to asking if have considered using both IDEs for their strengths, if costs permit. After migrating, I found no need to actually choose between them, and would ask you if your post hides a false framing question, implying a binary choice when other options exist. You need not fully setup a project in an IDE to reap many of the benefits of it's use. You may load a single source file and still perform a fairly broad number of powerful actions. (As other will no doubt point out, the mix of refactorings offered between them varies, it can be pleasing to utilize both for a combined pool of available IDE refactorings.)

    With Murphy as my witness, I currently have Eclipse, Visual SlickEdit, NetBeans, and IntelliJ installed. I use Eclipse for a subset of some of it's refactorings, SlickEdit as needed for things such as horizontal column cuts and power-editing macro recording/replay (the other IDEs simply don't provide these features suitably), and IntelliJ for most development. NetBeans I confess to not much using; I've tried JDeveloper on a colleagues box. Such evaluations are useful - an IDE with even one or two favorable unique features easily run on singleton files repays the exploratory time.

    That you may not wish the setup costs is a valid point, as is ability level at maintaining familiarity with multiple IDEs, however the counterpoint here about maximizing efficiency by selection and mix of the right tools, and about continual learning, are, I think, valid. In both regards to increased colleague collaboration and avoiding binary choices to build a robust mix of tools, please consider keeping an active mind.

    (*) There are some occasional stray bits of migration errata in either direction, but nothing severe. For instance, Eclipse awkwardly roadblocking on, say, encountering a mixed case windows directory vs an all lowercase Java import. That was bad coding by a third party developer, but an awkward case to workaround in Eclipse that IntelliJ handled smoothly. Both are good IDEs, IntelliJ is perhaps a bit smoother and more robust.

  • Tried it, didn't like it (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Will Sargent ( 2751 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @03:45AM (#14474702) Homepage
    I didn't like the Java editor [tersesystems.com]. There are many things that IntelliJ does differently, but there are very few things I could say that IntelliJ does that Eclipse doesn't in the Java editor. At least for 4.5.4. I have no experience with 5.0.

    However, the JSP and XML support in IntelliJ freaking rocks. Live templates combined with the IntelliJ JSP editor is enough that I switch out of Eclipse to IntelliJ whenever I have to edit JSP, even though I have WTP installed. I've been told that JDeveloper and Netbeans also have JSP editor support, but haven't looked at them closely.

    • there are very few things I could say that IntelliJ does that Eclipse doesn't in the Java editor

      I haven't kept up with either product. Three years ago, everyone in the Java shop that I was working in at that time always picked IntelliJ over Eclipse. They all swore by the refactoring support that IntelliJ had.

      Has Eclipse caught up with IntelliJ with regards to refactoring support?

      • I would say so. You can highlight a section of code and tell Eclipse to "Extract Method" and it will take all the variables external to that section of code and make them parameters to the method it creates. You can move methods up and down the class hierarchy. Implement interfaces automatically.

        Again, I haven't found anything that IntelliJ does that Eclipse doesn't do, but I'm officially behind the current package now and therefore don't know what I'm talking about. :-)

  • Eclipse: great, but sucks. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by clambake ( 37702 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @03:51AM (#14474719) Homepage
    Eclipse has a billion and one plugins, it runs on all platforms, it's awesome... Oh, but also it sucks. Absolutely anti-intuitive (perhaps holdover from it's IBM days? IBM couldn't design a UI to save thier lives). Inconsistancy, primarily, is my main beef. In one set of menus, FooBar is right on top, but on another it's two levels deep, but on the right-click context menu it's three levels deep in a completely different heirarchy... on one pane, but on another pane the right-click context menu for FooBar it's only one level deep, but is named slightly differently. It makes it's a nightmare to find what you are looking for even when know exactly what it is...
    • Do you have a precise exemple for this ? I have been using eclipse for quite some time now and wasn't particularly bothered by the UI. I really am curious for one or more exemples of what you state.
    • Eclipse is a pretty intuitive IDE. I have not an idea what you are talking about. Maybe that's because I've used it since 2.1, but I cannot see too many problematic parts. The only thing missinb by default is switching between tabs using the keyboard. I prefer to use ctrl-tab for this, as most Windows applications do. ctrl-F6 is used in other programs as well though, and you can pretty easily find/reprogram the keyboard shortcurt (fortunately).

      • Eclipse is a pretty intuitive IDE.
        Intuitive means yoou don't need to learn it, it works just so. And if you already have used it for a while you don't have to remember any features you already used because they are right there where you need them.

        Eclipse is anything but intuitive!

        E.g. how many ways are there to create a new project and connect it to a CVS repository? And why does only ONE of those many ways work correctly?

        The way how classpathes and libraries work is a compete mess. Why can't it be simple a
        • Intuitive means yoou don't need to learn it, it works just so.
          To a computer nerd, "intuitive" means, "I know how to use it!"

        • Eclipse is anything but intuitive!

          When I was starting with Eclipse I had little problem figuring out stuff. Now it's like second nature. E.g. how many ways are there to create a new project and connect it to a CVS repository? And why does only ONE of those many ways work correctly? Well, creating a new project is as simple as File -> New -> Project or File -> Import to import an existing one. Connecting to CVS is as simple as (right click on project) -> Team -> Share project, etc.

          The wa


          • I would say the Java perspective is more useful than the Resource perspective since it has all the Java refactoring stuff in addition to being able to create/delete java files.

            But thats what I say .... why is the refactoring not in the resource view available? If it was there, you would not need the Java perspective.

            Same for teh rest of your examples: it does not help much to point out the "easy" coammnd. As for every command you showed, there exist several alternatives wich either don't work, or have a sli
            • I hardly use the resource perspective, just stick to the Java persepctive as it does everything I need when editing (I also use the debug perspective for debugging). I suppose the resource perspective is there as a filesystem-only view of the project without any language specific stuff. As you say it doesn't do any Java stuff.

              A library in Eclipse is just a collection of jars and classes that you can use in multiple projects. They're useful for defining libraries of related stuff, so when you create a new pr
    • I use Eclipse a little, but often find it easier to revert to (favorite text editor) and javac. The Eclipse built-in compiler seems pretty fast though.

      The first roadblock is how to run a program from the IDE. Yeah, yeah, in Java you have to specify which module contains a class with a static main method, but still, bringing up a project and figuring out the Run dialog can be an effort.

      The second roadblock is how example programs are packaged -- some kind of .zip format and unzipping when you load proj

      • Eclipse is real fussy about existing/new directories, and yes I have generated projects to encompass collections of .java files I had previously maintained with a text editor and compiled with javac, but I can never remember from one time to the next how to do it.

        Once you've defined a project and copied over your source files, just go to Project -> Properties -> Source and include/exlclude your source directories as required. Choose a build directory (or not) and Eclipse will build your project in

    • I looked at IDEA shortly, but I've been rapturously using Eclipse for years now. The GUI in Eclipse is at the top of the heap, it works very well, it's quick, powerful, customizable, taps into JavaDoc help during coding, supremely well integrated with CVS, and easy to navigate. It took some time to get used to what all the icons represented, but Eclipse is another reason I enjoy coding. OH, and it's free! I was going to say "great bang for the buck", but it being free, then just... "great bang"!

  • Why not answer your own question? (Score:3, Informative)

    by darkpurpleblob ( 180550 ) * on Sunday January 15, 2006 @04:08AM (#14474756)
    So, I wonder if Eclipse is more complex than I need. I have never used IDEA before. Is it more straight-forward? Has anybody here migrated from Eclipse to IDEA? How steep was the learning curve?
    Why don't you try for yourself with a 30 day trial of IDEA [jetbrains.com]?
  • What's up with the Java programmers these days? They complain about an IDE that practically writes the code for them while they drink coffee, and it's free. You guys should see what kind of tools many C++ programmers are forced to use & and pay big bucks for. *cough* CodeWarrior *cough*.
    • I remember falling in love with Code Warrior many years ago. I think it was the graphical debugger that did it.

      Now graphical debuggers are no big deal, but when the only thing you'd used before was gdb, it was really cool.
    • God I hope no one says "Well you should use Eclipse with CDT!". CDT today barely functions. 3.x is going in the right direction, but after all it is still make and gdb behind the scenes, so how good can it ever get? Maybe when the C/C++ refactoring catches up then at least the editor will be usefull, but the debugging and building sucks still.
    • has code warrior gotten less buggy recently? a few years ago i used code warrior and it was awful. bloodshed's Dev-C++ was much better and i have been using it ever since.
    • C++?? Eclipse does that too. [eclipse.org] While Eclipse, out-of-the-box is a Java IDE, it was designed to support multiple languages and frameworks, and does so quite well.
    • And it was ++C and C++ both!
  • Doesn't the question of which IDE to use for Java come up every month or two on slashdot?
  • I'm an eclipse user, and I have been now for over a year. I think it's awesome, yes it takes a bit of getting used to, but I find that the way I work, eclipse just speeds everything up.

    However, it's clear that the Eclipse/IDEA argument is another vi/emacs war, and nearly everyone is going to have a strong opinion either way. I guess it's down to which fits the way you work best. I suggest trying IDEA out, if it works better for you, switch. If it's just as confusing as eclipse, don't bother, stick with the
  • I usually use Eclipse, for financial reasons, but I've used IntelliJ for a few months at a different company, and I regretted getting back to Eclipse. Eclipe is acceptable, but to me IntelliJ was much more intuitive to use. Of course there's a little bit of a learning curve -IDE's are complex programs. But I remember often being pleased with finding functionality at places where I expected/guessed/hoped it would be. I've rarely used a program this complex that felt so 'natural'. I completely agree with the
  • I haven't worked with the latest version of idea, but i used it a couple of years. Today i code with Eclipse. I can say that it was always a step behind, adding the best new usability-improvements a couple of month later. Well, that was my Impression. I don't know if its still like that. I loved to use Idea, because the usability was always very straight forward and developer-centric. Eclipse is a little more cryptic, with lots of functionality thats always present, even if you don't need it. But its very g
  • I started migratring from Eclipse to NetBeans when I saw how nice 4.1 was. Now I'm using the daily builds of 5.0 and it's fantastic. Great for doing GUI or J2EE work. Integrates with JBoss, which is key for my work. Haven't used IDEA so I can't help you there.
  • I checked out the Eclipse. Wasn't that impressed. To me it seemed too busy. I never understood the one editor fits all languages concept. Pick a language and write an IDE for it. Whats so difficult? I can see why most people on here seem to prefer the IntelliJ IDE.
  • I've used Eclipse for a while but was forced to change to IDEA because of a new project I got involved in and the project, including the GUI, was written in IDEA. So I wasn't able to migrate the project to Eclipse because IDEA does some magic with the Swing part (if someone can tip me on how to get the Swing GUI written in IDEA working in Eclipse, it would be great!).

    But I like Eclipse. Here is why:

    - Eclipse looks more polished including fonts, project navigation...
    - Overall usage is clearer in Eclipse. I l
  • Dear Ask Slashdot: I am currently an Agnostic, but I've read a lot about this "Jesus" thing on the internet and it sounds really cool!! Although I don't plan to now, I would like the option to sin, and I would prefer something that keeps my weekends free because I really like to sleep in. I've read a little bit about Catholicism and it seems interesting, and I've looked at Judiasm, but I think I would have a problem fasting for a whole day even though eight days of gifs would be neat. Hopefully someone can point me in the right direction!
    ====
    Will we actually see this on Ask Slashdot? Well, why not have a real religious argument, that would probably be less controversial than what IDE to choose!!

  • I've used both in the workplace (Score:4, Informative)

    by malachid69 ( 306291 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @03:33PM (#14476766) Homepage
    Personally, I have used both in the workplace. I have found IntelliJ to be:
    1) more expensive
    2) more intuitive
    3) more reliable (ie: searches in Eclipse regularly left items out)
    4) faster

    I would say that #1 is your deciding factor. If you are willing to spend the money on it (you can usually get it for 1/2 price for a Personal copy -- and free for open source projects), it is a much better product.

    Some will argue that Eclipse is better because of the fact that it is open source. As much as I prefer open source software, I was willing to spend the money on IntelliJ for home because of #2-#4.

    Some will likely point out that #3 just means that I was likely doing something wrong. It wasn't just me - it was the entire team. At the time that I noticed this deficit (last year), the entire work team was required to use Eclipse; and a few of us switched to IntelliJ (and honestly a couple to JBuilder as well; no one switched to NetBeans, though we tried it) because all but 1 of us despised how Eclipse performed.

    If you aren't looking for something with all the bells and whistles, you might just want to go with a much cheaper solution like JCreator (which I also paid for) -- but I personally would recommend IntelliJ.

  • The best IDE for Java is your favorite text editor, a console and ANT. IDE SchmIDE.
    • Yeah, text editors are great... until you start debugging. I don't care how good you are, my conditional breakpoints, annotated stack frames, expression watchers, and hot code replace will run circles around your System.out.println()'s.
  • Well, i dont think any other Java IDE can come close to IDEA.. IDEA is the way to go :-)
  • You could try using netbeans, an open-source project. Some of the advantages of using Netbeans are

    1. Its JSP, HTML, and XML editors are excellent. This is something that is sorely lacking in Eclipse. It is fast and it does not freeze like eclipse.

    2. Eclipse freezes when trying to open a class or expand the project tree. This happens most of the times.

    3. Code-completion is slow in eclipse.

    4. NetBeans 4.1 comes with full integration with Tomcat 5 and Sun System Application Server PE 8.1. In order to get this
  • Can the OP please tell us why the Eclipse environment setup took him/her such a long time? I've used Eclipse in the past with plugings such as EMF, JUnit (which now comes built in), VSS Plugin, Java Pretty Printer, Perl SDK Plugin, etc., and I never had too much trouble or time spent in setting up the environment....
  • I've never been a huge fan of Integrated Development Enviornments. The learning curve is usually quite steep, each has its own peculiarities, and each does things you originally had no intention of doing.

    Case in point, Anjuta, on the creation of a new app, creates a 500K config file and I have no idea what it's doing. Each IDE also has a tendency to create its own directory hierarchy, make file or equivilent, and if versioning is included, will pick its own scheme.

    What this usually entails for me is loss of control over the project. I sort of feel trapped within the IDE, and unable to get out. The Visual Studio effect; I don't know where my code ends and the automatically generated stuff begins.

    As such, I prefer keeping it simple. I use a bare text editor where possible. Syntac highlighting is a must for me, and I've found very few editors that do this correctly. Emacs will work if your colour scheme is OK, but Emacs is a quasi-IDE to begin with.

    I find writing computer programs to be just that. Writing. It's a personalised sort of thing. A few personally written shell scripts, a handmade makefile, the command line and a decent editor can go a long, long way. You are intimately aquainted with all aspects of the project. On the downside, you are intimately aquainted with all aspects of the project.

    Your milage may vary, considerably. But before you begin to use an IDE, as what it is giving you, good and bad, that a personalised DE is not. There's a trend towards monolithic IDE programs that do it all in one, but do they really deliver on their promise. Are you really more productive. Your troubles with Eclipse could be symptoms that IDE are really not for you.
    • Eclipse does very little in terms of creating filesystems, you can configure your project however you want, or create a project from any existing code, no matters how it is structured in terms of files. The only files it creates are .project and .classpath.

      I use an Ant build for building and packaging deliverables. Eclipse compiles my code as I work (the Eclipse build Just Works (tm)) and the hot code replacement means I don't have to repackage using the Ant script until I release to test. Whichever way
  • IntelliJ IDEA is available for a free 30 day trial [jetbrains.com]. Just download it and try it out, and you should be able to answer your own question. I did and decided that while IDEA is good, Eclipse has more compelling price:performance.

    There are other free options as well:
    Oracle JDeveloper [oracle.com]
    Borland JBuilder [borland.com]

    And maybe a few others if you search Google for "free Java IDE".

  • IDEA (Score:1)

    by sawanv ( 551336 )
    IDEA is an excellent tool...far superior than Netbeans or Eclipse IMHO. I have used all three and found IDEA to be heads above both.

    It is much more stable (It caught a JVM bug, reported it to me and offered to restart or adjust itself!),
    has excellent featueres built right in (no hunting for plugins and having to deal with buggy plugins),
    has a MUCH shorter learning curve then Eclipse,
    excellent version control (better then Netbeans 5, Eclipses' has bugs in it) subtle features that you grow to appreciate, exc
  • ...but I once had a somewhat bizarre set of circumstances that led to me downloading and using Oracle's JDeveloper [oracle.com]. It really wasn't too bad, I liked it much better than NetBeans (what's up with "mount points", anyway?), although I still prefer Eclipse. And it's free-as-in-beer, so all it'll cost you is some time to download and install it. I've also heard nice things about TopLink, but I haven't looked into it.
  • People will probably think I'm lieing, but I don't care. My IDE of choice is and will probably always be VIM. I have tried many IDE's and they all have something nice to offer, but I just can't get past the power of VIM. I can write code so much faster in VIM than I can with any other IDE. I often keep an IDE around for debugging though. The scripting capabilities of VIM, while not as robust as Emacs, are quite extensive and powerful such that you can build scripts to handle most repetitive tasks.

    Id

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