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Comment by haploid | Hacker News Reader

I can't even fathom how Eclipse somehow outstrips IDEA, particularly by such a large margin. IDEA destroys Eclipse in terms of usability, looks, features, speed, etc.

Is the premium developers put on "but it's open source!" really that compelling, or is there some key feature of Eclipse that I'm completely missing?

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Eclipse is a platform, and a lot of plugins are there to make it usable for your language(s). Where IDEA is only Java, Eclipse lets me do PHP too. As I do both regularly, it's a compelling "feature".

This is a common misconception. IDEA was once "only Java", but it is rapidly becoming a generalized platform, as well. Writing Ruby with IDEA is an absolute delight, for instance,

Interesting. I'll give it a try.

IDEA lets me do Java, PHP, RoR, html, etc. I'd say it's just as much of a platform as Eclipse is, and has a huge number of plug-ins to extend its feature set.

I know a large number of developers that have only used Eclipse, and swear by it. The prime motivation for using it seems to be that it's free.

I hired a couple of them for a gig a while ago, and gave them IDEA licenses so we'd all be running in the same IDE. They were instant converts.

I think the results are reflecting the larger numbers of developers who adopt the best free IDE rather than pay money for one. Might be safe to say it's more of a "what IDE are you using" vs. "best IDE".

It could be because Eclipse supports many languages (through plugins), whereas the (free) community edition of IntelliJ only supports Java. At least, last time I checked.

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