IntelliJ IDEA 12 Wins Jolt Award for Coding Tools 2013

Same here, but a vim guy. "Jump to source" alone makes an IDE worthwhile, and it still surprises me to this day that people eschew IDEs because of 'bloat', and instead prefer adding dozens of brittle extensions to vim/emacs/sublime/whatever to make up for what's missing.

I understand speed - I use vim for quick edits/changes - but simply being able to jump to the source of a function you're looking at is huge (yes I know about ctags for vim - doesn't even feel like it comes close).

EDIT: One of the other huge benefits of IDEs in general is working with and studying code that you didn't write yourself. All the sublime and textmate fans I know are almost always just writing their own code from scratch, or using a small subset of well-known plugins for popular framework X. Taking code written by someone you didn't know, who perhaps didn't even know language foo very well, is a pain that is lessened somewhat by using a capable IDE vs a plain text editor.

I used IntelliJ IDEA (Java) for the past 10 years or so (since IntelliJ IDEA version 4). I was pretty amazed at how much more productive I became using Emacs to do Clojure development (fast iteration cycles, instant REPL, paredit, hs-minor-mode, etc.).

Using an IDE took your coding to a next level just as design patterns took your coding to a next level because, by using Java (or C#), you need to automate and repeat tasks that should never have been mandatory to repeat in the first place.

To me nothing beats a programmable "text editor".

I don't doubt you consider yourself "productive". However Rich Hickey created Clojure using Emacs and then, using Clojure, he created Datomic. That's certainly something I'd call productive. So there's not one true way or true light to see to "take coding to next level".

It's good for you if you like your Java/C+ + ORM ([N]Hibernate) + XML + SQL hell. I don't like that particular hell which I know all too well and, thankfully, many programmers don't like either and are, productively, creating a better world for us programmers.

I still did buy IntelliJ IDEA version 12 during their doosmday promotion because at 55 Euros or so I figured out it was going to be handy the day I'll be forced to work on some pathetic Java / Hibernate / XML / SQL hell codebase but, thankfully, I still didn't need to install it (it's only two months but still...).

Meanwhile Emacs / elisp / Clojure are getting their daily dose of love.

Your Mileage May Vary but I honestly think you don't realize that most of the tasks IntelliJ allows you to automate are tasks which shouldn't exist in the first place.

P.S: it's possible to configure vi(m) and Emacs using eclim / emacs-eclim so that you can use, right from vim/emacs many of the features of Eclipse (like auto-completion). This is something with may see more in the future and that we may see working with IntelliJ too.

IDEA is an incredible development environment. I still use Emacs for some things (e.g. Perl). The Live Edit plugin is really slick (same as http://LiveReload.com for Sublime users)

http://blog.jetbrains.com/webide/2012/08/liveedit-plugin-fea...

I think Emacs will get a big resurgence if they ever get a better Lisp (aka Guile) integrated so they can get better performance. After all, Emacs is just a big Lisp interpreter. In theory, Emacs can do anything.

Damn, I guess I missed the discount, but it doesn't bother me much at all. I've used eclipse, netbeans, visual studio, and I'm sure a few others. In my opinion, a good IDE doesn't get in your way and makes life easier when you need it. I started using intellij at work and found it to be a breath of fresh air and in such compliance with my previously stated definition that I, for the first time ever, personally paid for IDE software (PyCharm). The only thing that comes close is VS and that's only when working on dot net stuff. They have 30 day trials and I suggest you give them a shot. It'll make whatever you're currently using feel like it's from 20 years ago.

Hindsight is 20/20, but when you by IDEA Ultimate, you get all the other derivatives as plugins to IDEA (I have the Python, Ruby, and PHP plugins which is the same as having PyCharm, RubyMine, and PHPStorm).

I almost did the same thing you did during the sale but one of my friends let me know about the plugins, which they could do a better job of talking about.

Can't go wrong with this great software either way though.

I'd like to caution you against deciding on Eclipse solely because of online tutorials and Google recommendation. For one, Eclipse is free, so it has a very low barrier to entry. If you were going to start Java tomorrow, I'd tell you to use Eclipse or Netbeans as well, even though I own IntelliJ.

Can't give you a comparison because I use it infrequently, and I use IntelliJ for Ruby. It's a lot more polished than Aptana Studios' Ruby integration, which is basically Eclipse.

Eclipse has a proper incremental compiler, which will tell you what's wrong with your code as you type and refactor. IntelliJ has historically not had one, and the introduction of the 'compile as you go' feature in IntelliJ 12 just doesn't hold a candle to the Eclipse one in complex workspaces.

Source: 5 years with Eclipse, and 6 months using IntelliJ 11/12 now.

Eclipse's interface is clunky (switch between debug and code), debugger is buggy and is generally slow.

IntelliJ's @Nullable annotations are a decent workaround to my biggest complaint about Java. (Java has a static type system that intentionally doesn't catch the most common type error.)

On the NetBeans subject: does NetBeans have much traction outside of Sun/Oracle? It's been a while since I've done any Java development, but back in 2005, it seemed that pretty much only the official Java tutorials used NetBeans.

I've used Eclipse for about 6 years for Java development before switching jobs and switching to IntelliJ. If there is one important difference it is this: It's fast. Eclipse can take up to a second or so to generate auto completion recommendations. In IntelliJ, you hardly even notice it it is so fast. This allows the IDE to get out of your way and leave your thinking uninterrupted which is often one of the main benefits touted by vim or emacs users.

I would say try IntelliJ for a month. That will give you time to alter some of the strange default settings (like being able to put the cursor past the end of the line) and discover some of the many other powerful features (like clever renaming of getters/setters when renaming a field). But I still believe it is the speed that sets IntelliJ apart from any other IDE out there and will be the ultimate reason for your improved productivity.

It seems like there are lots of little things that are preferable. A few random ones off the top of my head:

In my last job where we used Eclipse, we'd get a maven project and then run mvn eclipse:eclipse to generate the eclipse project. In IntelliJ, you can just open an existing maven project by selecting the pom.

Maven auto-update is also nice (if you do a mvn clean install, your project will automatically update accordingly).

In eclipse, if you debugged into an external library, you'd have the option of attaching the source; then you'd have to go find the right jar to add. In intellij, you can just click "download sources" and it usually does the right thing.

In general, I had a fair amount of difficulty setting up projects and getting them to run correctly under eclipse -- but that may be more of a reflection of how our projects were configured. Things seem smoother under IntelliJ.

I think IntelliJ is definitely better than Eclipse - feature wise.

However, it is really hard to beat free. I think the numbers show that 7 of 8 Java developers use Eclipse. This also means that third party providers are more likely to build on top of Eclipse.

The fact that IntelliJ has built a large user base only goes to show how good a product they are.

Yeah, IntelliJ has recently launched an open source version... But I am a little reluctant to use it given the strong Ecosystem around Eclipse.

(Disclaimer: I build plugins for Eclipse)

When I switched from Eclipse to IntelliJ about 2 years ago the thing that most impressed me was that every part of IntelliJ feels fully integrated with the IDE.

For Eclipse, you had to rely on 3rd party developers for plugins for things like Hibernate or Spring integration; and the amount of integration with the IDE itself was usually hit-or-miss. Different plugins would have different UIs or different ways of doing things.

I've found that in IntelliJ, these types of things are first-class features instead - the Spring and Hibernate support (for instance) is built into the IDE by JetBrains. Things like "find usages of bean" can be invoked with the same keystrokes as "find usage of class". The editor can jump from the Java class editor to where the class is defined in your Spring context just as easily.

1.Intellij Idea is faster , you could try searching for the same project. 2.Intellij Idea is way more Intelligent than Eclipse. try jsp/javascript/java editing by urself, and you will be surprised 3.Built in support for a lot of popular Frameworks and Version Control Systems.

IntelliJ is more reliable and better integrated; eclipse has more features but needs more attention. I don't think IntelliJ has anything that eclipse lacks per se, but it's much more likely to "just work" and get out of your way.

(personally I use eclipse and take the time to babysit it because I can't live without proper incremental compilation)

I've used both professionally, for years.

Eclipse has historically suffered from a couple of major problems, in my opinion:

1. It's "Eclipse is a framework, and the Java IDE is just an implementation" mentality made the user experience terrible. Everything was a perspective, with it's own configuration. I remember distinctly trying to set the editor to use four spaces instead of tabs. I had to do this once for every file type (xml, javascript, html, java, css, etc.) Commands would suddenly be disabled because you were looking at a file in a different perspective. In all fairness, the usability of Eclipse is getting better, but this, to me, is still Eclipse's major weakness.

2. Their JavaScript (and other language support) was terrible. (Note: It's first-class now. But it took a very long time to get to this point.) For those of us who did a lot of front-end work, this was a major shortcoming.

Overall, Eclipse has gotten much better, and there are some plugins that just might make it your editor of choice. IntelliJ is still my choice, though.

I'm not Eclipse user neither IntelliJ. I tried IntelliJ after looking at this post. First impression, InteliJ interface is lot better and cleaner than Eclipse. Eclipse interface (or skin) looks ugly and takes lot of space with its big toolbar buttons and rounded tabs. Also I noticed that IntelliJ shows shortcuts while hovering over things (like completion, docks etc...) nicely, which is pretty cool.

Rest I can't comment on how good they are with enhancing your productivity, as I never used them.

To answer your Android development concern specifically, as I didn't see anyone else commenting on it yet:

Having done Android work in both Eclipse and IntelliJ, I much prefer the latter. It has nice tools out-of-the-box for every aspect of Android development; package signing (and keystore management), integrated logcat monitor (a bit simpler than Eclipse's), the on-device or emulator debugging works perfectly etc. I've never had a problem translating Eclipse tutorials to IntelliJ.

It's also a lot less buggy than Eclipse+ADT in my experience. Eclipse/ADT is terrible when it comes to larger Android projects that may reference other projects in your workspace, I frequently had to do a clean build to get it to detect changes across the projects (a known problem in the ADT bugtracker IIRC).

IntelliJ is also faster, has better code completion, and a really nice dark UI theme called Darcula out of the box (trying to make Eclipse dark is near impossible). It's paid for its price many times over in productivity gains for me.

I have never used IDEA, but if it is even a fraction as good as ReSharper then it is still amazing. After being introduced to it I feel so handicapped without it when using plain Visual Studio.

Hmm... I like IdeaVIM (though I don't use any particularly complicated VIM commands). How does IdeaVIM lack?

IntelliJ supports multiple languages, primary reason I use it

I love a good IDE (RubyMines, for example), and in general a well-engineered IDE designed from the ground up for your language and development stack is going to be superior to emacs or vim.

However, I'd feel crippled overall as a developer if I didn't know one of those two (vim in my case). For one thing, a lot of the best IDEs are not free and some are very pricey. I'm not going to go out on a huge spending spree buying a bunch of IDEs just for little experiments I want to do in my spare time. More importantly, though, it is quite often at work that I need to edit code in a variety of languages, and it is simply more productive to be able to edit the code in one editor rather than having to fire up multiple IDEs. Not to mention the need to occasionally make quick edits from within a terminal.

Using vim frequently also keeps me up to speed on terminal commands for lots of modern tools. When I was in college I used IDEs almost exclusively, and whenever I found myself needing to do something from the terminal, my God it sucked. I was crippled. Now I feel more like a jack of all trades who can be productive in mostly any environment.

Syntax aware selection (Ctrl-W) doesn't work for you? I know it's not exactly what you ask for, but I think it's great. It successively selects a bigger and bigger block of code. According to Productivity Guide, it's the feature I use the most in IntelliJ (by a wide margin).

I run PyCharm in 64-bit linux and have no font problems. Perhaps you should ask in the Jetbrains community forums, and include some more details / screenshots?

Whats wrong with the way the fonts look? I find that people are split on the matter of good font rendering on Linux: some perfer hinting with bytecode-enabled fonts while others prefer antialiasing with hinting turned off...

Personally I like to add this line to bin/idea.vmoptions

  -Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=false

which turns off anti aliasing, then use windows fonts (Verdana for menus, Courier New for code) inside the IDE.

Hi,

I do when I browse Java and Scala code.

I'm not sure what problem you mean, but I have to run `wmname LG3D` before running idea, otherwise the fonts are not displayed at all.

With that, it runs fine; the only (minor) problem is that switching to another window and back to idea makes the cursor disappear and some point-related shortcuts stop working until I open any menu/window within idea.

I use a tiling window manager; I wonder if it claches with the Java UI library somehow.

Running Idea on 64bit Ubuntu here. Yes, there is a solution and it is a huge hack. The idea is to make your own fonts with hinting info stripped out - check out http://gleamynode.net/articles/2280/

For instance this is how Go code looks in my IDE: http://i.imgur.com/jcWVFuS.png

Some people don't like the blurry look but I have grown quite fond of it.