What do you like about it over Eclipse?
In my estimation, Eclipse has more momentum over anything else, primarily NetBeans (which is quite good, actually) and IntelliJ. And momentum counts more over the long run.
In my estimation, Eclipse has more momentum over anything else, primarily NetBeans (which is quite good, actually) and IntelliJ. And momentum counts more over the long run.
Sounds as if it's just what you are used to, not that one is better than the other. Back then when I worked with Eclipse, it did not seem full of seams, either.
Edit: In case it wasn't obvious, I meant an IDE that you're just used to using, and that you think it's perfectly alright because you're not aware of better options.
I've got some anecdotal evidence to support this, so if you disagree, let's hear yours.
Have you really tried IDEA, and did you really not think it was better than Eclipse?
Yes and yes I did think it was better than Eclipse but I did not think it was better than Netbeans since 6.5 and on. I think the problem with IDEA is they are beginning to have trouble keeping up with the latest trends in the industry given that fact that a lot of those trends are coming out of open source it is natural that the open source IDE's will implement tooling before there closed source competitors.
That being said IDEA always felt more "bolted together" and consistent than Eclipse but the trade-off was always that they did not have tooling for some of the things eclipse did, so personally I would have to jump between the two.
Since Netbeans 6.5 and now 6.7 I have moved away from both as, for me, it has both covered well. It is polished as if it where build less by community and more by a driving vision. It also has a large community following implementing new tooling for the latest and greatest. Take the JavaScript tool-kits for example, Netbeans is the only IDE short of Aptana that I have seen, that implements code completion jsdoc inspection, code navigation, debugging, trace from JavaScript client, through server to database, etc. etc. for all of the major JS frameworks.
Anyway, long story short, IDEA is competing in a space that is becoming increasingly difficult to remain closed source. Especially when some of it's open-source competitors have caught up with it in it's mainstay, efficiency and usability.
For example, in GWT, I can command-click (this is on a Mac) on a GWT style-name in a Java class, and it will bring me to the relevant part of the style in the CSS file. Same thing for Spring integration- it can connect all your code to your Spring XML config seamlessly. When you ask it "find all uses of this class/interface/member", it just does the right thing, whereas with Eclipse it often seems to miss things. Refactoring especially, in Eclipse seems to miss a lot of things that IDEA gets right.
I had the "misfortune" of having learned IDEA as my first IDE. So I am forever spoiled now. You could say that I am biased towards IDEA because it's what I learned first, and you'd probably be right to a certain extent. I tried on several occasions to migrate to Eclipse, with the intent of lowering the communication barrier between me and my colleagues. But each time I ended up going back to IDEA because it just works so much better at navigation. If you work in big codebases this becomes really important. Before IDEA I used to use Emacs and the command line exclusively.
Edit: After investigating further, it looks like there is an alpha-quality Python plugin, and eventually there will be full Python support, available in its own IDE or as a plugin for IDEA.
I use Eclipse, because I know that having really learned it, I can use it where ever I want, no matter where I work.
- Javascript / HTML / CSS support
- Structural search-and-replace (imagine search and replace that actually understands code)
- Code completion and navigation for XML and properties files
...and more.