I would say that a pre-requsite for learning a tool is to use it, but that is not the best way.
Give a city boy an axe and a tree to down and he is more likely to chop his own foot off.
I have worked with people who have programmed in a language/with an IDE for years and they don't use the full capabilities of the tool - its just a nicely coloured text editor to them.
What I was trying to get at was, the major seling point of IDEA is its increase in Developer productivity. Are the tutorials/documentation sufficient to get the best out of the tool?
For instance on Intellij's site we can find a getting started tutorial:
http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/training/demos/overview.html and tips on productivity and refactoring
http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/training/tips/ http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/training/refactoring.html Conversely the book description says:
To not only get you up and running quickly, but to teach you how to use IDEA's powerful software development tools to their fullest advantage. Important product features, including the debugger, source code control, and the many code generation tools, are carefully explained and accompanied by tips and tricks that will leave even experienced IDEA users with "Eureka!" moments of informed programming. Coders just graduating from NOTEPAD and Java IDE veterans alike will profit from the powerful and timesaving expertise provided in this essential programmer's resource.
Hence my question.