Any comments on IntelliJ from JetBrains

[Craig Thomas]

Wondering if any one has used IntelliJ and what they thought? It carries a hefty price and I wonder what people think of it?
(Sorry if this has been covered ad nauseam...didn't retrieve many useful search results, so I thought I'd ask.)
Thanks,
-Craig

[Maxim Avezbakiev]

Hello.
I evaluate this product (version 3.x) for my previous company and my suggestion was to buy it.
It is very convenient IDE with very powerful refactoring features. Templates feature was very useful too. And in general it was very intuitive IDE for the java programmer.
More then month ago, I started to use eclipse, and I find it very good (keep in mind that it is free of charge). And in some features even better then IntelliJ, although it is less intuitive.
There is a large community behind the eclipse and this is very important too.
Best regards,
Maxim.

[Kirk Pepperdine]

After being a consultant that used what ever tools the client provided me with, I'd have to say that I've run th gammit of IDE's. IntelliJ was the first IDE out of the bunch that I used that I felt worked with me. The features that we added in 3.0 allowed me to integrate IntelliJ with my own customized scripting language. Tool integration is very easy. The IDE works with me, not against me in that it helps to avoid mistakes as well as being extremely configurable. As was mentioned, templating is a great feature.
I like the IDE so much, I forked over my own cash to get a license and now use it unless the client insists that I use theirs.
Having said this, a development environment is one where personal choice does play a big role. In my case, I found that IntelliJ was a good fit. You may not so, I'd suggest that get an evaluation license and try before you buy.

[Andy Bowes]

I agree wholeheartedly with Kirk's appraisal.
I have used a fair few of the IDEs out there (Eclipse, NetBeans, JBuilder, etc ) and IntelliJ is the one that seems to have the closest fit to the way that I work. It does what I need an IDE to do without getting in the way.
At the end of the day it is all down to personal choice. I too have forked out money for IntelliJ for a licence that I can use on my client's sites. Download the evaluation and see if you like it you've got nothing to lose.

[Bill Barbour]

My company purchased IntelliJ for me about 14 months ago. It is by far well worth the price tag. After about 1 hour of working with Eclipse, I quickly went back to IntelliJ to get some "real work" done.

[Brian Buckley]

Is there anyone out there who has tried IDEA but still prefers another IDE?
If so please voice your opinion.

[Sharon Borracci]

All IDEs have their advantages and disadvantages, but, as was said before, try some evaluations and decide which one best suits you.
Also, cost is not always a good gauge. You can get the freebies like Eclipse with many good features, or pay $2000 - $3000 for high-end JBuilder and Websphere versions. I use JBuilder 6 at work and Idea at home. For the cost of upgrading JBuilder, we could buy 4 copies of Idea.

[Jeff Langr]

IDEA is a joy to work with and I prefer it over Eclipse--when my clients are paying for it.
Two downsides of IDEA are that there are far fewer plugins available for it than for Eclipse, and the integration with CVS is lacking (something that JetBrains has promised to fix with the next major release this summer).
-Jeff L.-

[Morten Moeller]

I've used IntelliJ for about a year now going from Netbeans/Eclipse. It is a big time saver especially in big projects when you have to start refactor a lot of code. Certain thing can be done in Intellij in hours compared to months without it.
Although the newer versions of Eclipse comes with some refactoring it is not yet up to par with IntelliJ.
It also has the best code completion system out there and a lot of other useful features (like live templates).

[Michael Crutcher]

I've used just about any IDE you can think of (JBuilder, Eclipse, Intellij, Netbeans, Togethersoft, etc) and I still come back to eclipse. Don't get me wrong, Intellij is a great IDE, but I still prefer Eclipse. The newest version of Eclipse is very competitive with Intellij as far as refactoring support (although Intellij still has more refactoring options) but Eclipse is gaining on it with every version. Look at all of the new refactorings that were added from Eclipse 2.0 - 2.1. A beta of 3.0 is now out and includes additional refactoring support.
The thing that really keeps me away from Intellij right now is dual monitor support. I think that more than any other factor, dual monitors help me code faster. Intellij's support for dual monitors is non existant. You can drag windows around, but you can't have different editors opened on seperate monitors. Jetbrains says that this will be in the next version (or so they told me through email), but we'll have to see.
Anyway, I think that the only thing that Intellij has over Eclipse right now is a wider variety of refactorings, but Eclipse is closing the gap with each version. Eclipse has a far more active plugin community, and is free. Additionally if you really want a feature thats not in Eclipse you can just add it yourself. The other advantages of Intellij over Eclipse that have been mentioned are mostly bogus in my opinion. Eclipse's code completion is awesome, pretty close to Intellij's. Eclipse supports custom templates (lieve templates) as well. Although it doesn't come with as many by default (although it still has some sysout --> System.out.println() for example) you can set up any templates you like.
Pick what you like, but I think that everything that you can like about Intellij is (or will be soon) in Eclipse for free.
Michael Crutcher