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IntelliJ vs. Netbeans/Eclipse

 
Greenhorn
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Hi All
I'm curious...for those of you out there who may have used various IDE's:
Is IntelliJ Idea worth the $249 as compared to free Netbeans or Eclipse?
 
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For me, absolutely. But here's where I see this thread going...

IDEA Users: Yes
Everyone Else: No

So I don't see how you are going to glean much from this kind of question. The best thing to do is try it out and decide for yourself. They offer a free 30 day trial.
 
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What do you do? Is coding your full-time job? Or are you a starving student? Or are you a hobbyist?

If you just dabble in Java apps, or on a strict budget, then paying money for an IDE does not seem to be worthwhile.

If putting food on the table depends on how well and efficiently you produce working applications, then paying $$$ for an IDE that lets you do that more easily and quickly is worth it.

Heck, even if you are just a hobbyist, it might be worthwhile to spend $$$s. I know a lot of people that spend fortunes on their hobbies.

Treat it like a business investment - what is the ROI? When you answer that question, you will then have answered your original question.

And there is also personal preference - some IDEs just might not be intuitive to you. Trying before buying is definitely worthwhile.
 
Hayssam Hajar
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I am a hobbyist turning serious. I have been using Netbeans.
As my project got bigger, I started wondering if I could be doing things more efficiently in a different IDE.
My research shows that there is a general concensus out there on the web that IntelliJ is better than Netbeans/Eclipse. However, I trust this forum and wanted to throw the question out there.
By the way, I downloaded the free trial IntelliJ and so far Netbeans seems just fine.
 
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Hayssam Hajar wrote:Hi All
I'm curious...for those of you out there who may have used various IDE's:
Is IntelliJ Idea worth the $249 as compared to free Netbeans or Eclipse?



note that the IntelliJ community edition is free and open source as of October 2009.

After using both Eclipse and IntelliJ, I find that the IntelliJ universe of plugins is far behind Eclipse. In fact, several of the IntelliJ plugins I've tried have been disasters.
This is one thing they are trying to fix by going open source.

The other parts of IntelliJ are slicker than hell: importing a maven project, refactoring, live templates, version control,

Here is a chart of the features of the community edition of IntelliJ vs the "Ultimate" edition:
http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/features/editions_comparison_matrix.html

 
Greenhorn
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just watched the video on IntelliJ community editon
it seems really confusing ...there are lots of hotkeys to remember
looks like many of the features are included in netbeans already

any IntelliJ users can point out some of their favourite features?
 
Hayssam Hajar
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I've used IntelliJ very little and found Netbeans more intuitive. That's why I was wondering whyIntelliJ's users think it is the best.
 
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Joe Eruay wrote:there are lots of hotkeys to remember


Doing things via keyboard shortcuts is *always* faster than using the mouse, regardless of the IDE. Power users will *learn* the shortcuts, because it makes them more effective and efficient. That's just general wisdom, and not related to any specific IDE.
 
Tim McGuire
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Joe Yaure wrote:just watched the video on IntelliJ community editon
it seems really confusing ...there are lots of hotkeys to remember
looks like many of the features are included in netbeans already

any IntelliJ users can point out some of their favourite features?



If you like Netbeans, use Netbeans

To answer the call: My IntelliJ favorite features

templates and live templates.... these are more sophisticated than what is available in Eclipse. There is an entire templating "language" that can pull parts of your file into the live template you call up with a keystroke.
Maven..... I'm really pleased with IntelliJ maven support Eclipse does not have as intuitive a way to either take an existing project and "mavenize" it, or pull an existing pom file in and have it load all the dependencies.
Hibernate.... (only in pay edition)Among other hibernate things. IntelliJ has a nice HQL console that you can type hibernate queries into, see results and also see SQL generated. Eclipse has this too.
XML editor. When I used Eclipse, I used several different xml tools and was never satisfied. in IntelliJ, sophisticated XML support is built in.
by sophisticated I mean, code completion/validation based on dtd/schema. Also by validation, I mean that the xml knows which java classes (and fields and methods) exist and don't exist. This is something I haven't seen anywhere else.
 
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I am going to use intellij community for a little while and see how I like it. Definitely not going to be a bad experience. Mainly going to use Java and Groovy and a personal license only $99. Not too bad. Alos like that Pycharm is easily available too if required.
 
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When I worked with IntelliJ regularly, it was more like $649. They're definitely suffering when all their competition is free.

On the other hand, they feel that they provide a little something extra for the expense, and I can't argue that they do.

A feature-by-feature comparison of the Big 3 IDEs is probably pointless. I do feel obliged to point out that having a whole raft of function keys is not a situation exclusive to IntelliJ, though. I doubt I use 1 in 10 of the Eclipse shortcuts, but a few of them are probably hard-wired into my hands by now.

On a macro scope:

IntelliJ - fine-tuned for run-of-the-mill Java development. Also has the best GUI designer I've ever seen for Java, which was sorely lacking in such things since the demise of Visual Café with the extinction of the dinosaurs. IntelliJ's Swing designer is a standout in that unlike all competitors, it doesn't employ vendor-proprietary "helpers", which is important to those of us who want to release the end result as open source.

NetBeans - I'm ashamed to say that I'm way out of date here, but NetBeans was where Sun prototyped development for many of its platforms, so it tended to have useful tools that no one else did. And if I'm not singing the praises of NetBeans here, there is no shortage of people in this forum who can and will.

Eclipse - In Java, perhaps the most useful thing about Eclipse is that it's especially helpful when you want to debug multiple interlocking apps. Say 2 webapps, an RMI server and an applet running and interacting at the same time. Not your average developer's functions, but this is the kind of stuff I do. Eclipse also provides a rich set of plugins for non-Java purposes, such as Python, shell scripts, C/C++ and even COBOL. In fact Eclipse itself is a framework program written in Java whose actual use depends on the plugins installed. We commonly employ the Java development bundles such as Helios, but you can also just download the core Eclipse without development support and use it anyway you like, including as a container for your own plugins.

So which one you prefer depends on what your focus is. And, of course, on what your employer lets you use.
 
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