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I'm always so confused by comment threads like this page. I used Eclipse daily for 6 years then was forced to switch and now I've been using IntelliJ daily for

by guelo 11y ago

I'm always so confused by comment threads like this page. I used Eclipse daily for 6 years then was forced to switch and now I've been using IntelliJ daily for the past 2 years. So I think I'm qualified to make a fair comparison and I still vastly prefer Eclipse. But then I look at comment threads like this page and it's all about how superior IntelliJ is. It always leaves me confused, like I'm missing something about IntelliJ but I don't know what it is.

paperwork 11y ago
Same here. I haven't used eclipse in the past two years because I've been doing non-java work. Before that I used it since the beginning of my career, around 2000. I don't recall having issues with slowness and plugins randomly not working. When I first started using it, I remember being a bit confused by projects vs files. That's when I didn't understand the concept of IDEs (as opposed to text editors). I feel like I'm living in an alternative universe.
- simoncion 11y ago
  I was using Eclipse for a couple of years for C++ and Java work (some of that work was building things on Eclipse) about three years back. Once you increased a few limits like the Java max heap size [0] Eclipse was a bit slow to start, but -once started- was no slower than any other full-featured IDE I'd used. CDT was really nice, and the Java tooling worked as well as I expected it to. The two really big issues I had were the really terrible dependency resolver -which not infrequently required you to update packages in stages, playing the "Which package(s) is giving the dep resolver grief now?" game for several fives of minutes-, and Eclipse's tendency to cache all sorts of file state. Once you learned what Eclipse cached, you knew what sorts of things to not do outside of Eclipse, but until then... oh, the mysterious errors one was likely to receive! :P [0] Rant: Why the fuck is this even a tunable? Every other program I use (including software written with a language that targets a GC'd VM like C# or Erlang) is completely capable of regulating its own memory usage. Why does Java need me to tell it how much memory it is allowed to use?
muhuk 11y ago
I think it's because IntelliJ has a greater cool factor. Exact same thing happens with Apple. Apple customers, say macbook users, complain about the high prices, subpar hardware, iTunes and other software issues in private. But then the same people can brag about their macbook in a different context. Eclipse is just not as cool as IntelliJ. But it gets the work done. And has more capabilities, and is open source, etc. etc. Yet, Eclipse is not cool. So we see an eagerness to point at its weak points. My personal comparison: Once you have the right plugins it's super easy to create a scala project with maven in Eclipse. I had to download scala sources and tell IntelliJ their location, still it didn't work. Forget about maven. (I'm sure IntelliJ gurus can set it up, my point is it's not easy for n00bs)
zimbu668 11y ago
I'm always so confused by comment threads like this page. I used Eclipse daily for 6+ years(I used it back when it was Visual Age for Java) then was forced to switch and now I've been using IntelliJ daily for the past 1 years(3 if you count RubyMine). So I think I'm qualified to make a fair comparison and I vastly prefer IntelliJ. But then I look at comment threads like this page and it's all about how superior Eclipse is. It always leaves me confused, like I'm missing something about Eclipse but I don't know what it is. There was a 2 month window a year ago where I used eclipse, before I forced my new company to buy IntelliJ.

by guelo 11y ago

paperwork 11y ago

Same here. I haven't used eclipse in the past two years because I've been doing non-java work. Before that I used it since the beginning of my career, around 2000. I don't recall having issues with slowness and plugins randomly not working. When I first started using it, I remember being a bit confused by projects vs files. That's when I didn't understand the concept of IDEs (as opposed to text editors). I feel like I'm living in an alternative universe.

simoncion 11y ago
I was using Eclipse for a couple of years for C++ and Java work (some of that work was building things on Eclipse) about three years back. Once you increased a few limits like the Java max heap size [0] Eclipse was a bit slow to start, but -once started- was no slower than any other full-featured IDE I'd used. CDT was really nice, and the Java tooling worked as well as I expected it to. The two really big issues I had were the really terrible dependency resolver -which not infrequently required you to update packages in stages, playing the "Which package(s) is giving the dep resolver grief now?" game for several fives of minutes-, and Eclipse's tendency to cache all sorts of file state. Once you learned what Eclipse cached, you knew what sorts of things to not do outside of Eclipse, but until then... oh, the mysterious errors one was likely to receive! :P [0] Rant: Why the fuck is this even a tunable? Every other program I use (including software written with a language that targets a GC'd VM like C# or Erlang) is completely capable of regulating its own memory usage. Why does Java need me to tell it how much memory it is allowed to use?

muhuk 11y ago

I think it's because IntelliJ has a greater cool factor. Exact same thing happens with Apple. Apple customers, say macbook users, complain about the high prices, subpar hardware, iTunes and other software issues in private. But then the same people can brag about their macbook in a different context. Eclipse is just not as cool as IntelliJ. But it gets the work done. And has more capabilities, and is open source, etc. etc. Yet, Eclipse is not cool. So we see an eagerness to point at its weak points. My personal comparison: Once you have the right plugins it's super easy to create a scala project with maven in Eclipse. I had to download scala sources and tell IntelliJ their location, still it didn't work. Forget about maven. (I'm sure IntelliJ gurus can set it up, my point is it's not easy for n00bs)

zimbu668 11y ago

I'm always so confused by comment threads like this page. I used Eclipse daily for 6+ years(I used it back when it was Visual Age for Java) then was forced to switch and now I've been using IntelliJ daily for the past 1 years(3 if you count RubyMine). So I think I'm qualified to make a fair comparison and I vastly prefer IntelliJ. But then I look at comment threads like this page and it's all about how superior Eclipse is. It always leaves me confused, like I'm missing something about Eclipse but I don't know what it is. There was a 2 month window a year ago where I used eclipse, before I forced my new company to buy IntelliJ.