6 ms·

How is Eclipse better than IntelliJ? My experience with IntelliJ has been: * Faster than eclipse. * Works better / crashes less. * Less headaches setting up pro

by bdamm 9y ago

How is Eclipse better than IntelliJ? My experience with IntelliJ has been: * Faster than eclipse. * Works better / crashes less. * Less headaches setting up projects. * Far superior vi keymap support.

AnimalMuppet 9y ago
And more/better keyboard shortcuts.
- fma 9y ago
  Recently switched from Eclipse to IntelliJ. I've tried a few times in the past but I think I've reached the point of no return. More keyboard shortcuts! = better. In eclipse I probably used 10...still hunting for the equivalent. Then there's the fact that some shortcuts require two hands, or a large hand. If you're focused on debugging and you need to step out... Shift F8? Also the amount of times IntelliJ caches old files and screws up my testing is as much as eclipse... Which is probably my my biggest time waster. At least Intellij has the invalidate cache and restart... Which mostly works, till it doesn't, then I need to reimport.
foepys 9y ago
Most importantly plugins in eclipse never really worked for me. They often broke during updates, the package servers were slow or unavailable, or I had to wait weeks for plugin updates to update to a newer version of Eclipse. IntelliJ has almost all important plugins and languages built-in. Even some quite nice frameworks.
- strictfp 9y ago
  I agree, but ironic considering that you are focusing on OSGIs main selling points :)
badpun 9y ago
I generally prefer IntelliJ to Eclipse, but what pains me in it is the slowness of the UI. When you open up a menu, you can literally watch as it is being painted to the screen. This is something that was instantenous on a 7 Mhz Amiga back in the nineties.
- nickh9000 9y ago
  Maybe it is time to upgrade from that machine.
  - badpun 9y ago
    The machine is less than a year old... I'm betting the menu content is dynamic (based on preferences, maybe the code that's on the screen etc.) and they're recomputing the content before drawing it - but still, it's no excuse.
chapill 9y ago
Eclipse git support is superior as well as the pom editor.
- s73v3r_ 9y ago
  But SourceTree is better than both.
  - chapill 9y ago
    Haven't used SourceTree. That may be true, but I prefer having all my tools in one place, and eGit is quite good. Besides, eGit has Eclipse Mylyn integration, which is another killer feature Idea doesn't have.
- Tharkun 9y ago
  Really? I hate Eclipse git "support" with a passion. I don't want my IDE to go anywhere near my version control. I'll take care of that myself, thankyouverymuch. The fact that Eclipse makes it nearly impossible to disable that git "support" downright angers me.
  - zmmmmm 9y ago
    Impossible? You just go to the Team menu and choose "Disconnect" or am I missing something?
    - Tharkun 9y ago
      Yes. That's incompatible with my workflow. Projects are generated on the fly, each new project is automatically connected even if I don't want it to be. Having to manually disconnect each project is a pain. I just want a big "disable this plugin" button.
  - chapill 9y ago
    Close the git perspective? Right-click project, team -> disconnect perhaps? Honestly, I'm curious. It's never occurred to me that having it there, even if you don't use it, could be problematic. What is it touching that bothers you so much? It's not like it's going to jump in your folder and start committing stuff at random.
sreque 9y ago
Sorry. I haven't had a chance to reply all day. The biggest reason I think Eclipse is better is because it has automatic incremental compilation built in. This feature is an absolute game changer in productivity. Visual Studio doesn't have it for C#. Intellij doesn't have it. As far as I know, Eclipse is the only Java IDE that does. Think about it. As you are editing and saving, a real compiler is recompiling your code. Any and all errors show up as feedback in the IDE immediately. Intellij tries to guess errors for you, but I find that it often misses things until you run a build manually. In conjunction with automatic incremental compilation is the problems window. I can't find anything remotely like it in Intellij. In a single window I can see all the errors and warnings in my workspace and address them. This is tremendously helpful, for instance, when I'm doing a complicated refactoring that can't be completely automated. Another insanely awesome feature of this compiler is that it compiles class files with errors in them. This lets you do things like run your program even if there are compiler errors in your project, or, even more usefully, run a unit test. In Intellij I get so frustrated when I can't run a unit test because some entirely unrelated java file in an entirely separate module has a compiler error because I haven't refreshed my gradle project since pulling from git. I really like seeing the warnings too. In every Intellij-driven project I've seen people do not care at all about warnings and the result is a lot sloppier code, including way more code that uses raw types, code that performs unchecked generic casts, code that makes mistakes with serialization, etc. In this sense Eclipse encourages better coding practices by putting the warnings your face in the problems tab. I've had the opposite experience with plugins in Eclipse. I've found that there's way more plugins than in Intellij and that they work better. For instance, I completely gave up on Intellij's code coverage builtin plugin. It flat out wasn't working. On the other hand, the plugin I've tried in Eclipse works great. I've also found Eclipse's FindBugs and Checkstyle plugins to work way better for me. I really dislike how Intellij handles debugging and spawning sub-processes. I remember at $lastjob when I still used Eclipse and I was helping an Intellij user try to debug something. I helped him figure out that he actually had about 5 sub-processes running in a debugger already and they were conflicting with each other. This kind of mistake I think is much harder to make in Eclipse. I also love the debug perspective and how it is separated from the regular perspective. I could go on and on. I've found Eclipse to always be much snappier and more responsive than Intellij and to use less memory. I've found its code formatter to be more feature rich and useful. I like Eclipse's look and feel a lot better. Intellij uses Swing and it shows. But, at the end of the day, above all else, its the incremental compilation and everything that builds off of it. I have to use Intellij at my current job and I absolutely wish we could use Eclipse instead. I find for instance that Intellij leaks memory and I frequently have to restart it once it gets to 8+ GB of usage. Also If I give it less than 6 GB of heap it runs insanely slowly.

by bdamm 9y ago

AnimalMuppet 9y ago

And more/better keyboard shortcuts.

fma 9y ago
Recently switched from Eclipse to IntelliJ. I've tried a few times in the past but I think I've reached the point of no return. More keyboard shortcuts! = better. In eclipse I probably used 10...still hunting for the equivalent. Then there's the fact that some shortcuts require two hands, or a large hand. If you're focused on debugging and you need to step out... Shift F8? Also the amount of times IntelliJ caches old files and screws up my testing is as much as eclipse... Which is probably my my biggest time waster. At least Intellij has the invalidate cache and restart... Which mostly works, till it doesn't, then I need to reimport.

foepys 9y ago

Most importantly plugins in eclipse never really worked for me. They often broke during updates, the package servers were slow or unavailable, or I had to wait weeks for plugin updates to update to a newer version of Eclipse. IntelliJ has almost all important plugins and languages built-in. Even some quite nice frameworks.

strictfp 9y ago
I agree, but ironic considering that you are focusing on OSGIs main selling points :)

badpun 9y ago

I generally prefer IntelliJ to Eclipse, but what pains me in it is the slowness of the UI. When you open up a menu, you can literally watch as it is being painted to the screen. This is something that was instantenous on a 7 Mhz Amiga back in the nineties.

nickh9000 9y ago
Maybe it is time to upgrade from that machine.
- badpun 9y ago
  The machine is less than a year old... I'm betting the menu content is dynamic (based on preferences, maybe the code that's on the screen etc.) and they're recomputing the content before drawing it - but still, it's no excuse.

chapill 9y ago

Eclipse git support is superior as well as the pom editor.

s73v3r_ 9y ago
But SourceTree is better than both.
- chapill 9y ago
  Haven't used SourceTree. That may be true, but I prefer having all my tools in one place, and eGit is quite good. Besides, eGit has Eclipse Mylyn integration, which is another killer feature Idea doesn't have.
Tharkun 9y ago
Really? I hate Eclipse git "support" with a passion. I don't want my IDE to go anywhere near my version control. I'll take care of that myself, thankyouverymuch. The fact that Eclipse makes it nearly impossible to disable that git "support" downright angers me.
- zmmmmm 9y ago
  Impossible? You just go to the Team menu and choose "Disconnect" or am I missing something?
  - Tharkun 9y ago
    Yes. That's incompatible with my workflow. Projects are generated on the fly, each new project is automatically connected even if I don't want it to be. Having to manually disconnect each project is a pain. I just want a big "disable this plugin" button.
- chapill 9y ago
  Close the git perspective? Right-click project, team -> disconnect perhaps? Honestly, I'm curious. It's never occurred to me that having it there, even if you don't use it, could be problematic. What is it touching that bothers you so much? It's not like it's going to jump in your folder and start committing stuff at random.

sreque 9y ago

Sorry. I haven't had a chance to reply all day. The biggest reason I think Eclipse is better is because it has automatic incremental compilation built in. This feature is an absolute game changer in productivity. Visual Studio doesn't have it for C#. Intellij doesn't have it. As far as I know, Eclipse is the only Java IDE that does. Think about it. As you are editing and saving, a real compiler is recompiling your code. Any and all errors show up as feedback in the IDE immediately. Intellij tries to guess errors for you, but I find that it often misses things until you run a build manually. In conjunction with automatic incremental compilation is the problems window. I can't find anything remotely like it in Intellij. In a single window I can see all the errors and warnings in my workspace and address them. This is tremendously helpful, for instance, when I'm doing a complicated refactoring that can't be completely automated. Another insanely awesome feature of this compiler is that it compiles class files with errors in them. This lets you do things like run your program even if there are compiler errors in your project, or, even more usefully, run a unit test. In Intellij I get so frustrated when I can't run a unit test because some entirely unrelated java file in an entirely separate module has a compiler error because I haven't refreshed my gradle project since pulling from git. I really like seeing the warnings too. In every Intellij-driven project I've seen people do not care at all about warnings and the result is a lot sloppier code, including way more code that uses raw types, code that performs unchecked generic casts, code that makes mistakes with serialization, etc. In this sense Eclipse encourages better coding practices by putting the warnings your face in the problems tab. I've had the opposite experience with plugins in Eclipse. I've found that there's way more plugins than in Intellij and that they work better. For instance, I completely gave up on Intellij's code coverage builtin plugin. It flat out wasn't working. On the other hand, the plugin I've tried in Eclipse works great. I've also found Eclipse's FindBugs and Checkstyle plugins to work way better for me. I really dislike how Intellij handles debugging and spawning sub-processes. I remember at $lastjob when I still used Eclipse and I was helping an Intellij user try to debug something. I helped him figure out that he actually had about 5 sub-processes running in a debugger already and they were conflicting with each other. This kind of mistake I think is much harder to make in Eclipse. I also love the debug perspective and how it is separated from the regular perspective. I could go on and on. I've found Eclipse to always be much snappier and more responsive than Intellij and to use less memory. I've found its code formatter to be more feature rich and useful. I like Eclipse's look and feel a lot better. Intellij uses Swing and it shows. But, at the end of the day, above all else, its the incremental compilation and everything that builds off of it. I have to use Intellij at my current job and I absolutely wish we could use Eclipse instead. I find for instance that Intellij leaks memory and I frequently have to restart it once it gets to 8+ GB of usage. Also If I give it less than 6 GB of heap it runs insanely slowly.