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IntelliJ IDEA 12 Wins Jolt Award for Coding Tools 2013

135 points by rdemmer 14y ago

steeve 14y ago
I use it everyday! Well deserved!
sparx 14y ago
best java ide ever
manuletroll 14y ago
I don't use IDEA but Jetbrains does make amazing tools. I couldn't survive without Resharper.
- benparsons 14y ago
  I have never used IDEA, but if it is even a fraction as good as ReSharper then it is still amazing. After being introduced to it I feel so handicapped without it when using plain Visual Studio.
mmahemoff 14y ago
Jolt was such a big phenomenon in the '90s. Do developers consume less caffeine now or maybe Red Bull cut their lunch? (It's a bit hard to gauge the trend from outside the US, as Jolt is particularly US-focused afaict.) Anyway, IDEA is always putting developer experience first, so it's well-deserved.
henrik_w 14y ago
Well deserved. I've been using IntelliJ IDEA (Java) for the past four years. Before that, I used Emacs coding C++. I was pretty amazed at how much more productive I became using an IDE (just for the mechanics of coding, like auto-completion, jump to suource etc - not counting any differences between C++ and Java). I still like Emacs a lot, but using a good IDE just took coding to the next level. More details: http://henrikwarne.com/2012/06/17/programmer-productivity-emacs-versus-intellij-idea/ http://henrikwarne.com/2012/06/17/programmer-productivity-em...
- mgkimsal 14y ago
  Same here, but a vim guy. "Jump to source" alone makes an IDE worthwhile, and it still surprises me to this day that people eschew IDEs because of 'bloat', and instead prefer adding dozens of brittle extensions to vim/emacs/sublime/whatever to make up for what's missing. I understand speed - I use vim for quick edits/changes - but simply being able to jump to the source of a function you're looking at is huge (yes I know about ctags for vim - doesn't even feel like it comes close). EDIT: One of the other huge benefits of IDEs in general is working with and studying code that you didn't write yourself. All the sublime and textmate fans I know are almost always just writing their own code from scratch, or using a small subset of well-known plugins for popular framework X. Taking code written by someone you didn't know, who perhaps didn't even know language foo very well, is a pain that is lessened somewhat by using a capable IDE vs a plain text editor.
  - freerobby 14y ago
    I'm sure you've seen it, but just to be sure - there's an IntelliJ plugin that gives you vim key bindings: http://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/?id=164 http://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/?id=164
    - mmahemoff 14y ago
      It's a good effort, but suffers from the usual problems of replicating Vim, ie lots of subtle changes and lots of missing functionality. Both of which wreak havoc with one's muscle memory. Also, I found it really slowed things down (in RubyMine), sometimes updating just 1-2 characters a second in a big project (on a modern MBP). I've gone back and forth, but generally I prefer Vim with Janus distro, albeit I miss a lot of cool things from IDEA.
      - digerata 14y ago
        Define Modern. I just upgraded from a "modern" macbook pro (2008, aftermarket SSD) to a "modern" retina macbook pro that is maxed out. IntelliJ and RubyMine fly like the wind on this new machine. The old one was painful to use IntelliJ but you could live with RubyMine performance.
tomlu 14y ago
IntelliJ is pretty awesome, and works great for Android development too in case anyone hasn't tried it yet. It's a pity its vim emulator (IdeaVim) is pretty bad compared to the other Java IDEs.
- CoffeeDregs 14y ago
  Hmm... I like IdeaVIM (though I don't use any particularly complicated VIM commands). How does IdeaVIM lack?
msluyter 14y ago
Intellij makes java much easier to bear for me. The one thing I miss is a single key combination to select a line and then select subsequent lines when pressed again (like cmd-L in Sublime). The intellij alternatives seem awkward to me.
- henrik_w 14y ago
  Syntax aware selection (Ctrl-W) doesn't work for you? I know it's not exactly what you ask for, but I think it's great. It successively selects a bigger and bigger block of code. According to Productivity Guide, it's the feature I use the most in IntelliJ (by a wide margin).
  - msluyter 14y ago
    Yeah, I use that and I agree that it's useful. I just want a simpler way to select successive lines.
    - lihaoyi 14y ago
      what's wrong with [Home] [Shift] [Down] [Down] [Down]? (2+n) keystrokes for (n) lines selected is hard to beat And the skill is transferable to MS Word/Sublime/Google Docs/Notepad/Eclipse/VS/any-other-text-input-everywhere-ever!
      - msluyter 14y ago
        a) Not all keyboards have Home/End keys (macbooks for example). b) Even then, I find it more error prone to reach over for the Home key, hit shift, etc... c) 2+n is still 1 more than 1+n ([Ctrl] [l] [l] [l]). ;) It's admittedly a minor thing; I just got really comfortable with Ctrl-l in Sublime. I should probably just get over it.
        miahi 14y ago
        There is an editor action to select a line (Select line at caret) in the keymap that doesn't have a default shortcut, but you can define it and use it instead of the first Home+Shift+down. Then you can extend the selection with Shift+down.
olive_ 14y ago
It was hard to adapt after using eclipse for years, but i did not regret it.
buster 14y ago
I've bought PyCharm and WebStorm recently when they sold it for 75% off last year and i must say i am extremely well pleased. Up until today i would've thought SublimeText2 is enough, but PyCharm just kicks ass, with its vagrant/debugging/ssh/sftp/intellisense/unittests/sphinx integration. Thanks Jetbrains, for a great IDE!
- csmatt 14y ago
  Damn, I guess I missed the discount, but it doesn't bother me much at all. I've used eclipse, netbeans, visual studio, and I'm sure a few others. In my opinion, a good IDE doesn't get in your way and makes life easier when you need it. I started using intellij at work and found it to be a breath of fresh air and in such compliance with my previously stated definition that I, for the first time ever, personally paid for IDE software (PyCharm). The only thing that comes close is VS and that's only when working on dot net stuff. They have 30 day trials and I suggest you give them a shot. It'll make whatever you're currently using feel like it's from 20 years ago.
  - buster 14y ago
    Exactly, it doesn't have to get in your way and that is what PyCharm is doing. Interestingly, after buying i had the need for some easy python debugging and was surprised how well it works, even "remotely" on a vagrant machine. The vagrant and remote deployment/debugging integration is probably the feature i love most. Oh.. and the virtualenv/pip integration. ;) p.s.: the discount (of all jetbrains products!) was around december 21st.
- steven_h 14y ago
  Hindsight is 20/20, but when you by IDEA Ultimate, you get all the other derivatives as plugins to IDEA (I have the Python, Ruby, and PHP plugins which is the same as having PyCharm, RubyMine, and PHPStorm). I almost did the same thing you did during the sale but one of my friends let me know about the plugins, which they could do a better job of talking about. Can't go wrong with this great software either way though.
  - 14y ago
mattquiros 14y ago
I'd like to hear someone's comparison of IntelliJ and Eclipse. I've used both, but because most books and online tutorials on Java revolve around Eclipse (even Google recommends it for Android development), it's my primary IDE and feel quite locked into it. NetBeans comes second because this is the only other IDE I often see in other resources. My only experience with IntelliJ is with a job I quit within a month because they were using some boring proprietary Java framework that has almost no documentation. I have no qualms about IntelliJ, I think it's pretty, looks a lot like NetBeans, but I don't think I've fully maximized its features (heck, I can only say it's pretty). I also hear a lot of people say that IntelliJ is the best IDE for Java. What makes it so much better than Eclipse, and maybe even NetBeans?
- caw 14y ago
  I'd like to caution you against deciding on Eclipse solely because of online tutorials and Google recommendation. For one, Eclipse is free, so it has a very low barrier to entry. If you were going to start Java tomorrow, I'd tell you to use Eclipse or Netbeans as well, even though I own IntelliJ. Can't give you a comparison because I use it infrequently, and I use IntelliJ for Ruby. It's a lot more polished than Aptana Studios' Ruby integration, which is basically Eclipse.
- Torn 14y ago
  Eclipse has a proper incremental compiler, which will tell you what's wrong with your code as you type and refactor. IntelliJ has historically not had one, and the introduction of the 'compile as you go' feature in IntelliJ 12 just doesn't hold a candle to the Eclipse one in complex workspaces. Source: 5 years with Eclipse, and 6 months using IntelliJ 11/12 now.
- verroq 14y ago
  Eclipse's interface is clunky (switch between debug and code), debugger is buggy and is generally slow.
- KMag 14y ago
  IntelliJ's @Nullable annotations are a decent workaround to my biggest complaint about Java. (Java has a static type system that intentionally doesn't catch the most common type error.) On the NetBeans subject: does NetBeans have much traction outside of Sun/Oracle? It's been a while since I've done any Java development, but back in 2005, it seemed that pretty much only the official Java tutorials used NetBeans.
Erwin 14y ago
I converted from many years' of using xemacs to pycharm (which is really a subset of the full if Intellij IDEA) and I'm mostly happy. When I started with xemacs in 2000 or so I made a few minor modes and tweaks but with years things started breaking mysteriously; xemacs was also mostly abandoned compared to GNU emacs but many of my settings were not compatible. Pycharm gave me overall a better out of the box experience, though at a heavy resource cost (I have 3 branches of my project open and use 1 GB of memory). I've paid maybe 150 EUR to JetBrains for that, but there simply isn't anyone that I could pay 150 EUR to to get a similar experience with emacs. I'm happy to pay JetBrains even more in yearly renewal costs to make the editor even better.
stoolpigeon 14y ago
I just scrolled through the comments and they are almost universally positive. Are any of you running it on 64 bit linux and if so - have you found a way to fix the way fonts look?
- cdawzrd 14y ago
  I run PyCharm in 64-bit linux and have no font problems. Perhaps you should ask in the Jetbrains community forums, and include some more details / screenshots?
- spion 14y ago
  Whats wrong with the way the fonts look? I find that people are split on the matter of good font rendering on Linux: some perfer hinting with bytecode-enabled fonts while others prefer antialiasing with hinting turned off... Personally I like to add this line to bin/idea.vmoptions -Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=false which turns off anti aliasing, then use windows fonts (Verdana for menus, Courier New for code) inside the IDE.
- geoka9 14y ago
  Hi, I do when I browse Java and Scala code. I'm not sure what problem you mean, but I have to run `wmname LG3D` before running idea, otherwise the fonts are not displayed at all. With that, it runs fine; the only (minor) problem is that switching to another window and back to idea makes the cursor disappear and some point-related shortcuts stop working until I open any menu/window within idea. I use a tiling window manager; I wonder if it claches with the Java UI library somehow.
- madisp 14y ago
  Running Idea on 64bit Ubuntu here. Yes, there is a solution and it is a huge hack. The idea is to make your own fonts with hinting info stripped out - check out http://gleamynode.net/articles/2280/ http://gleamynode.net/articles/2280/ For instance this is how Go code looks in my IDE: http://i.imgur.com/jcWVFuS.png http://i.imgur.com/jcWVFuS.png Some people don't like the blurry look but I have grown quite fond of it.
stephenhuey 14y ago
Jetbrains rocks, and I don't even own any stock. I've been out of the Java world for a few years, but when I was a young padawan I wanted to use IntelliJ at an investment bank but they wouldn't pay for it since Eclipse was available. Now I know it'd have been worth the productivity boost to pay for a license myself, because I currently use both RubyMine and TextMate at work, but I find that RubyMine helps me get more done and I can find my way around large projects more easily. RubyMine 5 was just released and it's fast, and it's also kind of cute when it points out that a line of code doesn't look like the Ruby style guide. :) FWIW, I just discovered VIM Adventures a week or so ago, and I'm planning to try to give it a chance to win me over: http://vim-adventures.com/ http://vim-adventures.com/
Osiris 14y ago
I've been using Sublime Text 2 for the past year or so, but I recently picked up a copy of PhpStorm (by the same company) during their last 75% sale. I've been using that ever since and almost never use ST2 anymore (I really miss multiple-cursors, so I still use it for that). PhpStorm gives me so much more information about the code, such as validating types (based on type hinting), showing warnings when the wrong type is used, automatically updates DocBlocks with correct information, allows very fast jumping to the source code of a function call, quickly find all references to a specific function or class, intelligent popup of callable functions on an object (again, using Type Hinting to know the object's type). It's really been a huge difference. Yes, there are some weird things to get used to (default OS X keymap uses a lot of non-standard keys), but overall it's pretty damn useful.
codex 14y ago
I've used Emacs, Vim, Eclipse, Visual Slickedit, Sublime Text 2, and JetBrains' IDEs. For C++, Slickedit is king, followed closely by Eclipse, but soon I think AppCode will give them both a run for their money. For all other mainstream languages JetBrains' products win hands down. For the rest either Emacs, Vim, or ST2 will do. The difference between using a real IDE and an editor with hacked IDE extensions is like the difference between hunting with a rifle and hunting with a bow and arrow. If you're skilled enough, both will work. If you're set in your ways you may prefer the bow, and the bow offers a more primal experience and requires more dedication. The bow is certainly more badass. But the rifle just boosts your productivity immensely. The one downside of IDEs is that they can encourage a bit of sloppiness. The tool automates so much you want it to automate it all, but there is still no substitute for a good working memory and careful study and thought.
Sindisil 14y ago
Very well deserved! My primary Java IDE had been NetBeans for years, mostly because the rough edges in Eclipse outweighed the extra functionality. Recently I've been doing some Android programming, and found the native lib support in nbandroid to be suboptimal at best. Idea works swimmingly in the same situation, and Eclipse well enough, so my options were to muddle along with manual build system changes in NB, add necessary functionality to NBAndroid, or switch. Since I spend a huge chunk of my time coding C (NB's C support is actually quite nice), I've been giving Eclipse a go. It's come along rather well, I must say. That said, if Idea were to add official C & C++ support, I'd be on it like white on rice. I very much prefer to use one primary tool, minimizing switching back and forth, so using Idea for some languages & platforms and NB or Eclipse for others just isn't palatable. Idea is almost good enough to make me consider a two IDE world, though (this from a "vim unless I'm doing Java" guy, up until a few months ago). Sadly, I've run into an aspect of CDT that might be enough to push me back to NetBeans, even if it means doing some additional work. It seems that CDT language aware search (such as "find references") takes pre-processor directives into account. So, when searching for, say, a function name (or worse, doing a "rename" refactoring), I'll only find a subset of occurrences, depending upon what symbols I have defined for a given build configuration. For personal code, that may not be an issue, as I tend to eschew ifdefs in favor of using different implementation files resolved by platform specific make targets. However, the main code bases I work with daily are littered with #ifdef WIN32 and #ifdef TRACE_ON and such.
Yhippa 14y ago
I got this during the "end of the world" sale last year and I love it. Well deserved. I'm hoping this will be the closest thing we'll get to Visual Studio for Java.
treerex 14y ago
For me the advantage of Emacs over a set of IDEs is its ability to support multiple languages very well within a single unified environment. In a typical day I'm writing Common Lisp, C++, XML, XSLT, shell scripts, documentation. The only time I'm not working in Emacs is when I switch to Eclipse for the odd Java project, because that's what everyone else uses in my department. Have a I spent a lot of time customizing my environment? Absolutely. But it fits me like a well oiled leather glove and makes me incredibly productive. I don't need to learn separate environments for Lisp, C++, XML... A lot of this is personal preference and familiarity. When I sit down with Visual Studio or XCode I'm completely lost and feel like I'm wearing shackles.
- rschmitty 14y ago
  IntelliJ supports multiple languages, primary reason I use it
- nilkn 14y ago
  I love a good IDE (RubyMines, for example), and in general a well-engineered IDE designed from the ground up for your language and development stack is going to be superior to emacs or vim. However, I'd feel crippled overall as a developer if I didn't know one of those two (vim in my case). For one thing, a lot of the best IDEs are not free and some are very pricey. I'm not going to go out on a huge spending spree buying a bunch of IDEs just for little experiments I want to do in my spare time. More importantly, though, it is quite often at work that I need to edit code in a variety of languages, and it is simply more productive to be able to edit the code in one editor rather than having to fire up multiple IDEs. Not to mention the need to occasionally make quick edits from within a terminal. Using vim frequently also keeps me up to speed on terminal commands for lots of modern tools. When I was in college I used IDEs almost exclusively, and whenever I found myself needing to do something from the terminal, my God it sucked. I was crippled. Now I feel more like a jack of all trades who can be productive in mostly any environment.
facboy 14y ago
i love intellij but i've been disappointed with the bugginess of 12. i am (unwisely) doing a fair bit of JPA/Hibernate work at the moment and in the latest point release they've managed to break this functionality completely.

135 points by rdemmer 14y ago

steeve 14y ago

I use it everyday! Well deserved!

sparx 14y ago

best java ide ever

manuletroll 14y ago

I don't use IDEA but Jetbrains does make amazing tools. I couldn't survive without Resharper.

benparsons 14y ago
I have never used IDEA, but if it is even a fraction as good as ReSharper then it is still amazing. After being introduced to it I feel so handicapped without it when using plain Visual Studio.

mmahemoff 14y ago

Jolt was such a big phenomenon in the '90s. Do developers consume less caffeine now or maybe Red Bull cut their lunch? (It's a bit hard to gauge the trend from outside the US, as Jolt is particularly US-focused afaict.) Anyway, IDEA is always putting developer experience first, so it's well-deserved.

henrik_w 14y ago

Well deserved. I've been using IntelliJ IDEA (Java) for the past four years. Before that, I used Emacs coding C++. I was pretty amazed at how much more productive I became using an IDE (just for the mechanics of coding, like auto-completion, jump to suource etc - not counting any differences between C++ and Java). I still like Emacs a lot, but using a good IDE just took coding to the next level. More details: http://henrikwarne.com/2012/06/17/programmer-productivity-emacs-versus-intellij-idea/ http://henrikwarne.com/2012/06/17/programmer-productivity-em...

mgkimsal 14y ago
Same here, but a vim guy. "Jump to source" alone makes an IDE worthwhile, and it still surprises me to this day that people eschew IDEs because of 'bloat', and instead prefer adding dozens of brittle extensions to vim/emacs/sublime/whatever to make up for what's missing. I understand speed - I use vim for quick edits/changes - but simply being able to jump to the source of a function you're looking at is huge (yes I know about ctags for vim - doesn't even feel like it comes close). EDIT: One of the other huge benefits of IDEs in general is working with and studying code that you didn't write yourself. All the sublime and textmate fans I know are almost always just writing their own code from scratch, or using a small subset of well-known plugins for popular framework X. Taking code written by someone you didn't know, who perhaps didn't even know language foo very well, is a pain that is lessened somewhat by using a capable IDE vs a plain text editor.
- freerobby 14y ago
  I'm sure you've seen it, but just to be sure - there's an IntelliJ plugin that gives you vim key bindings: http://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/?id=164 http://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/?id=164
  - mmahemoff 14y ago
    It's a good effort, but suffers from the usual problems of replicating Vim, ie lots of subtle changes and lots of missing functionality. Both of which wreak havoc with one's muscle memory. Also, I found it really slowed things down (in RubyMine), sometimes updating just 1-2 characters a second in a big project (on a modern MBP). I've gone back and forth, but generally I prefer Vim with Janus distro, albeit I miss a lot of cool things from IDEA.
    - digerata 14y ago
      Define Modern. I just upgraded from a "modern" macbook pro (2008, aftermarket SSD) to a "modern" retina macbook pro that is maxed out. IntelliJ and RubyMine fly like the wind on this new machine. The old one was painful to use IntelliJ but you could live with RubyMine performance.

tomlu 14y ago

IntelliJ is pretty awesome, and works great for Android development too in case anyone hasn't tried it yet. It's a pity its vim emulator (IdeaVim) is pretty bad compared to the other Java IDEs.

CoffeeDregs 14y ago
Hmm... I like IdeaVIM (though I don't use any particularly complicated VIM commands). How does IdeaVIM lack?

msluyter 14y ago

Intellij makes java much easier to bear for me. The one thing I miss is a single key combination to select a line and then select subsequent lines when pressed again (like cmd-L in Sublime). The intellij alternatives seem awkward to me.

henrik_w 14y ago
Syntax aware selection (Ctrl-W) doesn't work for you? I know it's not exactly what you ask for, but I think it's great. It successively selects a bigger and bigger block of code. According to Productivity Guide, it's the feature I use the most in IntelliJ (by a wide margin).
- msluyter 14y ago
  Yeah, I use that and I agree that it's useful. I just want a simpler way to select successive lines.
  - lihaoyi 14y ago
    what's wrong with [Home] [Shift] [Down] [Down] [Down]? (2+n) keystrokes for (n) lines selected is hard to beat And the skill is transferable to MS Word/Sublime/Google Docs/Notepad/Eclipse/VS/any-other-text-input-everywhere-ever!
    - msluyter 14y ago
      a) Not all keyboards have Home/End keys (macbooks for example). b) Even then, I find it more error prone to reach over for the Home key, hit shift, etc... c) 2+n is still 1 more than 1+n ([Ctrl] [l] [l] [l]). ;) It's admittedly a minor thing; I just got really comfortable with Ctrl-l in Sublime. I should probably just get over it.
      - miahi 14y ago
        There is an editor action to select a line (Select line at caret) in the keymap that doesn't have a default shortcut, but you can define it and use it instead of the first Home+Shift+down. Then you can extend the selection with Shift+down.

olive_ 14y ago

It was hard to adapt after using eclipse for years, but i did not regret it.

buster 14y ago

I've bought PyCharm and WebStorm recently when they sold it for 75% off last year and i must say i am extremely well pleased. Up until today i would've thought SublimeText2 is enough, but PyCharm just kicks ass, with its vagrant/debugging/ssh/sftp/intellisense/unittests/sphinx integration. Thanks Jetbrains, for a great IDE!

csmatt 14y ago
Damn, I guess I missed the discount, but it doesn't bother me much at all. I've used eclipse, netbeans, visual studio, and I'm sure a few others. In my opinion, a good IDE doesn't get in your way and makes life easier when you need it. I started using intellij at work and found it to be a breath of fresh air and in such compliance with my previously stated definition that I, for the first time ever, personally paid for IDE software (PyCharm). The only thing that comes close is VS and that's only when working on dot net stuff. They have 30 day trials and I suggest you give them a shot. It'll make whatever you're currently using feel like it's from 20 years ago.
- buster 14y ago
  Exactly, it doesn't have to get in your way and that is what PyCharm is doing. Interestingly, after buying i had the need for some easy python debugging and was surprised how well it works, even "remotely" on a vagrant machine. The vagrant and remote deployment/debugging integration is probably the feature i love most. Oh.. and the virtualenv/pip integration. ;) p.s.: the discount (of all jetbrains products!) was around december 21st.
steven_h 14y ago
Hindsight is 20/20, but when you by IDEA Ultimate, you get all the other derivatives as plugins to IDEA (I have the Python, Ruby, and PHP plugins which is the same as having PyCharm, RubyMine, and PHPStorm). I almost did the same thing you did during the sale but one of my friends let me know about the plugins, which they could do a better job of talking about. Can't go wrong with this great software either way though.
- 14y ago

mattquiros 14y ago

I'd like to hear someone's comparison of IntelliJ and Eclipse. I've used both, but because most books and online tutorials on Java revolve around Eclipse (even Google recommends it for Android development), it's my primary IDE and feel quite locked into it. NetBeans comes second because this is the only other IDE I often see in other resources. My only experience with IntelliJ is with a job I quit within a month because they were using some boring proprietary Java framework that has almost no documentation. I have no qualms about IntelliJ, I think it's pretty, looks a lot like NetBeans, but I don't think I've fully maximized its features (heck, I can only say it's pretty). I also hear a lot of people say that IntelliJ is the best IDE for Java. What makes it so much better than Eclipse, and maybe even NetBeans?

caw 14y ago
I'd like to caution you against deciding on Eclipse solely because of online tutorials and Google recommendation. For one, Eclipse is free, so it has a very low barrier to entry. If you were going to start Java tomorrow, I'd tell you to use Eclipse or Netbeans as well, even though I own IntelliJ. Can't give you a comparison because I use it infrequently, and I use IntelliJ for Ruby. It's a lot more polished than Aptana Studios' Ruby integration, which is basically Eclipse.
Torn 14y ago
Eclipse has a proper incremental compiler, which will tell you what's wrong with your code as you type and refactor. IntelliJ has historically not had one, and the introduction of the 'compile as you go' feature in IntelliJ 12 just doesn't hold a candle to the Eclipse one in complex workspaces. Source: 5 years with Eclipse, and 6 months using IntelliJ 11/12 now.
verroq 14y ago
Eclipse's interface is clunky (switch between debug and code), debugger is buggy and is generally slow.
KMag 14y ago
IntelliJ's @Nullable annotations are a decent workaround to my biggest complaint about Java. (Java has a static type system that intentionally doesn't catch the most common type error.) On the NetBeans subject: does NetBeans have much traction outside of Sun/Oracle? It's been a while since I've done any Java development, but back in 2005, it seemed that pretty much only the official Java tutorials used NetBeans.

Erwin 14y ago

I converted from many years' of using xemacs to pycharm (which is really a subset of the full if Intellij IDEA) and I'm mostly happy. When I started with xemacs in 2000 or so I made a few minor modes and tweaks but with years things started breaking mysteriously; xemacs was also mostly abandoned compared to GNU emacs but many of my settings were not compatible. Pycharm gave me overall a better out of the box experience, though at a heavy resource cost (I have 3 branches of my project open and use 1 GB of memory). I've paid maybe 150 EUR to JetBrains for that, but there simply isn't anyone that I could pay 150 EUR to to get a similar experience with emacs. I'm happy to pay JetBrains even more in yearly renewal costs to make the editor even better.

stoolpigeon 14y ago

I just scrolled through the comments and they are almost universally positive. Are any of you running it on 64 bit linux and if so - have you found a way to fix the way fonts look?

cdawzrd 14y ago
I run PyCharm in 64-bit linux and have no font problems. Perhaps you should ask in the Jetbrains community forums, and include some more details / screenshots?
spion 14y ago
Whats wrong with the way the fonts look? I find that people are split on the matter of good font rendering on Linux: some perfer hinting with bytecode-enabled fonts while others prefer antialiasing with hinting turned off... Personally I like to add this line to bin/idea.vmoptions -Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=false which turns off anti aliasing, then use windows fonts (Verdana for menus, Courier New for code) inside the IDE.
geoka9 14y ago
Hi, I do when I browse Java and Scala code. I'm not sure what problem you mean, but I have to run `wmname LG3D` before running idea, otherwise the fonts are not displayed at all. With that, it runs fine; the only (minor) problem is that switching to another window and back to idea makes the cursor disappear and some point-related shortcuts stop working until I open any menu/window within idea. I use a tiling window manager; I wonder if it claches with the Java UI library somehow.
madisp 14y ago
Running Idea on 64bit Ubuntu here. Yes, there is a solution and it is a huge hack. The idea is to make your own fonts with hinting info stripped out - check out http://gleamynode.net/articles/2280/ http://gleamynode.net/articles/2280/ For instance this is how Go code looks in my IDE: http://i.imgur.com/jcWVFuS.png http://i.imgur.com/jcWVFuS.png Some people don't like the blurry look but I have grown quite fond of it.

stephenhuey 14y ago

Jetbrains rocks, and I don't even own any stock. I've been out of the Java world for a few years, but when I was a young padawan I wanted to use IntelliJ at an investment bank but they wouldn't pay for it since Eclipse was available. Now I know it'd have been worth the productivity boost to pay for a license myself, because I currently use both RubyMine and TextMate at work, but I find that RubyMine helps me get more done and I can find my way around large projects more easily. RubyMine 5 was just released and it's fast, and it's also kind of cute when it points out that a line of code doesn't look like the Ruby style guide. :) FWIW, I just discovered VIM Adventures a week or so ago, and I'm planning to try to give it a chance to win me over: http://vim-adventures.com/ http://vim-adventures.com/

Osiris 14y ago

I've been using Sublime Text 2 for the past year or so, but I recently picked up a copy of PhpStorm (by the same company) during their last 75% sale. I've been using that ever since and almost never use ST2 anymore (I really miss multiple-cursors, so I still use it for that). PhpStorm gives me so much more information about the code, such as validating types (based on type hinting), showing warnings when the wrong type is used, automatically updates DocBlocks with correct information, allows very fast jumping to the source code of a function call, quickly find all references to a specific function or class, intelligent popup of callable functions on an object (again, using Type Hinting to know the object's type). It's really been a huge difference. Yes, there are some weird things to get used to (default OS X keymap uses a lot of non-standard keys), but overall it's pretty damn useful.

codex 14y ago

I've used Emacs, Vim, Eclipse, Visual Slickedit, Sublime Text 2, and JetBrains' IDEs. For C++, Slickedit is king, followed closely by Eclipse, but soon I think AppCode will give them both a run for their money. For all other mainstream languages JetBrains' products win hands down. For the rest either Emacs, Vim, or ST2 will do. The difference between using a real IDE and an editor with hacked IDE extensions is like the difference between hunting with a rifle and hunting with a bow and arrow. If you're skilled enough, both will work. If you're set in your ways you may prefer the bow, and the bow offers a more primal experience and requires more dedication. The bow is certainly more badass. But the rifle just boosts your productivity immensely. The one downside of IDEs is that they can encourage a bit of sloppiness. The tool automates so much you want it to automate it all, but there is still no substitute for a good working memory and careful study and thought.

Sindisil 14y ago

Very well deserved! My primary Java IDE had been NetBeans for years, mostly because the rough edges in Eclipse outweighed the extra functionality. Recently I've been doing some Android programming, and found the native lib support in nbandroid to be suboptimal at best. Idea works swimmingly in the same situation, and Eclipse well enough, so my options were to muddle along with manual build system changes in NB, add necessary functionality to NBAndroid, or switch. Since I spend a huge chunk of my time coding C (NB's C support is actually quite nice), I've been giving Eclipse a go. It's come along rather well, I must say. That said, if Idea were to add official C & C++ support, I'd be on it like white on rice. I very much prefer to use one primary tool, minimizing switching back and forth, so using Idea for some languages & platforms and NB or Eclipse for others just isn't palatable. Idea is almost good enough to make me consider a two IDE world, though (this from a "vim unless I'm doing Java" guy, up until a few months ago). Sadly, I've run into an aspect of CDT that might be enough to push me back to NetBeans, even if it means doing some additional work. It seems that CDT language aware search (such as "find references") takes pre-processor directives into account. So, when searching for, say, a function name (or worse, doing a "rename" refactoring), I'll only find a subset of occurrences, depending upon what symbols I have defined for a given build configuration. For personal code, that may not be an issue, as I tend to eschew ifdefs in favor of using different implementation files resolved by platform specific make targets. However, the main code bases I work with daily are littered with #ifdef WIN32 and #ifdef TRACE_ON and such.

Yhippa 14y ago

I got this during the "end of the world" sale last year and I love it. Well deserved. I'm hoping this will be the closest thing we'll get to Visual Studio for Java.

treerex 14y ago

For me the advantage of Emacs over a set of IDEs is its ability to support multiple languages very well within a single unified environment. In a typical day I'm writing Common Lisp, C++, XML, XSLT, shell scripts, documentation. The only time I'm not working in Emacs is when I switch to Eclipse for the odd Java project, because that's what everyone else uses in my department. Have a I spent a lot of time customizing my environment? Absolutely. But it fits me like a well oiled leather glove and makes me incredibly productive. I don't need to learn separate environments for Lisp, C++, XML... A lot of this is personal preference and familiarity. When I sit down with Visual Studio or XCode I'm completely lost and feel like I'm wearing shackles.

rschmitty 14y ago
IntelliJ supports multiple languages, primary reason I use it
nilkn 14y ago
I love a good IDE (RubyMines, for example), and in general a well-engineered IDE designed from the ground up for your language and development stack is going to be superior to emacs or vim. However, I'd feel crippled overall as a developer if I didn't know one of those two (vim in my case). For one thing, a lot of the best IDEs are not free and some are very pricey. I'm not going to go out on a huge spending spree buying a bunch of IDEs just for little experiments I want to do in my spare time. More importantly, though, it is quite often at work that I need to edit code in a variety of languages, and it is simply more productive to be able to edit the code in one editor rather than having to fire up multiple IDEs. Not to mention the need to occasionally make quick edits from within a terminal. Using vim frequently also keeps me up to speed on terminal commands for lots of modern tools. When I was in college I used IDEs almost exclusively, and whenever I found myself needing to do something from the terminal, my God it sucked. I was crippled. Now I feel more like a jack of all trades who can be productive in mostly any environment.

facboy 14y ago

i love intellij but i've been disappointed with the bugginess of 12. i am (unwisely) doing a fair bit of JPA/Hibernate work at the moment and in the latest point release they've managed to break this functionality completely.