4 ms·

I always fail to understood why these products are so ugly to see...

by _ZeD_ 12y ago

unfamiliar 12y ago
Probably because they are written in Java. I don't think I've ever seen a good looking Java application.
- agildehaus 12y ago
  Any decent Android app?
chillax 12y ago
If you are refering to the look and feel it's probably down to what's possible with Javas UI frameworks (Swing/AWT).
LoneWolf 12y ago
I fail to see why you call it ugly, the most important thing is not if it is beautiful or ugly but if works well, and helps development.
Vespasian 12y ago
Maybe it's just me but i quite like the dark version (Theme "Darcular"). Nothing wrong with it.
- LoneWolf 12y ago
  Sorry for being pedantic, but the theme is called "Darcula".
gecko 12y ago
I disagree they're straight-up ugly, but they're certainly cluttered, and I think there's a very simple reason for that: IntelliJ (or VisualStudio, or Xcode, or anything in this class) is an expert tool. Expert tools can be insanely complex to use, and can have very steep learning curves, because the people who use them are willing and able to invest the time. In exchange, the tools assume that most users are going to want to customize the living daylights out of their tooling. This means that really good IDEs like IntelliJ, Visual Studio, etc., can optimize for two separate extremes. On the one hand, it almost doesn't matter how cluttered they are, because experts are going to customize them to look exactly how they want anyway. On the other hand, they pack so much functionality that they face a very real problem of people not even knowing what's there in the first place. (E.g., did you know you can debug any browser's JavaScript directly from IntelliJ? I sure didn't until surprisingly recently, but apparently that's been there for quite some time.) So there's also a mode that displays all the things that the IDE can possibly do, and you're completely correct that that mode looks borderline unusable. Honestly, as long as the clutter is done sanely, I'm okay with it. I frequently toggle between just-the-code and all-the-things when I'm in IntelliJ, and the recent No Distraction mode makes doing that a lot simpler. If I know a keyboard shortcut, awesome. If I don't, I have the shortcuts for all the panes hardwired, so at least I can quickly browse the 25 buttons that show up, immediately discard the 15 I recognize, and quickly find which of the remaining 10 actually does what I want. I'm not going to argue this is the most elegant or most efficient, but I'm not convinced it's a horrible trade-off, either.
- LoneWolf 12y ago
  So there's also a mode that displays all the things that the IDE can possibly do I'm curious, how do I turn that mode on?
  - gecko 12y ago
    In IntelliJ, that'd be turning on the Toolbar, the Tool Buttons, Navigation Bar, and Status Bar, and then opening all the panels at once. In real life, I don't actually turn all those things on; I instead have common panels enabled, and then bound a shortcut to Distraction Free Mode that I use when I'm actually coding instead of debugging/building/etc. I don't remember the equivalent for Visual Studio off the top of my head, but it's similar. Emacs and Vim don't really have a mode like that. I suppose the closest in Emacs would be just hitting M-x and then tabbing through all the functions, but I'm not sure that counts.
    - ygra 12y ago
      Alt+Shift+Enter in VS is full-screen mode, which removes most if not all floating windows as well.
- mariusmg 12y ago
  I disagree about having to look cluttered. Here's how my Visual Studio usually looks like http://i.imgur.com/imqiWGT.png http://i.imgur.com/imqiWGT.png
  - z5h 12y ago
    And for the record, here's my IntelliJ Ultimate Edition. http://imgur.com/r78ATGQ http://imgur.com/r78ATGQ
  - arcticfox 12y ago
    You missed the point. Experts, like yourself, will customize the IDE to look like whatever they like so it doesn't matter if the default is cluttered. Cluttered is just a logical default, in order to expose all of the functionality to new users.
sz4kerto 12y ago
It might look much worse than Sublime Text on your Macbook when you're sitting in a coffee shop sipping your vanilla frappucino. However, apart from VS it's _the_ IDE to get things done when working with large and complex codebase. (I'm talking about multi-million LOCs, where a method rename takes 1 second in IntelliJ, and you can be pretty sure that it has properly checked out the files, put the changes into the proper VCS changeset, updated the comments accordingly, etc.)
- contergan 12y ago
  I would agree, if IntelliJ's performance wasn't so bad. On my 2012 MBA I had to turn off the auto completion, because otherwise, just typing text into the editor would make the fans run on full speed and lead to stuttering and hang-ups. So, unfortunately for performance reasons, I had to switch back to Sublime Text.
  - vetinari 12y ago
    The target audience for MBA is not workstation/professional users, for that it was underpowered when it launchaed (current Macbook is the same). That's fine, because the normal or mainstream user does not need that much power to browse facebook and ebay. On my 2012 Thinkpad T-series (8 GB RAM, SSD, shitty display) Idea runs very nicely (Java, Python). But then, we cannot compare Thinkpad and MBA, as they are entirely different weight categories.
    - baldfat 12y ago
      To be fair, I use auto complete with my 5 year old netbook in VIM and Kate with auto complete and it doesn't slow down. I also run RStudio (occasionally) and it has a slight slow down. Intellij slows only a little more and is usable with my old netbook.
  - jgrowl 12y ago
    I am probably working with smaller code-bases than you, but I've never had this problem with auto-completion causing intellij to hang on my mba. I'm pretty sure it is a 2011 model too. shrug
winterbe 12y ago
I couldn't disagree more. In my opinion it's the most decent looking IDE / code editor I've ever used. Most IDEs are cluttered with a gazillion views. Intellij focuses on the code editor instead. You can hide everything but the code editor and keep full control via keyboard shortcuts.
cfontes 12y ago
Comming from eclipse, intelliJ is beautiful! and also faster. In fact if you develop in Java and you are not using it... you are missing it. It's awesome.

I always fail to understood why these products are so ugly to see...

by _ZeD_ 12y ago

I always fail to understood why these products are so ugly to see...

unfamiliar 12y ago

Probably because they are written in Java. I don't think I've ever seen a good looking Java application.

agildehaus 12y ago
Any decent Android app?

chillax 12y ago

If you are refering to the look and feel it's probably down to what's possible with Javas UI frameworks (Swing/AWT).

LoneWolf 12y ago

I fail to see why you call it ugly, the most important thing is not if it is beautiful or ugly but if works well, and helps development.

Vespasian 12y ago

Maybe it's just me but i quite like the dark version (Theme "Darcular"). Nothing wrong with it.

LoneWolf 12y ago
Sorry for being pedantic, but the theme is called "Darcula".

gecko 12y ago

I disagree they're straight-up ugly, but they're certainly cluttered, and I think there's a very simple reason for that: IntelliJ (or VisualStudio, or Xcode, or anything in this class) is an expert tool. Expert tools can be insanely complex to use, and can have very steep learning curves, because the people who use them are willing and able to invest the time. In exchange, the tools assume that most users are going to want to customize the living daylights out of their tooling. This means that really good IDEs like IntelliJ, Visual Studio, etc., can optimize for two separate extremes. On the one hand, it almost doesn't matter how cluttered they are, because experts are going to customize them to look exactly how they want anyway. On the other hand, they pack so much functionality that they face a very real problem of people not even knowing what's there in the first place. (E.g., did you know you can debug any browser's JavaScript directly from IntelliJ? I sure didn't until surprisingly recently, but apparently that's been there for quite some time.) So there's also a mode that displays all the things that the IDE can possibly do, and you're completely correct that that mode looks borderline unusable. Honestly, as long as the clutter is done sanely, I'm okay with it. I frequently toggle between just-the-code and all-the-things when I'm in IntelliJ, and the recent No Distraction mode makes doing that a lot simpler. If I know a keyboard shortcut, awesome. If I don't, I have the shortcuts for all the panes hardwired, so at least I can quickly browse the 25 buttons that show up, immediately discard the 15 I recognize, and quickly find which of the remaining 10 actually does what I want. I'm not going to argue this is the most elegant or most efficient, but I'm not convinced it's a horrible trade-off, either.

LoneWolf 12y ago
So there's also a mode that displays all the things that the IDE can possibly do I'm curious, how do I turn that mode on?
- gecko 12y ago
  In IntelliJ, that'd be turning on the Toolbar, the Tool Buttons, Navigation Bar, and Status Bar, and then opening all the panels at once. In real life, I don't actually turn all those things on; I instead have common panels enabled, and then bound a shortcut to Distraction Free Mode that I use when I'm actually coding instead of debugging/building/etc. I don't remember the equivalent for Visual Studio off the top of my head, but it's similar. Emacs and Vim don't really have a mode like that. I suppose the closest in Emacs would be just hitting M-x and then tabbing through all the functions, but I'm not sure that counts.
  - ygra 12y ago
    Alt+Shift+Enter in VS is full-screen mode, which removes most if not all floating windows as well.
mariusmg 12y ago
I disagree about having to look cluttered. Here's how my Visual Studio usually looks like http://i.imgur.com/imqiWGT.png http://i.imgur.com/imqiWGT.png
- z5h 12y ago
  And for the record, here's my IntelliJ Ultimate Edition. http://imgur.com/r78ATGQ http://imgur.com/r78ATGQ
- arcticfox 12y ago
  You missed the point. Experts, like yourself, will customize the IDE to look like whatever they like so it doesn't matter if the default is cluttered. Cluttered is just a logical default, in order to expose all of the functionality to new users.

sz4kerto 12y ago

It might look much worse than Sublime Text on your Macbook when you're sitting in a coffee shop sipping your vanilla frappucino. However, apart from VS it's _the_ IDE to get things done when working with large and complex codebase. (I'm talking about multi-million LOCs, where a method rename takes 1 second in IntelliJ, and you can be pretty sure that it has properly checked out the files, put the changes into the proper VCS changeset, updated the comments accordingly, etc.)

contergan 12y ago
I would agree, if IntelliJ's performance wasn't so bad. On my 2012 MBA I had to turn off the auto completion, because otherwise, just typing text into the editor would make the fans run on full speed and lead to stuttering and hang-ups. So, unfortunately for performance reasons, I had to switch back to Sublime Text.
- vetinari 12y ago
  The target audience for MBA is not workstation/professional users, for that it was underpowered when it launchaed (current Macbook is the same). That's fine, because the normal or mainstream user does not need that much power to browse facebook and ebay. On my 2012 Thinkpad T-series (8 GB RAM, SSD, shitty display) Idea runs very nicely (Java, Python). But then, we cannot compare Thinkpad and MBA, as they are entirely different weight categories.
  - baldfat 12y ago
    To be fair, I use auto complete with my 5 year old netbook in VIM and Kate with auto complete and it doesn't slow down. I also run RStudio (occasionally) and it has a slight slow down. Intellij slows only a little more and is usable with my old netbook.
- jgrowl 12y ago
  I am probably working with smaller code-bases than you, but I've never had this problem with auto-completion causing intellij to hang on my mba. I'm pretty sure it is a 2011 model too. shrug

winterbe 12y ago

I couldn't disagree more. In my opinion it's the most decent looking IDE / code editor I've ever used. Most IDEs are cluttered with a gazillion views. Intellij focuses on the code editor instead. You can hide everything but the code editor and keep full control via keyboard shortcuts.

cfontes 12y ago

Comming from eclipse, intelliJ is beautiful! and also faster. In fact if you develop in Java and you are not using it... you are missing it. It's awesome.