6 ms·

It's a mind-blowing and efficient IDE. A pity it doesn't support android development though otherwise Intellij would be out of business by now!

29athrowaway 4y ago
IntelliJ is superior in every way. Better than NetBeans and Eclipse.
- 0x445442 4y ago
  Netbeans > Eclipse > IntelliJ when it comes to working on multiple projects. I still see colleagues who have a separate IntelliJ window open for each project they need to work with because IntelliJ makes it so damned convoluted.
  - iLoveOncall 4y ago
    > I still see colleagues who have a separate IntelliJ window open for each project they need to work with because IntelliJ makes it so damned convoluted. I do this on purpose, because it's much easier than having all in a single window. IntelliJ always gives you the option to have them in a single window.
    - 0x445442 4y ago
      The single window option from IntelliJ is a hack of sorts, the last I checked they have some notion about importing a module vice a project. I'm not sure why on earth you would want separate windows though when, say, you're working on multiple Spring Boot projects and a couple of library jar projects that all interact with each other. Switching back and forth from window to window seems like self cutting.
- tpm 4y ago
  Sadly for OSGi development there is no alternative to Eclipse.
- jillesvangurp 4y ago
  Except performance. Saying this as a daily intellij user. I still miss incremental compilation speeds for Java that were in the order of milliseconds rather than the 5-10 seconds (minimum, if you are lucky). I love Kotlin but compiler speed is not one of its strengths. And with the round trip via Gradle, it just is guaranteed to take multiple seconds to process even a 1 character change in a unit test when you run one. Eclipse used to be awesome for this with Java: - error state of your project would update in real time while you were typing. Introduce a problem, the project goes red immidiately. Fix the problem, the red goes away immediately. - Edit, run, type, edit run type, etc. without noticable delay. Intellij never had this. The reason for this was a deeply integrated incremental compiler. It could even tolerate compilation errors and still allow you to run parts of your code. There are not many IDEs out there for any language that can do that. IBM did that 20 years ago with Eclipse and it's a feature I miss a lot.
  - zmmmmm 4y ago
    you just beautifully summarised why i still use Eclipse today :-) Once you get used to it, instant incremental compile >> everything else ...
    - hugi 4y ago
      Same here, much prefer Eclipse to IntelliJ. Super fast and provides instant feedback on everything you do with the incremental compilation. And the workspace is amazingly powerful as a concept.
      - candiodari 4y ago
        Incredible how often you hear the same about MSVC++6 or one of the Delphi's, up to 7.
      - pjmlp 4y ago
        I used to bash Eclipse (Netbeans fanboy :) ), then IntelliJ came into the picture without Javadoc completion out of the box (fixed nowdays), required explicit invocation of inspections, ten finger chords, no incremental compilation, no support for JNI development, indexing non stop,... and I re-learned how great Eclipse actually happens to be.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Not it isn't, specially for those of us that do JNI development. JetBrains refuses to support it and points users to buy Clion instead.
firstSpeaker 4y ago
Around NetBeans 5 and 6 it was becoming pretty good to be a competitor to IntelliJ...
Semaphor 4y ago
Is it that good, nowadays? Long, long time ago in university (okay not that long, around 2006), I first discovered NetBeans as superior Eclipse replacement, but about a year later IntelliJ as superior NetBeans replacement. And this was already for relatively simple stuff.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  So superior that JetBrains would rather sell Clion licenses than support JNI development, meanwhile Netbeans has been doing it for at least a decade.
fipar 4y ago
Agree completely that it's mind-blowing, it's my go-to tool when I do need an IDE (though I get most of my work done on emacs). However, at my age, another thing that's mind-blowing is that this is now considered efficient. My first experiences with this was with (IIRC) was its predecessor, Forte for Java, and while I loved it, I remember it being a huge resource-hog. It's unbelievable to me how much computing power has improved to the point that something like NetBeans can be considered efficient (I don't discount their efforts in making it more efficient, but I think the fact we have more brute-force capacity these days certainly helps a lot).
- rob74 4y ago
  Well, it's efficient if you compare it with the even newer (and even less efficient) generation of IDEs based on browser technology. Haven't used NetBeans in a while, but JetBrains are doing their very best to hide Java from you - their products come with their own (probably customized) OpenJDK so you don't have to have Java installed etc.
  - prmoustache 4y ago
    Scale down the speed of your processor and you quickly see what a resource hog jetbrains IDE are.
- bitwize 4y ago
  Emacs was once considered a resource hog. Eight Megs And Constantly Swapping...
  - meepmorp 4y ago
    Eventually Mallocs All Computer Storage
- HelloNurse 4y ago
  In the time of Forté For Java there were no SSDs.
  - 4y ago
grishka 4y ago
Around 10 years ago, when I was getting started with Android development, there was a plugin for that. I did try it first, but ended up going the official way with Eclipse.

29athrowaway 4y ago

IntelliJ is superior in every way. Better than NetBeans and Eclipse.

0x445442 4y ago
Netbeans > Eclipse > IntelliJ when it comes to working on multiple projects. I still see colleagues who have a separate IntelliJ window open for each project they need to work with because IntelliJ makes it so damned convoluted.
- iLoveOncall 4y ago
  > I still see colleagues who have a separate IntelliJ window open for each project they need to work with because IntelliJ makes it so damned convoluted. I do this on purpose, because it's much easier than having all in a single window. IntelliJ always gives you the option to have them in a single window.
  - 0x445442 4y ago
    The single window option from IntelliJ is a hack of sorts, the last I checked they have some notion about importing a module vice a project. I'm not sure why on earth you would want separate windows though when, say, you're working on multiple Spring Boot projects and a couple of library jar projects that all interact with each other. Switching back and forth from window to window seems like self cutting.
tpm 4y ago
Sadly for OSGi development there is no alternative to Eclipse.
jillesvangurp 4y ago
Except performance. Saying this as a daily intellij user. I still miss incremental compilation speeds for Java that were in the order of milliseconds rather than the 5-10 seconds (minimum, if you are lucky). I love Kotlin but compiler speed is not one of its strengths. And with the round trip via Gradle, it just is guaranteed to take multiple seconds to process even a 1 character change in a unit test when you run one. Eclipse used to be awesome for this with Java: - error state of your project would update in real time while you were typing. Introduce a problem, the project goes red immidiately. Fix the problem, the red goes away immediately. - Edit, run, type, edit run type, etc. without noticable delay. Intellij never had this. The reason for this was a deeply integrated incremental compiler. It could even tolerate compilation errors and still allow you to run parts of your code. There are not many IDEs out there for any language that can do that. IBM did that 20 years ago with Eclipse and it's a feature I miss a lot.
- zmmmmm 4y ago
  you just beautifully summarised why i still use Eclipse today :-) Once you get used to it, instant incremental compile >> everything else ...
  - hugi 4y ago
    Same here, much prefer Eclipse to IntelliJ. Super fast and provides instant feedback on everything you do with the incremental compilation. And the workspace is amazingly powerful as a concept.
    - candiodari 4y ago
      Incredible how often you hear the same about MSVC++6 or one of the Delphi's, up to 7.
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      I used to bash Eclipse (Netbeans fanboy :) ), then IntelliJ came into the picture without Javadoc completion out of the box (fixed nowdays), required explicit invocation of inspections, ten finger chords, no incremental compilation, no support for JNI development, indexing non stop,... and I re-learned how great Eclipse actually happens to be.
pjmlp 4y ago
Not it isn't, specially for those of us that do JNI development. JetBrains refuses to support it and points users to buy Clion instead.

firstSpeaker 4y ago

Around NetBeans 5 and 6 it was becoming pretty good to be a competitor to IntelliJ...

Semaphor 4y ago

Is it that good, nowadays? Long, long time ago in university (okay not that long, around 2006), I first discovered NetBeans as superior Eclipse replacement, but about a year later IntelliJ as superior NetBeans replacement. And this was already for relatively simple stuff.

pjmlp 4y ago
So superior that JetBrains would rather sell Clion licenses than support JNI development, meanwhile Netbeans has been doing it for at least a decade.

fipar 4y ago

Agree completely that it's mind-blowing, it's my go-to tool when I do need an IDE (though I get most of my work done on emacs). However, at my age, another thing that's mind-blowing is that this is now considered efficient. My first experiences with this was with (IIRC) was its predecessor, Forte for Java, and while I loved it, I remember it being a huge resource-hog. It's unbelievable to me how much computing power has improved to the point that something like NetBeans can be considered efficient (I don't discount their efforts in making it more efficient, but I think the fact we have more brute-force capacity these days certainly helps a lot).

rob74 4y ago
Well, it's efficient if you compare it with the even newer (and even less efficient) generation of IDEs based on browser technology. Haven't used NetBeans in a while, but JetBrains are doing their very best to hide Java from you - their products come with their own (probably customized) OpenJDK so you don't have to have Java installed etc.
- prmoustache 4y ago
  Scale down the speed of your processor and you quickly see what a resource hog jetbrains IDE are.
bitwize 4y ago
Emacs was once considered a resource hog. Eight Megs And Constantly Swapping...
- meepmorp 4y ago
  Eventually Mallocs All Computer Storage
HelloNurse 4y ago
In the time of Forté For Java there were no SSDs.
- 4y ago

grishka 4y ago

Around 10 years ago, when I was getting started with Android development, there was a plugin for that. I did try it first, but ended up going the official way with Eclipse.