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by Curt Hibbs.
Original Post: I prefer Eclipse over IDEA
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The last time I used IDEA heavily was version 2. I did upgrade to version 3, and used it briefly, but when version 4 came out I couldn’t justify paying for the upgrade because I wasn’t doing any Java Development.
I have been using Eclipse for my Java development at work for more than a year, and since Eclipse 3.0 was released I’ve been very happy with it. Recently, some new members of my team got management to acquire licenses for IntelliJ IDEA, and I supported this knowing that IDEA is the cadillac of Java IDEs.
Yesterday, I spent the day installing the latest version of IDEA and converting all of my projects. But it didn’t take very long to see that I was missing what I considered to be a very important feature of Eclipse. Eclipse eliminates the compile/build cycle by continuously recompiling your changes in the background. Errors are immediately reflected in package tree as little red “x” overlays on the package tree icons. And the red “x”s are propagated up the tree hierarchy so errors are not buried in closed branches of the tree.
And when you open a java file with an error in it, each lime in error is also flagged with a red “x” icon in the left margin. Clicking on the red x pops up a little context menu with a list of suggested fixes, and most of the time the needed fix is right there… a single click and the problem is fixed!
All this makes me productive enough that I don’t want up give up using Eclipse.
Now I’ll be the first to admit that I my in-depth knowledge of IDEA is out of date. That’s why I’m posting this. If IDEA can do this too, then please tell me (I’m also happy with Eclipses refactoring support). What am I missing by giving up in IDEA?
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