I Switched to IDEA!

General Discussions
#1

Beginning about 2 weeks ago, I officially began trying out IntelliJ IDEA due to exasperation with Eclipse.

I can finally comfortably say that I have fully and officially switched.

It all began when Eclipse decided to betray me and blow up in my face, destroying my workspace and erasing all my settings. That was the final straw for me. I had already been interested in IntelliJ IDEA earlier, especially with their new Darcula theme, which is much sexier than any other theme they had.

Other virtues of IDEA are its SUPERIOR editor, including the smarter Intellisense. The UI is also very well organized and the settings are very customizable. I could go on listing how it’s much better in many ways.

Of course, it’s not all roses and rainbows. The only complaints I have so far are its lack of an option to keep tabs on blank lines and the lack of a “Favorite” feature like Eclipse does with static imports. Part of my weird self-imposed strict formatting rules is to keep tabs on blank lines at the same level as if there were code there. IDEA’s formatter strips them. Eclipse has an option to keep them in the formatter. Thankfully, a nice workaround was that I found a plugin that used the Eclipse formatter and all was well again.

The Favorite feature in Eclipse allows you to set a bunch of classes for whose static methods you would like it to auto-detect when you begin typing them. For example this is especially useful with LWJGL functions: I begin typing glGenBu… and it finds it, statically imports org.lwjgl.opengl.GL15.* and I’m happy. There is no such equivalent feature in IDEA, but this has not be a problem for me really since I already know where the functions are and hitting Alt+Enter+Enter (yes, enter twice) with the class highlighted will statically import the class in IDEA.

If anyone decides to try it out, you will notice that the keymap is very different than Eclipse’s. Fear not! There is already an Eclipse pre-set that you can switch to in Settings -> Keymap. With that and a couple more customized settings, I was able to have the shortcuts I was comfortable with :slight_smile:

Of course, this post wouldn’t be complete with a screenshot (click for better view):

http://i.imgur.com/KBHg5bv.png

Only visuals changed are a couple syntax colors and the font is DejaVu Sans Mono.

#2

TRAITOR! ;D

#3

Yeah! D:

#4

Looks good. Will try! Thanks!

#5

I’ve considered switching but it still lacks a lot of features that Eclipse had. Have tried it on every new release.

#6

How much is IDEA these days? I tried it a few years ago but nothing really convinced me to part with hard-earned moolah over Eclipse.
I don’t use/need any “enterprise” features or GUI designers anyway.

Is there a “killer” feature? Or is it just a matter of many small improvements?

#7

[quote=“ra4king,post:1,topic:41198”]
Not sure why you need that. Press on an empty line (or on the line before) and the caret will move to the correct indentation level for the current scope.

[quote=“ra4king,post:1,topic:41198”]
Try glVAP + . You’ll still have to do the static import intention, but I bet that just blew your mind.

[quote=“20thCenturyBoy,post:6,topic:41198”]
The Community edition is free and good enough for anything, unless you do web development. The killer feature is its editor.

#8

Consolas is a better font. :slight_smile: Also look at all that wasted space on the right?! Fill it with tools!

#9

Is it lighter than Eclipse?

#10

From my experience, no. Dunno compared to netbean because IMO netbean > heavier > eclipse.

#11

netbeans king of IDE

#12

For performance, I recommend the following:

  • Disable any plugins that are not useful to your work.
  • Configure inspections to your needs. The best approach is to use a different set of inspections for on-the-fly editor highlighting and a different one for “offline” analysis.
  • Same for intentions, you may want to disable the uninteresting ones.
  • Disable or tune the delays of the automatic re-parsing / code completion / parameter info popup.
#13

Using IDEA for over 2 month now
Never going back to eclipse…probably :smiley:

#14

When I tried IDEA on my comp, it took up more resources than eclipse did.

#15

[quote=“Spasi,post:7,topic:41198”]

[quote=“ra4king,post:1,topic:41198”]
Not sure why you need that. Press on an empty line (or on the line before) and the caret will move to the correct indentation level for the current scope.

It’s still super annoying when putting the cursor in general. Requires me to remember to hit End every time.

I disabled Ctrl+Space because Smart Type is better. Also someone else told me about Ctrl+Alt+Space, which works much better! :slight_smile:

Yes, MUCH faster startup/close and uses less RAM.

Nahh nothing beats DejaVu Sans Mono! And what tools could I use?

#16

As much as I like Idea, this is highly dependent on the type and size of projects you are working with.

#17

The enormous IntelliJ source code opens extremely quickly for me :slight_smile:

#18

Idea’s maven and VCS integration is a lot nicer and native compared to the plugins that Eclipse makes you use.

I switched just recently, and the weirdest thing for me to get used to is not needing to save files.

#19

Also keep in mind that the first time you open a project or set up a library/JDK, IDEA starts indexing it in the background. Performance and functionality will be degraded until indexing completes.

#20

I use it at work with project consisting of 50 maven-modules. It’s still useable (and maybe better than eclipse), but it is definately not MUCH faster and it does not use less ram either…

Just a reality check, no bashing…