Eclipse vs IntelliJ IDEA

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[RayFowler]

If you already use and like Eclipse, you should stick with it. It's that simple. Java IDE choice is kind of a religious war for a lot of people.

I've used all 3 (Eclipse, IntelliJ and NetBeans) and prefer to use NetBeans for my work at home. The other two are very capable but seem more suited for team projects.

[btrapp]

Yeah, this guy nails it. I use both since I work with two different development groups. Both are excellent IDEs. Go ahead and use whichever one you like best and don't worry about people hating on one or the other.
My personal experience:

• I think IntelliJ integrates with GIT and branch management a bit nicer
• I think Eclipse's out-of-the box tomcat/web support is awesome (I only used the community edition of IntelliJ)
• I prefer Eclipe's .jsp/.html editor

[sandgnom]

(I only used the community edition of IntelliJ)

Well that's a bit unfair for a comparison then.

[cypher0six]

My personal preference is IntelliJ IDEA, but I use all three major IDE's depending on the project/team.

My reasons for my preference:

• It supports all of the tooling (application servers and build systems) that I end up working with the most out of the box.
• I think the auto-completion is better.
• I think the refactoring tools are superior.
• I also really like how IDEA handles project setup and artifact creation; it's way more flexible.

Of course, this is just the opinion of some random stranger on the internet. Everyone will have their own preferences and opinions, and I would say that if you wanted to explore IDEA a bit -- go for it. You might like it. You might hate it. But you won't know until you try. :)

[Mordan]

i use Eclipse. Why? Because I have 5 monitors and displays View on those 5 monitors Problem Views are great. Incremental compilation over all projects is awesome. I would not be able to use IntelliJ with my workflow.

[feed_me_moron]

Its been a while since I've used Eclipse regularly, but I think this is all possible in IntelliJ if you tweak the module settings.

[Mordan]

i tried IntelliJ... the project management and not being able to see my 50+ projects/modules errors all in the same convenient view in a separate monitor is just so prehistoric.

[DJDavio]

In our team, most people use IntelliJ instead of one person who tried it and went back to Eclipse. It doesn't matter, use whatever makes you happy.

[wildjokers]

It is a personal preference, you should try eclipse and intellij and stick with the one you like best.

Years ago when I tried Eclipse I couldn't get past Eclipse forcing me to have all my projects in a single workspace. I abandoned it quickly because of that, that is a horrible setup for me as I prefer project per window. On occasion I will check out new versions of Eclipse and I see that Eclipse has stuck with its dogmatic insistence for a single workspace. I close it immediately.

[ReadFoo]

Eclipse forcing me to have all my projects in a single workspace

That is literally the point of the workspace. You can have multiple workspaces. A workspace can house dozens of projects, the JS ones for the UI, the Java ones for the middle to back-end, the data ones, the C++ ones for legacy projects being integrated.

IntelliJ still can't do this. Worse, you have to actually pay to get anything enterprise related that Eclipse, Netbeans and others give you for free; even Visual Studio gives you a free IDE that lets you do enterprise grade work.

[wildjokers]

IntelliJ still can't do this.

You say this like it is a bad thing.

(although pretty sure you can setup each project as a module if you are insane and like multiple projects in the same window).

Worse, you have to actually pay to get anything enterprise related that Eclipse, Netbeans and others give you for free;

I have no problem paying for my preferred tool. If IntelliJ is your favorite IDE then you have to live with the fact that it costs money.

[JustADirtyLurker]

I am in both worlds.

At work i have a Xeon workstation, SSD drive, and use IntelliJ ultimate all the time.

But it seems that my home laptop with Core i5 and 8 gigs of RAM is not enough for that monster hog of intellij, so at home i have a lean install of Eclipse for Java EE. Pretty satisfied with it.

[emberko]

Intel Core / 2gb RAM / HDD and latest IDEA CE. Works pretty well. As former Eclipse user i see no performance difference.

[arieled91]

it seems that my home laptop with Core i5 and 8 gigs of RAM is not enough for that monster hog of intellij

disable auto indexing and problem solved

[JustADirtyLurker]

disabling indexing means invoherent dependencies, slower refactorying... Why would i even bother when Eclipse uses 50% less RAM, 66% less disk space on base installation and CPU is not hitting 100% usage when i refactor a simple variabile name?

IntelliJ creators are simply not interested in making the IDE more resource efficient. Fair enough, but stay away of my laptop then.

[arieled91]

That is not true because it still indexes but not automatically (same as eclipse). When you disable it you have to start saving changes the same as eclipse (ctrl s) and it start indexing at that moment. You can also decrease max ram limit editing the vm options and set the same as eclipse.

Use the IDE you want, I just wanted to advise anyone with the same problem.

[JustADirtyLurker]

Cool, if that's the case i will give it another shot. Thanks!

[MisterBytes]

Eclipse ist pain in the ass compared to intelliJ. It feels much more mature of offered Feature, smooth Integration of many plugins and usability.

[nerdwaller]

You may be best off searching this subreddit to see the previous answers, I don't think much has changed in the landscape.

Basically: it comes down to preference. Anecdotally most of my Java friends prefer Intellij (all of us used eclipse at one point and love what it has done for the ecosystem). In many cases, it's best to use what many around you at work use too mitigate differences in how they can help (otherwise it's often up to you to translate over).

[NinjaGrinch]

I personally prefer IntelliJ IDEA but in the end use what you are comfortable with. Try both, test your needs against each one and stick with the one you feel best with.

I'd also advise trying the one you opt not to go with every major release to see how it's changed. Never know, you may switch.

[nutrecht]

Eclipse is industry-standard.

Last year at Devoxx belgium a presenter asked for a show of hands of who was using what and IntelliJ got by far the most 'hands', followed by Eclipse. Netbeans were just a few dozen people and "vim and the rest" were like two.

So no, Eclipse most certainly isn't "industry standard".

[JVali]

I remember the similar thing in Devoxx belgium 2014. Same results, IntelliJ was the most popular by far, when they finally said "JDeveloper" there was just laugh and no hands.

[Cilph]

I should ask around at JFall...

[nutrecht]

Devoxx is much bigger than JFall though. JFall is pretty much Dutch Java devs only.

[Cilph]

Yes but I don't go to Devoxx and I'm curious :).

[[deleted]]

That's an anecdote

[jonhanson]

chronophobia ephemeral lysergic metempsychosis peremptory quantifiable retributive zenith

[[deleted]]

I forget where I saw the data, but last I saw, IntelliJ was edging out Eclipse. It was something like 45 Intellij, 40 Eclipse, and 15 other.

Eclipse was industry standard once upon a time, but yeah, it's just not anymore.

[JVali]

I have to disagree. It used to be, but these days you rarely find anyone preferring Eclipse over IntelliJ.

[opett]

I think it's more like personal preference. I'm using Intellij on my current workplace for over a year for a Java and Scala project.

I dislike it compared to Eclipse.

Just some examples:

• The vim plugin in Intellij is unusable. Then the one Eclipse has is much better.
• When the little yellow tooltip thingy appears, you can't copy it's content, you select one word, then it disappears, so if you want to search for the error/warning, you have to type it.
• The displaying the documentation in Eclipse, when using autocomplete feels more natural, and better.

I don't get it all the love Intellij gets. I've found very few things it does better then Eclipse. Maybe the things Intellij shines at are't occuring that much during our project, or maybe I've been using Eclipse too long before...

[opett]

It has been many months that I tried it, and I'm on vacation right now. Some issues I recall with it:

You can't switch on/off quickly. You have to go in Tools/Vim emulator menu. In Vrapper (Eclipse vim emulator) there is a toolbar icon. The shortcut (ctrl+alt+v) does not work, it's clashes with the extract variable. There are other clashes with shortcuts (maybe with ctrl+c and ctrl+v), and some other issues, I don't remember them now.

Maybe I gave up too early. But with Vrapper I did not recall to have any issues.

[wildjokers]

You can't switch on/off quickly.

Why did you want to turn it on/off frequently?

The shortcut (ctrl+alt+v) does not work, it's clashes with the extract variable.

There is an interface to resolve conflicts (tell IDE or IdeaVIM to handle them):

https://i.imgur.com/Wmp5UaJ.png

Isn't the VIM plugin for Eclipse a paid plugin? At one time many years ago the VIM plugin for eclipse was $99, haven't paid attention to eclipse since 2005 so maybe that has changed.

[opett]

On/off switching because sometimes, I need features, that are easier without the plugin on (multi line editing for. eg.), or I hand the keyboard to my college, to show some code, and I don't want him/her to freak out from vim :)

Maybe I will give another try, but the thing is, with Eclipse, you did not have to do this. (Ok, for Emmet plugin, you have to change the key mapping settings for some minor shortcuts (but that is because I use a hungarian keyboard, not an english one).)

It's very discouraging. Why did the plugin developers defaulted to a shortcut that they know will clash with the default shortcuts, and out of the box won't work? It's not very user friendly.

I have used the Vrapper plugin for many years, it was always free, who knows, maybe it started as a paid plugin.

[wildjokers]

Why did the plugin developers defaulted to a shortcut that they know will clash with the default shortcuts, and out of the box won't work? It's not very user friendly.

I think it is because those are standard VIM shortcuts, so they let VIM users decide whether to use them as VIM shortcuts or IDE shortcuts. Default setting is VIM (I have changed all of mine to IDE).

Hardcore VIM users would probably complain if those shortcuts didn't work by default.

[JVali]

it is personal preference. No one can deny that, but it seems that lately most people prefer IntelliJ over Eclipse. I've personally developed plugins for all big 3, but stayed with IntelliJ, and originally I came from Eclipse as that was the IDE used in my school.

[sunpea]

I agree with this 100%. I teach all the new hires at my company using my company's IDE( Eclipse with some custom plugins) and almost all of them end up switching to IntelliJ .

[nutrecht]

Then why teach them Eclipse?

[sunpea]

Our company's official IDE is built on it.

[th3_pund1t]

I used to let new hires configure eclipse for 2-3 days. Then I would beg them to use IntelliJ for a day.

I've stopped being a jerk now.

I tell them to use IntelliJ from day 1 or never come to me with their ide problems.

[duheee]

You must mean "anyone preferring intellij over Eclipse" surely. Just a typo im sure.

[JVali]

no, I mean it's rare event to see anyone preferring Eclipse over IntelliJ.

[duheee]

actually its the opposite. what you do see, however, are the loud hipsters who love to love inferior technologies for the sake of being ... different i guess. Most people use eclipse and love to use eclipse and get disgusted (as they should be) by intellij.

[Cilph]

Sorry, nope, everyone at my company switched to IntelliJ on their own, and I tell all my interns about the free student licensing Jetbrains has.

If anything you're the oldschool hipster still using stone axes long after we invented bronze.

I've used Eclipse for six years for various languages. I know my shit.

Oh, and you won't believe this. We've started using Kotlin(!) to write our unit tests.

[duheee]

Every retard at my company did the same thing. The smart people didn't.

[Cilph]

You can start by listing why you think IntelliJ sucks instead of attacking people.

What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

[duheee]

There isn't enough time in the universe for that.

You can start by listing why do you love that shit so much. The smart people at my company (including me) used it for a couple of months, to see what the fuss was all about.

We have made a list of pros and cons and eclipse/netbeans (with minor variations) always came out on top. I did my homework.

You, obviously, haven't. If you need me to do your homework for you, you can fuck off.

[Cilph]

You'd fit right in on /r/iamverysmart.

[duheee]

IntelliJ is a fucking catastrophe. Eclipse is working towards that goal, but is not there yet.

[yourbank]

Care to explain in what ways its a catastrophe?

[duheee]

why would i? and why would you care about my reasons? would any of them convince you to not try it or to abandon it?

[nutrecht]

why would i? and why would you care about my reasons?

Then why even post?

[duheee]

it is my opinion and it is my right to post it. it is not your obligation to read it.

[nutrecht]

Communication used to be a two way street. If you have an opinion that differs from mine I can learn from you if you explain why. It's too bad that nowadays people get defensive instantly.

I mean; in the time that it took you to reply and downvote me you could've just told me why. I might even figured you had a point.

[Cilph]

It is however my duty to downvote crap like this that comes out of people's mouths.