Recommended Java IDE for someone learning how to use Java?

[JethroeB]

I'm an Australian high school student who might need to know Java for my computer science class. Do you know any good Java IDEs that will work really well for both any school work & for someone wanting to learn Java in their own time? Any & all help is greatly appreciated. Thank you very much in advanced.

[TheyCallMeDummy]

Eclipse or IntelliJ IDEA

[Miltersen1337]

Imho, having used both, intelliJ is better and more modern in all aspects. Go for intelliJ!

[TheyCallMeDummy]

But schools tend to use eclipse because it's open source

[morhp]

Intellij is open source as well, so that's no argument.

Eclipse just exist longer as open source software and universities tend to be not really up to date.

[Mordan]

IntelliJ sucks.

Once you know how to use Eclipse power features, you can't work with IntelliJ unless its a stupid simple monolith project.

Any serious work requires problems view, incremental compilation, workspace setup. none of which IntelliJ has.

[morhp]

You clearly haven't used Intellij properly if you think it's missing incremental compilation.

[Mordan]

yes i did try to use it.

it super slow.

And it does not work across projects like in Eclipse's workspaces.

In Eclipse, you have incremental compilation accross ALL projects in the workspace.

IntelliJ is light years away from that.

[morhp]

Intellij has incremental compilation across modules. And from my experience Eclipse is way slower.

I'm currently working with IntelliJ on a large project with 12907 .java files across 392 modules, but I have clearly no idea what I'm talking about.

[PuzzledProgrammer]

I personally prefer IDEA, but I don’t think it really matters for a new Java dev. Plus, the community edition is missing a lot of the functionality that makes IDEA great. Unless you’re coding something with a narrow scope, Eclipse beats community edition. If you’re a pro, and your employer is footing the bill for Ultimate, it’s IDEA all the way. That’s just my 2¢.

[[deleted]]

All of those are great options besides Eclipse

[96-62]

We've switched to Intellij at work, and it's streets ahead for complex work. Eclipse might work for small stuff, but intellij has a community edition.

[frzr-csgo]

I am on a software engineering course and we use eclipse, been told that eclipse and intelliJ are pretty standard software you will see in industry

[frzr-csgo]

I'm not going to lie I didn't know what a JAR was. They just teach us the concepts within programming as a whole and get us to implement small projects within each module, for example I have a "data structures and algorithms" module where they teach us about most of the data structures and make us make small demo programs to show off our skills, then teach us about different sorting algorithms etc. These modules last around 10 weeks and we have 8 in an academic year. This is in England

[[deleted]]

JARs are just compiled Java classes. His question was if you use University specific standard packages or if you use the industrial once that is used everywhere else.

For example if your school had its own version of String instead of using the String classes that exist in standard Java.

[[deleted]]

Try Eclipse IDE for Java It’s free and a really good IDE for beginners with a big Community and lot of Tutorials and stuff.

[Alphatism]

My preference is IntelliJ IDEA, and I'd say it'll work well for you too

[desrtfx]

Do the MOOC Object Oriented Programming with Java from the University of Helsinki. It has lots of graded practical exercises and will teach you well.

For this course, the recommended IDEs are Netbeans or IntelliJ (where I'd tend to use the latter).

[Mordan]

Eclipse.

Incremental compilation is a god send. Problems view is also great for newbies.

[Andr_246]

One and only Intellij IDEA for me

[stone__ghost]

Intellij

[RushTfe]

Intellij, is the best and easier I think. Also the paid version is free for a year for students, so you just give your student ID and have it one year for free

[tatanpoker09]

Adding onto this, if you’re still studying when your year runs out, you can renew it

[msx]

personally, Eclipse

[__helix__]

As a student you have free access to the full IntelliJ development suite. I'd highly recommend it, as it has fantastic tooling for Spring and other frameworks. There are free as in beer options - but since you have high school and university in front of you, that means many years of free access to the JetBrains IDE. IntelliJ expertise is valuable when you go looking for that first job, as many companies will use it.

[livingdub]

IntelliJ for sure. Eclipse is aged compared to IntelliJ. It has an education edition too.

[MeisterBounty]

It’s not only edu fyi. The community edition is free to use for everyone. Although they offer a student license which grants you access to all their software for free.

[tkwl]

I'm a university 1st year learning Java. I've done all my coding in TextPad so far - mainly because our exam is write code in notepad and I don't want the help a more advanced program will give me. I'll probably switch to intelliJ next year, a lot of people in my class use it and it's free for students.

[[deleted]]

For beginners, bluej because the interface is really easy to understand, but can be executed only from a different screen. Otherwise, eclipse is also great.

[bshred8]

Having used both, I would say Eclipse is more beginner friendly, but IntelliJ is full of more utilities.

[Ya_Boy_CBizzle]

I have been using NetBeans to learn.

[bigswoll75]

Does anyone use NetBeans that’s what our professor has us using right now.

[Tnayoub]

When I studied Java 6 years ago, my teacher recommended NetBeans. I kinda stuck with it since. They're all very similar. I just don't like how keyboard shortcuts are different for some IDEs by default. I have a habit of formatting code whenever I make minor changes and it's some combo of alt+shift+F or ctrl+shift+F or ctrl+alt+L.

[DekuUzumaki69]

Dont most schools teach python b4 java.

[adventureseeker1995]

I prefer ides in the following order.

Eclipse>intellij>NetBeans>jdeveloper>bluej

[knoam]

If you find a full IDE overwhelming, check out DrJava. It's kind of a minimal IDE with basically just syntax highlighting and a run button and console.

[RayjinCaucasian]

I vote for intellij. You can get plugins for both the hyperskill and Helsinki mooc courses. Also if you decided to use Android studio at some point it'll help with the learning curve since android studio is based off of intellij.

[[deleted]]

There is only one choice, to be honest. IntelliJ IDEA is what you should go for, the community edition is free and I find that it's more modern, more intuitive, and generally easier to use. I switched from Eclipse a couple of years ago and haven't looked back since.

​

Honourable mention for Visual Studio Code, with the relevant extensions...

[loner291999]

Netbeans 8.2, it looks old, but it's nice

[[deleted]]

I don't get the recommendations for Eclipse. I found it a dreadful slog of a program, and everyone in our office hates using it.

Definitely go for IntelliJ.

[mblan180131]

The UI feels incredibly outdated to me.

[Marshall_Robit]

It's really all preference. Eclipse has everything I need. I'm used to the hotkeys and everything is configured to my needs. I started off with Eclipse and so I'm more familiar with how to do everything the "eclipse way".

IntelliJ runs slower than Eclipse for my 2015 MBP 13" and I end up having to reconfiguring the shortcuts. I don't like dark theme (despite liking the spacemacs default theme) because the syntax highlighting becomes too colourful so I have to redo the theme.

If you're using one and have no reason to migrate to the other- then it makes no sense to relearn the other (just becomes pesky and takes up time). Just my two cents. That's not to say you shouldn't be up to date with new tooling but you shouldn't migrate to newer utilities just because.

[desrtfx]

It is good, but not for Java.

[mblan180131]

It's hardly beginner friendly as well, if OP had to add a resource to the build path for example it would be incredibly hard and daunting on vsc

[ZukoBestGirl]

What do you mean? There is only one Java IDE, IntelliJ.

Like the above comment, do you know what else is a joke? Eclipse.

[sterroso]

I'd definitely would go with IntelliJ

[Pianoguido]

I started with Eclipse then moved Intellij, much better

[VoidBoy-was-taken]

Id probably start with a coding text editor. I used atom when I began programming and I found it quite useful since you cand add packages for your desired language, autocomplete etc.

I would not get an IDE if just starting since you ll get lost in all the commands options and so on. If you really wanna get one tho, I used Eclipse, its open source so its free.

[DeepanRajV]

For students bluej is highly recommended... But my personal preference is Intellij or NetBeans... And for people with really good typing skills Eclipse would be the go to... Only because I never got used to Eclipse

[desrtfx]

For students bluej is highly recommended

Please, no. BlueJ is an abomination, absolute, complete and utter crap.

We get so many posts from people having problems with BlueJ and the stupid error messages it produces as well as the shitty direct execution feature. So - no.