32

I have been working with Eclipse for quite some time and recently got several recommendations to use IntelliJ.

As I just saw that questions of the format of "Which IDE is better?" are frowned upon (not without a good reason) - I wanted to know objectively what are the advantages of IntelliJ over Eclipse.

I know what Eclipse does and frankly I'm not missing anything. But this is exactly what I said about Visual Studio 2005 (C#) before starting to work on Eclipse - and now I can't even write a Hello World in VS without getting annoyed ...

I'll narrow the question down to the world of Java SE and Java EE only. No Android, no GUI.

I'm looking for:
What does IntelliJ give me that Eclipse lacks?
What does Eclipse give me that IntelliJ lacks?

Try to be objective, and please only answer if you had substantial experience with both tools.

Thanks.

Edit: The scope of work I'm looking for is both for working on private projects and as part of a team of several developers working on the same product. But if I have to choose - I'll focus on teams only.
JUnit is a crucial part of the work (personally I started working in TDD several months ago - but lets not open that).
I'll also be interested to know about ANT/Maven related benefits if there are - although my prime motives are to know if I can benefit from things like: Quicker development (e.g. code generation, templates, auto complete etc.), Easier AUT, simpler Java EE application deployment during development (for UT) etc.

Arjan Tijms
  • 37,782
  • 12
  • 108
  • 140
RonK
  • 9,472
  • 8
  • 51
  • 87
  • 7
    I disagree with the votes to close. I think the questioner is asking a reasonable thing, and it is possible to answer objectively. @RonK makes it clear he's looking for concrete facts, not subjective interpretation. – andersoj Apr 10 '11 at 17:32
  • 2
    This will be closed as well. For many people, the best IDE is the one that they had started with. Becasue, you know exactly how it works -- you invested time in learning that IDE. When you face another IDE, you face another learning curve.. at the same time you think, your old IDE was much easier. So, it's more a personal taste kind of thing. Can't really be argued on, as most of the IDEs does the same task. – Nishant Apr 10 '11 at 17:36
  • 2
    @Nishant: But RonK wasn't asking for an argument, nor for what the "best" IDE is. He was asking for a feature diff. It may or may not have been realistic, but I'm voting to reopen. This is well in line with the guidelines for good subjective questions. – T.J. Crowder Apr 10 '11 at 17:39
  • @T.J. Crowder I fear a flame-war. :) – Nishant Apr 10 '11 at 17:41
  • @Nishant: I wish I could say you were wrong to fear that. But I really, really can't. :-) @RonK: You did your best to make it objective, don't take it the wrong way it got closed. – T.J. Crowder Apr 10 '11 at 17:41
  • @T.J. Crowder; @Nishant: Let's have a meta flamewar about whether this question would lead to one ;) – phooji Apr 10 '11 at 17:42
  • 2
    @Bala R, @Bart Kiers, @Helper Method, @Nishant, @phooji: Voting to reopen as well. The closing was *utterly* unjustified. I'm getting seriously annoyed at people's knee-jerk close-votes for everything that in any way can be interpreted to imply asking people for a value judgement. – Michael Borgwardt Apr 10 '11 at 18:10
  • I voted for a reopen, it's not really subjective/argumentative in its essence. – Jim Ferrans Apr 10 '11 at 20:32
  • @Michael Borgwardt: @RonK: Perhaps the question would more easily be perceived as 'sufficiently objective' with some additional information on your exact use case. Notably, you say 'no Android, no GUI', but that leaves 'J2 SE and J2EE' which is quite vague. Are you working with a large number of developers? Any particular emphasis unit/regression/integration testing? – phooji Apr 10 '11 at 20:39
  • 2
    (See also: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/239732/things-possible-in-intellij-that-arent-possible-in-eclipse) – phooji Apr 10 '11 at 20:45
  • Debugging is so crucial. No one has commented on the debugging capabilities of IntelliJ vis-a-vis Eclipse. Can someone comment on that? – Prasad May 25 '23 at 11:18

4 Answers4

6

For me there are two points:

  1. Refactorings (IntelliJ is great in the refactorings it provides)

  2. Plugin stability, I've always found that when I have a stable install of Eclipse, I get a new plugin and everything comes down in flames and I have to reinstall everything.

CarlosZ
  • 8,281
  • 1
  • 21
  • 16
  • point2 is not valid now with Eclipse Helios. Installation is a breeze with the eclipse marketplace. – zengr Apr 10 '11 at 17:34
  • 6
    Can you elaborate a bit on Refactoring abilities that `IntelliJ` has which `Eclipse` does not? I find `Eclipse` as a very powerful refactoring tool – RonK Apr 10 '11 at 17:35
  • 3
    @zengr, the markedplace is only halfbaked. Try installing 10 plugins without going mad. – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Apr 10 '11 at 18:01
3

IntelliJ allows me to navigate between Java, JSP, JS, CSS and pretty must every other type of file. With Eclipse I need to install a plugin to be able to navigate through file types other than Java.

@Rachel. Hmmm. In Eclipse Ctrl-Shift-R (on mac Command-Shift-R), open up "Open Resource" dialog where you can type whatever you want and it will match ANY file, not just Java. Ctrl-Shift-T will do the same, but limit it only to Java types.

Radim Köhler
  • 122,561
  • 47
  • 239
  • 335
user1902183
  • 3,203
  • 9
  • 31
  • 48
  • The JEE edition of eclipse comes with those plugins built in, I don't see it as an advantage. – RonK Jun 07 '13 at 09:22
  • I wasn't suggesting this as an advantage. Just pointing out that what @Rachel said was only possible in Intellij has been possible in Eclipse for as long as I can remember. I've been using it for years and years now. – user1902183 Jun 07 '13 at 19:57
  • Sorry, I didn't notice this was a reply to another answer – RonK Jun 11 '13 at 15:57
3

This is the keymap of IntelliJIDEA.

Just read this article and you able to doing amazyng features with IntelliJ which you do not even dream of in Eclipse. For me, the most useful are Ctrl-Y , Ctrl-Enter, Ctrl-Alt-T, Shift-F6 and auto-completion.

Veedrac
  • 58,273
  • 15
  • 112
  • 169
Insomniac631
  • 1,018
  • 12
  • 20
2

Code navigation. (being able to find method and field declarations and usages.)

We have a J2EE project at work where both IntelliJ and Eclipse are in use so I have been able to compare the abilities of both.

IntelliJ allows me to navigate between Java, JSP, JS, CSS and pretty must every other type of file. With Eclipse I need to install a plugin to be able to navigate through file types other than Java.

Rachel
  • 3,691
  • 5
  • 32
  • 32