Raible Designs

IDEA vs. Eclipse

I've been switching back and forth between IDEA and Eclipse for the past couple nights. I DO like IDEA, but as I only have 3 days left on my evaluation, I'll sadly have to let it go. My favorite feature is it's ability to recognize that you haven't imported a class, and then allows you to hit Alt+Enter to add the import. Also, it grays out imports that aren't being used, both very slick features. As for generating getters and setters, it does a poor job in my opinion. It puts them above your variable declaration and doesn't add any javadoc comments. Eclipse puts them at the bottom of your class and adds javadoc comments - so Eclipse wins here. Also, Eclipse does a much better job of adding and recognizing javadoc comments. IDEA wins on indentation, it always seems to know where you want to be. If I get a full time gig here soon, I might have to buy IDEA. I think it's best when you can use multiple tools to make your development life easier. I say screw these debates on Eclipse vs. IDEA or Struts vs. Webwork - use them all! (I need to examine Webwork as it gets lots of good comments from it's developers.) Of course, it's easier to use both when you have a dual-monitor setup! I highly recommend this... it's awesome!

Later: The other thing that IDEA wins on is that it can actually run my Ant script without puking. Eclipse doesn't let me run it - maybe it's cause it has Ant 1.4.1. Hmmm, wonder if I can upgrade it to 1.5.1. IDEA has better XML editing, and even seems to detect errors in build.xml.

As I'm editing this post with the Later paragraph, I received the following from Cédric (who seems to work for BEA from his e-mail address).

You didn't say if you already knew this about Eclipse, so I thought I would tell you anyway:

- To fix a missing import, just press Ctrl-1 (Quick Fix) on the class with squiggly lines. Ctrl-1 does a lot of incredible things, like it sometimes reads your mind. I much prefer this approach to having specific actions and shortcuts to remember. Another interesting one is Ctrl-Shift-O (Organize Imports), when you have a lot of imports to fix. Eclipse will analyze your whole source and add them all for you (and possibly prompt your when there are ambiguities).

- The latest builds underline the unused imports with yellow squiggly lines.

-- Cédric http://beust.com/weblog

Sweet! Must be time to download a nightly build!