Comments on: IDEA versus Eclipse

By: Jeff Johnston

Jeff Johnston — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 20:11:21 +0000

You might also want to try Netbeans! I switched from Eclipse to Netbeans around version 6.0 and I really like it. Its hard to believe how bad it used to be and how great it is now. I have also started making my own Netbeans applications and its a really nice framework to program against. Its no wonder Netbeans is on such a roll right now.

By: Sujit Pal

Sujit Pal — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 01:34:52 +0000

>> I haven’t found the keystroke yet to “go to next error/warning”.
C-. to next error/warning
C-, to previous error/warning.
(C- == Control and)

At least thats true in Eclipse’s emacs mode. I also find Eclipse considerably cheaper, even with the $30 yearly subscription to MyEclipse. You may want to look at MyEclipse, they have pretty good support for Spring XML refactoring.

By: matthew

matthew — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:19:23 +0000

Svn functionality is lacking and buggy

Actually, I’ve found the opposite — that IDEA has repeatable SVN bugs, and eclipse does what you ask it to. The main thing I miss is “change set” management, but I’m seeing if Mylyn and the SVN perspective’s “synchronize” window will get me there.

By: Dmitry

Dmitry — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 06:04:14 +0000

Good points on eclipse. Svn functionality is lacking and buggy. I think IDEA is better on that front.
But on build.xml – I do believe control+click goes to target definition as long as you use the Ant Editor, not just XML editor. It does get confused with too many includes, does not have good undo support, and messes up indentation on copy/paste, but hey, nobody’s perfect, right?

There’s “jump to test” function in Eclipse JUnit plugin but have you found something like that for TestNG?

Also, IDEA brings up a drop-down list of implementers on an interface or method name, right by the method name. Eclipse has Control+G to find definitions but those come up in another window. Not quite as nice.

Save or no save: I am so used to hitting Control+S every few lines that I get worried if I watch someone work in IDEA and never save. But to me it’s as natural as putting a period at the end of a sentence, so I find it comforting and not a problem.