What Ide For Java Do You Use

[dsys]

Ok I know J# is not true Java but I am about to move from Visual studio 2005 to visual studio 2008 and need an IDE for Java, does not need to be J# variation.

What are you currently using and what do you recomend? Don't mind paying for it does, not have to be free.

Currently looking at NetBeans and JSE.

Edited January 17, 2008 by dsys

[nikster]

There are two IDEs to consider:

Eclipse and IntelliJ. The former is free, the latter is $1000.

We are using both in the company and are pretty evenly divided between the two. Eclipse seems to be gaining some momentum though, I personally use it b/c, well, it's very stable and it does everything you could think of. Nearly.

IntelliJ is a bit better with support for JSPs but Eclipse is gaining in this area as well. Its constantly being improved. There's zillions of plug-ins for the Eclipse platform as well.

Biggest bonus of Eclipse vs IntelliJ is the incremental compiler. You write a line of code, and there's no guesswork as to the correctness of your code - it's recompiled in the global context and you get immediate feedback. For example, if your interface change broke some other module that depends on this code, the error will show up there instantly. There is no "compile" button. Everything is compiled all the time, and it's so fast that there is no delay.

You need to give it a lot of memory, 300 - 600MB for larger projects. But memory is cheap these days. Eclipse never crashes either, I have it running for weeks on end with no problem.

NetBeans has made improvements and is catching up, but that's been the case ever since I have followed NetBeans 6 years ago. I haven't looked at it in a while for that reason. I also really disliked its user interface in previous versions and I don't trust Sun to improve that. Sun and user interfaces is square pegs and round holes.

[dsys]

There are two IDEs to consider:

Eclipse and IntelliJ. The former is free, the latter is $1000.

We are using both in the company and are pretty evenly divided between the two. Eclipse seems to be gaining some momentum though, I personally use it b/c, well, it's very stable and it does everything you could think of. Nearly.

IntelliJ is a bit better with support for JSPs but Eclipse is gaining in this area as well. Its constantly being improved. There's zillions of plug-ins for the Eclipse platform as well.

Biggest bonus of Eclipse vs IntelliJ is the incremental compiler. You write a line of code, and there's no guesswork as to the correctness of your code - it's recompiled in the global context and you get immediate feedback. For example, if your interface change broke some other module that depends on this code, the error will show up there instantly. There is no "compile" button. Everything is compiled all the time, and it's so fast that there is no delay.

You need to give it a lot of memory, 300 - 600MB for larger projects. But memory is cheap these days. Eclipse never crashes either, I have it running for weeks on end with no problem.

NetBeans has made improvements and is catching up, but that's been the case ever since I have followed NetBeans 6 years ago. I haven't looked at it in a while for that reason. I also really disliked its user interface in previous versions and I don't trust Sun to improve that. Sun and user interfaces is square pegs and round holes.

Agree about the user interface for Sun products, hence this post. NetBeans, in my limted testing, is IMHO crap. Use interface is almost unworkable and it is not very stable.

Thanks for the suggestions will take a look at both of those.

Edited January 17, 2008 by dsys

[nikster]

Another bonus for Eclipse: CVS and Subversion integration is leaps and bounds ahead of IJ.