Things possible in IntelliJ that aren t possible in Eclipse

Question

I have heard from people who have switched either way and who swear by the one or the other   Being a huge Eclipse fan but having not had the time to try out IntelliJ  I am interested in hearing from IntelliJ users who are  ex-Eclipsians  some specific things that you can do with IntelliJ that you can not do with Eclipse   Note  This is not a subjective question nor at all meant to turn into an IDE holy war  Please downvote any flamebait answers

User · Answer

Introduce variable   Ctrl Alt V on Windows  Cmd Alt V on OSX   Lets say you call a method  service listAllPersons   Hit Ctrl Alt V and Enter  and variable for return value from method call is inserted   List lt Person gt  list   service listAllPersons      Saves you typing  and you don t have to check the return type of the method you are calling  Especially useful when using generics  e g   new ArrayList lt String gt       introduce variable   ArrayList lt String gt  stringArrayList   new ArrayList lt String gt        of course you can easily change the name of the variable before hitting Enter

User · Answer

The IntelliJ debugger has a very handy feature called  Evaluate Expression   that is by far better than eclipses pendant  It has full code-completion and i concider it to be generally  more useful

User · Answer

At current  it is the only one that can have tabs torn out into another window  Handy when you have more screens

User · Answer

A few other things    propagate parameters exceptions when changing method signature  very handy for updating methods deep inside the call stack SQL code validation in the strings passed as arguments to jdbc calls  and the whole newly bundled language injection stuff  implemented in overwritten in icons for interfaces  amp  classes  and their methods  and the smart implementation navigation  Ctrl Alt Click or Ctrl Alt B  linking between the EJB 2 1 interfaces and bean classes  including refactoring support   old one  but still immensely valuable when working on older projects

User · Answer

IntelliJ has intellisense and refactoring support from code into jspx documents

User · Answer

There is one thing that IntelliJ does much much better than Eclipse and that is empty your pockets    I do however prefer using it and one big advantage it has over Eclipce is the way it synchronises with the file system  for big projects and slow computers  yes in work environments the PC s are a lot slower than our ones at home  Eclipse seems to struggle where IntelliJ seems to be quicker albeit with a slower initial indexing time   IntelliJ Community edition obviously makes using it free but you soon want those extra refactoring and nice little goodies not included in the CC edition   In my opinion  its generally a better user experience but whether its worth the cost is a question for each developer to answer themselves    But lets be grateful we have up to three great IDEs for Java right now with NetBeans getting better all the time

User · Answer

Structural search and replace   For example  search for something like     System out println  string     expr      Where  string  is a literal  and  expr  is an expression of type my package and Class  and then replace with      expr  inspect  string

User · Answer

I don t remember if word line method class wrap is possible in Eclipse  In Intellij Idea you use Ctrl W

User · Answer

I think you can stick to either of these IDEs  The best sign to not to  worry about missing a giant benefit in the IDE you are not using  is the very long arguments we have seen between Eclipse fans and IntelliJ fans  This is a good sign that both sides have almost the same power which has led this long discussion to survive

User · Answer

Well  for me it s a thousand tiny things  Some of the macros  the GUI layout in general in Eclipse I find awful  I can t open multiple projects in different windows in Eclipse  I can open multiple projects  but then it s view based system swaps a bunch of things around on me when I switch files  IntelliJ s code inspections seem better  Its popup helpers to fix common issues is nice  Lots of simple usability things like the side bar where I can hover over a hot spot and it ll tell me every implementing subclass of a method or the method I m implementing and from where    Whenever I ve had to use  or watch someone use  Eclipse it seems like they can do most of the things I can do in IntelliJ  but it takes them longer and it s clunkier

User · Answer

One thing I use regularly is setting a breakpoint  but then controlling what it does   At my last job  most everyone else used Eclipse    I remember being surprised that no one could find how to do this in Eclipse    For example  can have the breakpoint not actually stop  but just log a message to the console  Which means  I don t have to litter my code with  System out println       and then recompile

User · Answer

IntelliJ has intellisense and refactoring support from code into jspx documents

User · Answer

Don t forget  compare with clipboard    Something that I use all the time in IntelliJ and which has no equivalent in Eclipse

User · Answer

Probably is not a matter of what can can t be done  but how   For instance both have editor surrounded with dock panels for project  classpath  output  structure etc  But in Idea when I start to type all these collapse automatically let me focus on the code it self  In eclipse all these panels keep open leaving my editor area  very reduced   about 1 5 of the total viewable area  So I have to grab the mouse and click to  minimize in those panels  Doing this all day long is a very frustrating experience in eclipse   The exact opposite thing happens with the view output window   In Idea running a program brings the output window panel  to see the output of the program even if it was perviously minimized   In eclipse I have to grab my mouse again and look for the output tab and click it to view my program output  because the output window panel is just another one  like all the rest of the windows  but in Idea it is treated in a special way   If the user want to run his program  is very likely he wants to see the output of that program    It seems so natural when I write it  but eclipse fails in this basic user interface concept   Probably there s a shortcut for this in eclipse   autohide output window while editing and autoshow it when running the program     but as some other tens of features the shortcut must be hunted in forums  online help etc while in Idea is a little bit more  natural     This can be repeated for almost all the features both have  autocomplete  word wrap  quick documentation view  everything  I think the user experience is far more pleasant in Idea than in eclipse  Then the motto comes true  Develop with pleasure   Eclipse handles faster larger projects    300 jars and  4000 classes    and I think IntelliJ Idea 8 is working on this   All this of course is subjective  How can we measure user experience

User · Answer

My favorite shortcut in IntelliJ that has no equivalent in Eclipse  that I ve found  is called  Go to symbol    CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-N lets you start typing and glob up classes  method names  variable names  etc  from the entire project

User · Answer

A few other things    propagate parameters exceptions when changing method signature  very handy for updating methods deep inside the call stack SQL code validation in the strings passed as arguments to jdbc calls  and the whole newly bundled language injection stuff  implemented in overwritten in icons for interfaces  amp  classes  and their methods  and the smart implementation navigation  Ctrl Alt Click or Ctrl Alt B  linking between the EJB 2 1 interfaces and bean classes  including refactoring support   old one  but still immensely valuable when working on older projects

User · Answer

A few other things    propagate parameters exceptions when changing method signature  very handy for updating methods deep inside the call stack SQL code validation in the strings passed as arguments to jdbc calls  and the whole newly bundled language injection stuff  implemented in overwritten in icons for interfaces  amp  classes  and their methods  and the smart implementation navigation  Ctrl Alt Click or Ctrl Alt B  linking between the EJB 2 1 interfaces and bean classes  including refactoring support   old one  but still immensely valuable when working on older projects

User · Answer

A few other things    propagate parameters exceptions when changing method signature  very handy for updating methods deep inside the call stack SQL code validation in the strings passed as arguments to jdbc calls  and the whole newly bundled language injection stuff  implemented in overwritten in icons for interfaces  amp  classes  and their methods  and the smart implementation navigation  Ctrl Alt Click or Ctrl Alt B  linking between the EJB 2 1 interfaces and bean classes  including refactoring support   old one  but still immensely valuable when working on older projects

User · Answer

One of the good points in my opinion is the Dependency Structure Matrix  http   www jetbrains com idea features dependency analysis html link0  There s a good introduction to DSM usage and benefits in Lattix  website  a standalone product   http   www lattix com files dl slides s php directory 4tour

User · Answer

Well  for me it s a thousand tiny things  Some of the macros  the GUI layout in general in Eclipse I find awful  I can t open multiple projects in different windows in Eclipse  I can open multiple projects  but then it s view based system swaps a bunch of things around on me when I switch files  IntelliJ s code inspections seem better  Its popup helpers to fix common issues is nice  Lots of simple usability things like the side bar where I can hover over a hot spot and it ll tell me every implementing subclass of a method or the method I m implementing and from where    Whenever I ve had to use  or watch someone use  Eclipse it seems like they can do most of the things I can do in IntelliJ  but it takes them longer and it s clunkier

User · Answer

Something which I use in IntelliJ all the time is refactoring as I type   I have re-written classes from a printout  originally written in eclipse  using both IDEs and I used about 40  less key strokes mouse clicks to write the same classes in IntelliJ than eclipse   I wouldn t want to use Eclipse until they support as much refactoring with incomplete pieces of code   Here is a longer list of features in IntelliJ 8 0 8 1  http   www jetbrains com idea features index html

User · Answer

My timing may be a little off in terms of this thread  but I just had to respond   I am a huge eclipse fan -- using it since it s first appearance  A friend told me then  10  years ago  that it would be a player  He was right   However  I have just started using IntelliJ and if you haven t seen or used changelists -- you are missing out on programming heaven   The ability to track my changed files  on my development branch ala clearcase  was something I was looking for in a plugin for eclipse  Intellij tracks all of your changes for a single commit  extremely easy  You can isolate changed files with custom lists  I use that for configuration files that must be unique locally  but are constantly flagged when I sync or compare against the repository -- listing them under a changelist  I can monitor them  but neatly tuck them away so I can focus on the real additions I am making   Also  there s a Commit Log plugin that outputs a text of all changes for those SCCS that aren t integrated with your bug tracking software  Pasting the log into a ticket s work history captures the files  their version  date time  and the branch tags  It s cool as hell   All of this could be supported via plugins  or future enhancements  in eclipse  I wager  yet  Intellij makes this a breeze    Finally  I am really excited about the mainstream love for this product -- the keystrokes  so it s painful  but fun

User · Answer

First of all I love intellij   There are at least a hundred features it has that eclipse lack   I m talking magnitudes better in reliability and intelligence that no hyperbole can describe when it comes to refactoring  renaming  moving and others which have already been mentioned   BUT  there is one thing that intellij does not allow which eclipse does   It does not allow running multiple projects at once under the same vm     When you have separate projects for the front  middle  core  agents  etc  where they all have to interact with each other  you can not quickly modify and debug at the same time  afaik  The only way I current cope with this is to use ant scripts to deploy and update jars in dependent projects  or use maven    Eclipse allows multiple projects to be debugged under one ide vm instance

User · Answer

One very useful feature is the ability to partially build a Maven reactor project so that only the parts you need are included    To make this a little clearer  consider the case of a collection of WAR files with a lot of common resources  e g  JavaScript  Spring config files etc  being shared between them using the overlay technique  If you are working on some web page  running in Jetty  and want to change some of the overlay code that is held in a separate module then you d normally expect to have to stop Jetty  run the Maven build  start Jetty again and continue  This is the case with Eclipse and just about every other IDE I ve worked with  Not so in IntelliJ  Using the project settings you can define which facet of which module you would like to be included in a background build  Consequently you end up with a process that appears seamless  You make a change to pretty much any code in the project and instantly it is available after you refresh the browser   Very neat  and very fast   I couldn t imagine coding a front end in something like YUI backing onto DWR SpringMVC without it

User · Answer

If you have the cursor on a method then CTRL SHIFT I will popup the method implementation  If the method is an interface method  then you can use up- and down- arrows to cycle through the implementations   Map lt String  Integer gt  m       m contains Key  Wibble      Where   is  for example  where your cursor is

User · Answer

Preamble to my answer  My use of Eclipse is limited  We needed a Java IDE to work on both Windows and Mac and the Mac port slowed down day by day  This was years ago and I m sure it s OK now  But that is what got us to switch to IntelliJ and we ve been happy with it   Now for my answer  One big difference I haven t seen mentioned yet is that tech support is better with IntelliJ Jet Brains  We send an e-mail to JetBrains and get a definitive answer back in less than an hour  Looking for answers to Eclipse problems results in the usual   You stupid idiot  answers  usually a small number of the replies  along with the much larger number of insightful  helpful replies  But it takes some sorting through to get the real answer

User · Answer

Idea 8 0 has the lovely ctrl shift space x 2 that does the following autocomplete    City city   customer  lt ctrl-shift-space twice gt    resolves to    City city   customer getAddress   getCity      through any number of levels of getters setters

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Open a project from a Maven POM  Just select  Open project     navigate to your top level pom xml and hit Enter    NetBeans now has this feature as well

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Alt Insert to edit text in Column Mode

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In IntelliJ  one can jump through a history of the last places edited with  Last Edit Location   Eclipse has a similar feature but Eclipse only goes back to one level of edit location    Having the history rather than just the one level that Eclipse offers is a great productivity feature  it acts as a form of auto-bookmarking  since you often want to jump back to the places where you have been making changes  I use this ability several times a day  and feel the pain of not having it when I am asked to use Eclipse for something

User · Answer

There are many things that idea solves in a much simpler way  or there s no equivalent    Autocomplete actions  Doing ctrl shift a you can call any idea action from the keyboard without remembering its key combination    Think about gnome-do or launchy in windows  and you ve got the idea  Also  this feature supports CamelCasing abbreviations    Shelf  Lets you keep easily some pieces of code apart  and then review them through the diff viewer  Local history  It s far better managed  and simpler  SVN annotations and history  simpler to inspect  and also you can easily see the history only for such a part of a whole source file  Autocomplete everywhere  such as the evaluate expression and breakpoint condition windows  Maven integration    much  much simpler  and well integrated  Refactors much closer to the hand  such as loops insertion  wrapping casting  renaming  and add variables  Find much powerful and well organized  Even in big projects Much stable to work with several branches of a big project at the same time  as a former bugfixer of 1 5Gb by branch sources  and the need to working in them simultaneously  idea shown its rock-solid capabilities  Cleaner and simpler interface    And  simpler to use only with the keyboard  letting apart the need of using the mouse for lots of simple taks  saving you time and giving you more focus on the code    where it matters    And now  being opensource    the Idea user base will grow exponentially

User · Answer

Sorry if this is covered already  but simply having the  changes  tab there where I can see my local changes  incoming changes  remote changes is just simply something I can t live without    In Eclipse  I can t find such a feature     Also just a simple thing like middle clicking which binds to the  open declaration  is a great UI addition - something I also cannot see implemented in Eclipse   There is only Eclipse at my work place but I m seriously thinking of purchasing a personal Idea license

User · Answer

I don t remember if word line method class wrap is possible in Eclipse  In Intellij Idea you use Ctrl W

User · Answer

If you have the cursor on a method then CTRL SHIFT I will popup the method implementation  If the method is an interface method  then you can use up- and down- arrows to cycle through the implementations   Map lt String  Integer gt  m       m contains Key  Wibble      Where   is  for example  where your cursor is

User · Answer

IntelliJ has intellisense and refactoring support from code into jspx documents

User · Answer

Show Navigation Bar ALT-Home

User · Answer

IntelliJ has some pretty advanced code inspections  comparable but different to FindBugs     Although I seriously miss a FindBugs plugin when using IntelliJ  The Eclipse FindBugs integration is pretty cool     Here is an official list of CodeInspections supported by IntelliJ   EDIT  Finally  there is a findbugs-plugin for IntelliJ  It is still a bit beta but the combination of Code Inspections and FindBugs is just awesome

User · Answer

The IntelliJ debugger has a very handy feature called  Evaluate Expression   that is by far better than eclipses pendant  It has full code-completion and i concider it to be generally  more useful

User · Answer

Don t forget  compare with clipboard    Something that I use all the time in IntelliJ and which has no equivalent in Eclipse

User · Answer

Data flow analysis   inter-procedural backward flow analysis and forward flow analysis  as described here  My experiences are based on Community Edition  which does data flow analysis fairly well  It has failed  refused to do anything  in few cases when code is very complex

User · Answer

IntelliJ has some pretty advanced code inspections  comparable but different to FindBugs     Although I seriously miss a FindBugs plugin when using IntelliJ  The Eclipse FindBugs integration is pretty cool     Here is an official list of CodeInspections supported by IntelliJ   EDIT  Finally  there is a findbugs-plugin for IntelliJ  It is still a bit beta but the combination of Code Inspections and FindBugs is just awesome

User · Answer

There is only one reason I use intellij and not eclipse  Usability   Whether it is debugging  refactoring  auto-completion   Intellij is much easier to use with consistent key bindings  options available where you look for them etc  Feature-wise  it will be tough for intellij to catch up with Eclipse  as the latter has much more plugins available that intellij  and is easily extensible

User · Answer

IntelliJ has intellisense and refactoring support from code into jspx documents

User · Answer

Show Navigation Bar ALT-Home

User · Answer

Introduce variable   Ctrl Alt V on Windows  Cmd Alt V on OSX   Lets say you call a method  service listAllPersons   Hit Ctrl Alt V and Enter  and variable for return value from method call is inserted   List lt Person gt  list   service listAllPersons      Saves you typing  and you don t have to check the return type of the method you are calling  Especially useful when using generics  e g   new ArrayList lt String gt       introduce variable   ArrayList lt String gt  stringArrayList   new ArrayList lt String gt        of course you can easily change the name of the variable before hitting Enter

User · Answer

Structural search and replace   For example  search for something like     System out println  string     expr      Where  string  is a literal  and  expr  is an expression of type my package and Class  and then replace with      expr  inspect  string

User · Answer

I don t remember if word line method class wrap is possible in Eclipse  In Intellij Idea you use Ctrl W

User · Answer

For me  it s IDEA s maven support  especially in version 9 is second to none  The on-the-fly synchronizing of the project to the maven model is just fantastic and makes development pleasant

User · Answer

CTRL-click works anywhere  CTRL-click that brings you to where clicked object is defined works everywhere - not only in Java classes and variables in Java code  but in Spring configuration  you can click on class name  or property  or bean name   in Hibernate  you can click on property name or class  or included resource   you can navigate within one click from Java class to where it is used as Spring or Hibernate bean  clicking on included JSP or JSTL tag also works  ctrl-click on JavaScript variable or function brings you to the place it is defined or shows a menu if there are more than one place  including other  js files and JS code in HTML or JSP files   Autocomplete for many languagues  Hibernate  Autocomplete in HSQL expressions  in Hibernate configuration  including class  property and DB column names   in Spring configuration   lt property name  propName  ref   lt hit CTRL-SPACE gt     and it will show you list of those beans which you can inject into that property    Java  Very smart autocomplete in Java code   interface Person       String getName        String getAddress        int getAge        --- Person p  String name   p  lt CTRL-SHIFT-SPACE gt    and it shows you ONLY getName    getAddress   and toString    only they are compatible by type  and getName   is first in the list because it has more relevant name  Latest version 8 which is still in EAP has even more smart autocomplete   interface Country    interface Address       String getStreetAddress        String getZipCode        Country getCountry      interface Person       String getName        Address getAddress        int getAge        ---  Person p  Country c   p  lt CTRL-SHIFT-SPACE gt    and it will silently autocomplete it to  Country c   p getAddress   getCountry      Javascript  Smart autocomplete in JavaScript   function Person name address        this getName   function     return name        this getAddress   function     return address       Person prototype hello   function         return  I m     this getName       from     this get lt CTRL-SPACE gt       and it shows ONLY getName   and getAddress    no matter how may get  methods you have in other JS objects in your project  and ctrl-click on this getName   brings you to where this one is defined  even if there are some other getName   functions in your project   HTML  Did I mention autocomplete and ctrl-clicking in paths to files  like  lt script src      lt img src     etc   Autocomplete in HTML tag attributes  Autocomplete in style attribute of HTML tags  both attribute names and values  Autocomplete in class attributes as well  Type  lt div class   lt CTRL-SPACE  and it will show you list of CSS classes defined in your project  Pick one  ctrl-click on it and you will be redirected to where it is defined   Easy own language higlighting  Latest version has language injection  so you can declare that you custom JSTL tag usually contains JavaScript and it will highlight JavaScript inside it    lt ui obfuscateJavaScript gt function something        lt  ui obfuscateJavaScript gt    Indexed search across all project   You can use Find Usages of any Java class or method and it will find where it is used including not only Java classes but Hibernate  Spring  JSP and other places  Rename Method refactoring renames method not only in Java classes but anywhere including comments  it can not be sure if string in comments is really method name so it will ask   And it will find only your method even if there are methods of another class with same name  Good source control integration  does SVN support changelists  IDEA support them for every source control   ability to create a patch with your changes so you can send your changes to other team member without committing them   Improved debugger  When I look at HashMap in debugger s watch window  I see logical view - keys and values  last time I did it in Eclipse it was showing entries with hash and next fields - I m not really debugging HashMap  I just want to look at it contents   Spring  amp  Hibernate configuration validation  It validates Spring and Hibernate configuration right when you edit it  so I do not need to restart server to know that I misspelled class name  or added constructor parameter so my Spring cfg is invalid   Last time I tried  I could not run Eclipse on Windows XP x64   and it will suggest you person name or person address  Ctrl-click on person name and it will navigate you to getName   method of Person class   Type Pattern compile      put    there  hit CTRL-SPACE and see helpful hint about what you can put into your regular expression  You can also use language injection here - define your own method that takes string parameter  declare in IntelliLang options dialog that your parameter is regular expression - and it will give you autocomplete there as well  Needless to say it highlights incorrect regular expressions   Other features  There are few features which I m not sure are present in Eclipse or not  But at least each member of our team who uses Eclipse  also uses some merging tool to merge local changes with changes from source control  usually WinMerge  I never need it - merging in IDEA is enough for me  By 3 clicks I can see list of file versions in source control  by 3 more clicks I can compare previous versions  or previous and current one and possibly merge   It allows to to specify that I need all  jars inside WEB-INF lib folder  without picking each file separately  so when someone commits new  jar into that folder it picks it up automatically   Mentioned above is probably 10  of what it does  I do not use Maven  Flex  Swing  EJB and a lot of other stuff  so I can not tell how it helps with them  But it does

User · Answer

Structural search and replace   For example  search for something like     System out println  string     expr      Where  string  is a literal  and  expr  is an expression of type my package and Class  and then replace with      expr  inspect  string

User · Answer

I don t remember if word line method class wrap is possible in Eclipse  In Intellij Idea you use Ctrl W

User · Answer

One thing I use regularly is setting a breakpoint  but then controlling what it does   At my last job  most everyone else used Eclipse    I remember being surprised that no one could find how to do this in Eclipse    For example  can have the breakpoint not actually stop  but just log a message to the console  Which means  I don t have to litter my code with  System out println       and then recompile

User · Answer

There is only one reason I use intellij and not eclipse  Usability   Whether it is debugging  refactoring  auto-completion   Intellij is much easier to use with consistent key bindings  options available where you look for them etc  Feature-wise  it will be tough for intellij to catch up with Eclipse  as the latter has much more plugins available that intellij  and is easily extensible

User · Answer

CTRL-click works anywhere  CTRL-click that brings you to where clicked object is defined works everywhere - not only in Java classes and variables in Java code  but in Spring configuration  you can click on class name  or property  or bean name   in Hibernate  you can click on property name or class  or included resource   you can navigate within one click from Java class to where it is used as Spring or Hibernate bean  clicking on included JSP or JSTL tag also works  ctrl-click on JavaScript variable or function brings you to the place it is defined or shows a menu if there are more than one place  including other  js files and JS code in HTML or JSP files   Autocomplete for many languagues  Hibernate  Autocomplete in HSQL expressions  in Hibernate configuration  including class  property and DB column names   in Spring configuration   lt property name  propName  ref   lt hit CTRL-SPACE gt     and it will show you list of those beans which you can inject into that property    Java  Very smart autocomplete in Java code   interface Person       String getName        String getAddress        int getAge        --- Person p  String name   p  lt CTRL-SHIFT-SPACE gt    and it shows you ONLY getName    getAddress   and toString    only they are compatible by type  and getName   is first in the list because it has more relevant name  Latest version 8 which is still in EAP has even more smart autocomplete   interface Country    interface Address       String getStreetAddress        String getZipCode        Country getCountry      interface Person       String getName        Address getAddress        int getAge        ---  Person p  Country c   p  lt CTRL-SHIFT-SPACE gt    and it will silently autocomplete it to  Country c   p getAddress   getCountry      Javascript  Smart autocomplete in JavaScript   function Person name address        this getName   function     return name        this getAddress   function     return address       Person prototype hello   function         return  I m     this getName       from     this get lt CTRL-SPACE gt       and it shows ONLY getName   and getAddress    no matter how may get  methods you have in other JS objects in your project  and ctrl-click on this getName   brings you to where this one is defined  even if there are some other getName   functions in your project   HTML  Did I mention autocomplete and ctrl-clicking in paths to files  like  lt script src      lt img src     etc   Autocomplete in HTML tag attributes  Autocomplete in style attribute of HTML tags  both attribute names and values  Autocomplete in class attributes as well  Type  lt div class   lt CTRL-SPACE  and it will show you list of CSS classes defined in your project  Pick one  ctrl-click on it and you will be redirected to where it is defined   Easy own language higlighting  Latest version has language injection  so you can declare that you custom JSTL tag usually contains JavaScript and it will highlight JavaScript inside it    lt ui obfuscateJavaScript gt function something        lt  ui obfuscateJavaScript gt    Indexed search across all project   You can use Find Usages of any Java class or method and it will find where it is used including not only Java classes but Hibernate  Spring  JSP and other places  Rename Method refactoring renames method not only in Java classes but anywhere including comments  it can not be sure if string in comments is really method name so it will ask   And it will find only your method even if there are methods of another class with same name  Good source control integration  does SVN support changelists  IDEA support them for every source control   ability to create a patch with your changes so you can send your changes to other team member without committing them   Improved debugger  When I look at HashMap in debugger s watch window  I see logical view - keys and values  last time I did it in Eclipse it was showing entries with hash and next fields - I m not really debugging HashMap  I just want to look at it contents   Spring  amp  Hibernate configuration validation  It validates Spring and Hibernate configuration right when you edit it  so I do not need to restart server to know that I misspelled class name  or added constructor parameter so my Spring cfg is invalid   Last time I tried  I could not run Eclipse on Windows XP x64   and it will suggest you person name or person address  Ctrl-click on person name and it will navigate you to getName   method of Person class   Type Pattern compile      put    there  hit CTRL-SPACE and see helpful hint about what you can put into your regular expression  You can also use language injection here - define your own method that takes string parameter  declare in IntelliLang options dialog that your parameter is regular expression - and it will give you autocomplete there as well  Needless to say it highlights incorrect regular expressions   Other features  There are few features which I m not sure are present in Eclipse or not  But at least each member of our team who uses Eclipse  also uses some merging tool to merge local changes with changes from source control  usually WinMerge  I never need it - merging in IDEA is enough for me  By 3 clicks I can see list of file versions in source control  by 3 more clicks I can compare previous versions  or previous and current one and possibly merge   It allows to to specify that I need all  jars inside WEB-INF lib folder  without picking each file separately  so when someone commits new  jar into that folder it picks it up automatically   Mentioned above is probably 10  of what it does  I do not use Maven  Flex  Swing  EJB and a lot of other stuff  so I can not tell how it helps with them  But it does

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VIM Emulator  This plugin provides nearly complete vi vim gvim emulation while editing files in IDEA          The following functionality is supported                        Motion keys              Deletion Changing              Insert mode commands              Marks              Registers              VIM undo redo              Visual mode commands              Some Ex commands              Some  set options              Full VIM regular expressions for search and search replace              Macros              Diagraphs              Command line history              Search history              Jumplists              VIM help             some comments about this plugin from http   plugins jetbrains net plugin  id 164                                                                                 I can t see ever going back to any other ide because of this plugin                                                                                                       Best of both worlds    Awesome                                                                                                        that s what i was lacking in all IDEs

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I think you can stick to either of these IDEs  The best sign to not to  worry about missing a giant benefit in the IDE you are not using  is the very long arguments we have seen between Eclipse fans and IntelliJ fans  This is a good sign that both sides have almost the same power which has led this long discussion to survive

User · Answer

One thing I use regularly is setting a breakpoint  but then controlling what it does   At my last job  most everyone else used Eclipse    I remember being surprised that no one could find how to do this in Eclipse    For example  can have the breakpoint not actually stop  but just log a message to the console  Which means  I don t have to litter my code with  System out println       and then recompile

User · Answer

One of the good points in my opinion is the Dependency Structure Matrix  http   www jetbrains com idea features dependency analysis html link0  There s a good introduction to DSM usage and benefits in Lattix  website  a standalone product   http   www lattix com files dl slides s php directory 4tour

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In IntelliJ  one can jump through a history of the last places edited with  Last Edit Location   Eclipse has a similar feature but Eclipse only goes back to one level of edit location    Having the history rather than just the one level that Eclipse offers is a great productivity feature  it acts as a form of auto-bookmarking  since you often want to jump back to the places where you have been making changes  I use this ability several times a day  and feel the pain of not having it when I am asked to use Eclipse for something

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Structural search and replace   For example  search for something like     System out println  string     expr      Where  string  is a literal  and  expr  is an expression of type my package and Class  and then replace with      expr  inspect  string

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My favorite shortcut in IntelliJ that has no equivalent in Eclipse  that I ve found  is called  Go to symbol    CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-N lets you start typing and glob up classes  method names  variable names  etc  from the entire project

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Two things that IntelliJ does that Eclipse doesn t that are very valuable to me   Method separators  those faint gray lines between methods make code much more readable  Text anti-aliasing  makes code look so nice in the IDE

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IntelliJ has some pretty advanced code inspections  comparable but different to FindBugs     Although I seriously miss a FindBugs plugin when using IntelliJ  The Eclipse FindBugs integration is pretty cool     Here is an official list of CodeInspections supported by IntelliJ   EDIT  Finally  there is a findbugs-plugin for IntelliJ  It is still a bit beta but the combination of Code Inspections and FindBugs is just awesome

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Open a project from a Maven POM  Just select  Open project     navigate to your top level pom xml and hit Enter    NetBeans now has this feature as well

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Data flow analysis   inter-procedural backward flow analysis and forward flow analysis  as described here  My experiences are based on Community Edition  which does data flow analysis fairly well  It has failed  refused to do anything  in few cases when code is very complex

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Intellij has a far superior SVN plug-in than either Subversive or Subclipse and it works  The amount of time we ve wasted merging source files using Eclipse doesn t bear thinking about  This isn t an issue with IntelliJ because the plugin helps you much more    Also the Subclipse plugin is unreliable - we regularly have instances where the plugin doesn t think there has been any code checked in to SVN by other developers  but there has - the CI server has processed them

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There is one thing that IntelliJ does much much better than Eclipse and that is empty your pockets    I do however prefer using it and one big advantage it has over Eclipce is the way it synchronises with the file system  for big projects and slow computers  yes in work environments the PC s are a lot slower than our ones at home  Eclipse seems to struggle where IntelliJ seems to be quicker albeit with a slower initial indexing time   IntelliJ Community edition obviously makes using it free but you soon want those extra refactoring and nice little goodies not included in the CC edition   In my opinion  its generally a better user experience but whether its worth the cost is a question for each developer to answer themselves    But lets be grateful we have up to three great IDEs for Java right now with NetBeans getting better all the time

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For me  it s IDEA s maven support  especially in version 9 is second to none  The on-the-fly synchronizing of the project to the maven model is just fantastic and makes development pleasant

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There are a number of features and workflows that are different in the two  as is evident in all the answers  However  I think that in deciding what framework to use one much also consider the general productivity improvement one can make with each tool   I am a big fan of Netbeans and Eclipse and have used both for many years  They are excellent tools and depending on what you are doing  you may want to choose one or the other   However  about six months ago  while working on a complex java web project involving a lot of javascript front end code for a HMT5 ui  I was forced to look for alternatives to Eclipse due to a js autocomplete bug  I was so desperate that I was considering going back to a simple text editor for my js code     It is only by luck that I ran across Intellij Idea  no time to research tools unfortunately    While it takes some time to get used to the Idea way of doing things  special features aside  the productivity increase it offers from small things left and right is the biggest asset in my opinion  It simply works better for me and I am now a subscription-paying client of Idea Ultimate  Once you get used to this  its is very difficult to go back to anything else   Nothing beats free and I am a big fan of open source  but in the end if you are doing this for a living  being able to do things faster pays out every time

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I tried to switch to IntelliJ because of the new Android Studio  But I m very disappointed now  I m using Eclipse with the Code Recommanders Plugin  Here is a simple example why Eclipse is so awesome   I want to create a new SimpleTimeZone  SimpleTimeZone has no Constructor with zero arguments   Ctrl   Space in Eclipse    Ctrl   Space in IntelliJ    In IntelliJ I get no informations what kind of constructors SimpleTimeZone has   After Enter in Eclipse    I get the previously selected constructor filled with predefined variable names  And I can see the type of every argument  With Code Recommanders Eclipse guesses the right constructor by the previously defined variable types in the current scope and fills the constructor with these vars   After Enter in IntelliJ nothing happens  I get an empty constructor  I have to press Ctrl   P to see the expected arguments

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I have discovered recently at least two advanteges of IntelliJ IDEA over Eclipse   If one tries to use code formating in the JSP code editor the JSP scriptlets get broken  Eclipse is getting a little bit crazy  it ads random pieces of code here and there  IDEA behaves very nicely   The other thing is speed of deployment of the application on the JBoss Server  IntelliJ is replacing the application in the JBoss s tmp folder  so the redeployment is really fast  Eclipse WTP is replacing application in the deploy folder  which  as it turns out  lasts much longer

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I not have coded a lot with IntellijIdea  but in IntellijIdea you can see where a block of code between brackets  if  try catch  cycle  etc  begins and where finish   In  Eclipse  I code in Eclipse 3 2  you can identify the block only manually

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Far  far  far more refactorings

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I not have coded a lot with IntellijIdea  but in IntellijIdea you can see where a block of code between brackets  if  try catch  cycle  etc  begins and where finish   In  Eclipse  I code in Eclipse 3 2  you can identify the block only manually

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One very useful feature is the ability to partially build a Maven reactor project so that only the parts you need are included    To make this a little clearer  consider the case of a collection of WAR files with a lot of common resources  e g  JavaScript  Spring config files etc  being shared between them using the overlay technique  If you are working on some web page  running in Jetty  and want to change some of the overlay code that is held in a separate module then you d normally expect to have to stop Jetty  run the Maven build  start Jetty again and continue  This is the case with Eclipse and just about every other IDE I ve worked with  Not so in IntelliJ  Using the project settings you can define which facet of which module you would like to be included in a background build  Consequently you end up with a process that appears seamless  You make a change to pretty much any code in the project and instantly it is available after you refresh the browser   Very neat  and very fast   I couldn t imagine coding a front end in something like YUI backing onto DWR SpringMVC without it

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Sorry if this is covered already  but simply having the  changes  tab there where I can see my local changes  incoming changes  remote changes is just simply something I can t live without    In Eclipse  I can t find such a feature     Also just a simple thing like middle clicking which binds to the  open declaration  is a great UI addition - something I also cannot see implemented in Eclipse   There is only Eclipse at my work place but I m seriously thinking of purchasing a personal Idea license

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Well  for me it s a thousand tiny things  Some of the macros  the GUI layout in general in Eclipse I find awful  I can t open multiple projects in different windows in Eclipse  I can open multiple projects  but then it s view based system swaps a bunch of things around on me when I switch files  IntelliJ s code inspections seem better  Its popup helpers to fix common issues is nice  Lots of simple usability things like the side bar where I can hover over a hot spot and it ll tell me every implementing subclass of a method or the method I m implementing and from where    Whenever I ve had to use  or watch someone use  Eclipse it seems like they can do most of the things I can do in IntelliJ  but it takes them longer and it s clunkier

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IntelliJ has some pretty advanced code inspections  comparable but different to FindBugs     Although I seriously miss a FindBugs plugin when using IntelliJ  The Eclipse FindBugs integration is pretty cool     Here is an official list of CodeInspections supported by IntelliJ   EDIT  Finally  there is a findbugs-plugin for IntelliJ  It is still a bit beta but the combination of Code Inspections and FindBugs is just awesome

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Idea 8 0 has the lovely ctrl shift space x 2 that does the following autocomplete    City city   customer  lt ctrl-shift-space twice gt    resolves to    City city   customer getAddress   getCity      through any number of levels of getters setters

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At current  it is the only one that can have tabs torn out into another window  Handy when you have more screens

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Idea 8 0 has the lovely ctrl shift space x 2 that does the following autocomplete    City city   customer  lt ctrl-shift-space twice gt    resolves to    City city   customer getAddress   getCity      through any number of levels of getters setters

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My timing may be a little off in terms of this thread  but I just had to respond   I am a huge eclipse fan -- using it since it s first appearance  A friend told me then  10  years ago  that it would be a player  He was right   However  I have just started using IntelliJ and if you haven t seen or used changelists -- you are missing out on programming heaven   The ability to track my changed files  on my development branch ala clearcase  was something I was looking for in a plugin for eclipse  Intellij tracks all of your changes for a single commit  extremely easy  You can isolate changed files with custom lists  I use that for configuration files that must be unique locally  but are constantly flagged when I sync or compare against the repository -- listing them under a changelist  I can monitor them  but neatly tuck them away so I can focus on the real additions I am making   Also  there s a Commit Log plugin that outputs a text of all changes for those SCCS that aren t integrated with your bug tracking software  Pasting the log into a ticket s work history captures the files  their version  date time  and the branch tags  It s cool as hell   All of this could be supported via plugins  or future enhancements  in eclipse  I wager  yet  Intellij makes this a breeze    Finally  I am really excited about the mainstream love for this product -- the keystrokes  so it s painful  but fun

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Probably is not a matter of what can can t be done  but how   For instance both have editor surrounded with dock panels for project  classpath  output  structure etc  But in Idea when I start to type all these collapse automatically let me focus on the code it self  In eclipse all these panels keep open leaving my editor area  very reduced   about 1 5 of the total viewable area  So I have to grab the mouse and click to  minimize in those panels  Doing this all day long is a very frustrating experience in eclipse   The exact opposite thing happens with the view output window   In Idea running a program brings the output window panel  to see the output of the program even if it was perviously minimized   In eclipse I have to grab my mouse again and look for the output tab and click it to view my program output  because the output window panel is just another one  like all the rest of the windows  but in Idea it is treated in a special way   If the user want to run his program  is very likely he wants to see the output of that program    It seems so natural when I write it  but eclipse fails in this basic user interface concept   Probably there s a shortcut for this in eclipse   autohide output window while editing and autoshow it when running the program     but as some other tens of features the shortcut must be hunted in forums  online help etc while in Idea is a little bit more  natural     This can be repeated for almost all the features both have  autocomplete  word wrap  quick documentation view  everything  I think the user experience is far more pleasant in Idea than in eclipse  Then the motto comes true  Develop with pleasure   Eclipse handles faster larger projects    300 jars and  4000 classes    and I think IntelliJ Idea 8 is working on this   All this of course is subjective  How can we measure user experience

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Two things that IntelliJ does that Eclipse doesn t that are very valuable to me   Method separators  those faint gray lines between methods make code much more readable  Text anti-aliasing  makes code look so nice in the IDE

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CTRL-click works anywhere  CTRL-click that brings you to where clicked object is defined works everywhere - not only in Java classes and variables in Java code  but in Spring configuration  you can click on class name  or property  or bean name   in Hibernate  you can click on property name or class  or included resource   you can navigate within one click from Java class to where it is used as Spring or Hibernate bean  clicking on included JSP or JSTL tag also works  ctrl-click on JavaScript variable or function brings you to the place it is defined or shows a menu if there are more than one place  including other  js files and JS code in HTML or JSP files   Autocomplete for many languagues  Hibernate  Autocomplete in HSQL expressions  in Hibernate configuration  including class  property and DB column names   in Spring configuration   lt property name  propName  ref   lt hit CTRL-SPACE gt     and it will show you list of those beans which you can inject into that property    Java  Very smart autocomplete in Java code   interface Person       String getName        String getAddress        int getAge        --- Person p  String name   p  lt CTRL-SHIFT-SPACE gt    and it shows you ONLY getName    getAddress   and toString    only they are compatible by type  and getName   is first in the list because it has more relevant name  Latest version 8 which is still in EAP has even more smart autocomplete   interface Country    interface Address       String getStreetAddress        String getZipCode        Country getCountry      interface Person       String getName        Address getAddress        int getAge        ---  Person p  Country c   p  lt CTRL-SHIFT-SPACE gt    and it will silently autocomplete it to  Country c   p getAddress   getCountry      Javascript  Smart autocomplete in JavaScript   function Person name address        this getName   function     return name        this getAddress   function     return address       Person prototype hello   function         return  I m     this getName       from     this get lt CTRL-SPACE gt       and it shows ONLY getName   and getAddress    no matter how may get  methods you have in other JS objects in your project  and ctrl-click on this getName   brings you to where this one is defined  even if there are some other getName   functions in your project   HTML  Did I mention autocomplete and ctrl-clicking in paths to files  like  lt script src      lt img src     etc   Autocomplete in HTML tag attributes  Autocomplete in style attribute of HTML tags  both attribute names and values  Autocomplete in class attributes as well  Type  lt div class   lt CTRL-SPACE  and it will show you list of CSS classes defined in your project  Pick one  ctrl-click on it and you will be redirected to where it is defined   Easy own language higlighting  Latest version has language injection  so you can declare that you custom JSTL tag usually contains JavaScript and it will highlight JavaScript inside it    lt ui obfuscateJavaScript gt function something        lt  ui obfuscateJavaScript gt    Indexed search across all project   You can use Find Usages of any Java class or method and it will find where it is used including not only Java classes but Hibernate  Spring  JSP and other places  Rename Method refactoring renames method not only in Java classes but anywhere including comments  it can not be sure if string in comments is really method name so it will ask   And it will find only your method even if there are methods of another class with same name  Good source control integration  does SVN support changelists  IDEA support them for every source control   ability to create a patch with your changes so you can send your changes to other team member without committing them   Improved debugger  When I look at HashMap in debugger s watch window  I see logical view - keys and values  last time I did it in Eclipse it was showing entries with hash and next fields - I m not really debugging HashMap  I just want to look at it contents   Spring  amp  Hibernate configuration validation  It validates Spring and Hibernate configuration right when you edit it  so I do not need to restart server to know that I misspelled class name  or added constructor parameter so my Spring cfg is invalid   Last time I tried  I could not run Eclipse on Windows XP x64   and it will suggest you person name or person address  Ctrl-click on person name and it will navigate you to getName   method of Person class   Type Pattern compile      put    there  hit CTRL-SPACE and see helpful hint about what you can put into your regular expression  You can also use language injection here - define your own method that takes string parameter  declare in IntelliLang options dialog that your parameter is regular expression - and it will give you autocomplete there as well  Needless to say it highlights incorrect regular expressions   Other features  There are few features which I m not sure are present in Eclipse or not  But at least each member of our team who uses Eclipse  also uses some merging tool to merge local changes with changes from source control  usually WinMerge  I never need it - merging in IDEA is enough for me  By 3 clicks I can see list of file versions in source control  by 3 more clicks I can compare previous versions  or previous and current one and possibly merge   It allows to to specify that I need all  jars inside WEB-INF lib folder  without picking each file separately  so when someone commits new  jar into that folder it picks it up automatically   Mentioned above is probably 10  of what it does  I do not use Maven  Flex  Swing  EJB and a lot of other stuff  so I can not tell how it helps with them  But it does

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VIM Emulator  This plugin provides nearly complete vi vim gvim emulation while editing files in IDEA          The following functionality is supported                        Motion keys              Deletion Changing              Insert mode commands              Marks              Registers              VIM undo redo              Visual mode commands              Some Ex commands              Some  set options              Full VIM regular expressions for search and search replace              Macros              Diagraphs              Command line history              Search history              Jumplists              VIM help             some comments about this plugin from http   plugins jetbrains net plugin  id 164                                                                                 I can t see ever going back to any other ide because of this plugin                                                                                                       Best of both worlds    Awesome                                                                                                        that s what i was lacking in all IDEs

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CTRL-click works anywhere  CTRL-click that brings you to where clicked object is defined works everywhere - not only in Java classes and variables in Java code  but in Spring configuration  you can click on class name  or property  or bean name   in Hibernate  you can click on property name or class  or included resource   you can navigate within one click from Java class to where it is used as Spring or Hibernate bean  clicking on included JSP or JSTL tag also works  ctrl-click on JavaScript variable or function brings you to the place it is defined or shows a menu if there are more than one place  including other  js files and JS code in HTML or JSP files   Autocomplete for many languagues  Hibernate  Autocomplete in HSQL expressions  in Hibernate configuration  including class  property and DB column names   in Spring configuration   lt property name  propName  ref   lt hit CTRL-SPACE gt     and it will show you list of those beans which you can inject into that property    Java  Very smart autocomplete in Java code   interface Person       String getName        String getAddress        int getAge        --- Person p  String name   p  lt CTRL-SHIFT-SPACE gt    and it shows you ONLY getName    getAddress   and toString    only they are compatible by type  and getName   is first in the list because it has more relevant name  Latest version 8 which is still in EAP has even more smart autocomplete   interface Country    interface Address       String getStreetAddress        String getZipCode        Country getCountry      interface Person       String getName        Address getAddress        int getAge        ---  Person p  Country c   p  lt CTRL-SHIFT-SPACE gt    and it will silently autocomplete it to  Country c   p getAddress   getCountry      Javascript  Smart autocomplete in JavaScript   function Person name address        this getName   function     return name        this getAddress   function     return address       Person prototype hello   function         return  I m     this getName       from     this get lt CTRL-SPACE gt       and it shows ONLY getName   and getAddress    no matter how may get  methods you have in other JS objects in your project  and ctrl-click on this getName   brings you to where this one is defined  even if there are some other getName   functions in your project   HTML  Did I mention autocomplete and ctrl-clicking in paths to files  like  lt script src      lt img src     etc   Autocomplete in HTML tag attributes  Autocomplete in style attribute of HTML tags  both attribute names and values  Autocomplete in class attributes as well  Type  lt div class   lt CTRL-SPACE  and it will show you list of CSS classes defined in your project  Pick one  ctrl-click on it and you will be redirected to where it is defined   Easy own language higlighting  Latest version has language injection  so you can declare that you custom JSTL tag usually contains JavaScript and it will highlight JavaScript inside it    lt ui obfuscateJavaScript gt function something        lt  ui obfuscateJavaScript gt    Indexed search across all project   You can use Find Usages of any Java class or method and it will find where it is used including not only Java classes but Hibernate  Spring  JSP and other places  Rename Method refactoring renames method not only in Java classes but anywhere including comments  it can not be sure if string in comments is really method name so it will ask   And it will find only your method even if there are methods of another class with same name  Good source control integration  does SVN support changelists  IDEA support them for every source control   ability to create a patch with your changes so you can send your changes to other team member without committing them   Improved debugger  When I look at HashMap in debugger s watch window  I see logical view - keys and values  last time I did it in Eclipse it was showing entries with hash and next fields - I m not really debugging HashMap  I just want to look at it contents   Spring  amp  Hibernate configuration validation  It validates Spring and Hibernate configuration right when you edit it  so I do not need to restart server to know that I misspelled class name  or added constructor parameter so my Spring cfg is invalid   Last time I tried  I could not run Eclipse on Windows XP x64   and it will suggest you person name or person address  Ctrl-click on person name and it will navigate you to getName   method of Person class   Type Pattern compile      put    there  hit CTRL-SPACE and see helpful hint about what you can put into your regular expression  You can also use language injection here - define your own method that takes string parameter  declare in IntelliLang options dialog that your parameter is regular expression - and it will give you autocomplete there as well  Needless to say it highlights incorrect regular expressions   Other features  There are few features which I m not sure are present in Eclipse or not  But at least each member of our team who uses Eclipse  also uses some merging tool to merge local changes with changes from source control  usually WinMerge  I never need it - merging in IDEA is enough for me  By 3 clicks I can see list of file versions in source control  by 3 more clicks I can compare previous versions  or previous and current one and possibly merge   It allows to to specify that I need all  jars inside WEB-INF lib folder  without picking each file separately  so when someone commits new  jar into that folder it picks it up automatically   Mentioned above is probably 10  of what it does  I do not use Maven  Flex  Swing  EJB and a lot of other stuff  so I can not tell how it helps with them  But it does

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Something which I use in IntelliJ all the time is refactoring as I type   I have re-written classes from a printout  originally written in eclipse  using both IDEs and I used about 40  less key strokes mouse clicks to write the same classes in IntelliJ than eclipse   I wouldn t want to use Eclipse until they support as much refactoring with incomplete pieces of code   Here is a longer list of features in IntelliJ 8 0 8 1  http   www jetbrains com idea features index html

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One thing I use regularly is setting a breakpoint  but then controlling what it does   At my last job  most everyone else used Eclipse    I remember being surprised that no one could find how to do this in Eclipse    For example  can have the breakpoint not actually stop  but just log a message to the console  Which means  I don t have to litter my code with  System out println       and then recompile

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One very useful feature is the ability to partially build a Maven reactor project so that only the parts you need are included    To make this a little clearer  consider the case of a collection of WAR files with a lot of common resources  e g  JavaScript  Spring config files etc  being shared between them using the overlay technique  If you are working on some web page  running in Jetty  and want to change some of the overlay code that is held in a separate module then you d normally expect to have to stop Jetty  run the Maven build  start Jetty again and continue  This is the case with Eclipse and just about every other IDE I ve worked with  Not so in IntelliJ  Using the project settings you can define which facet of which module you would like to be included in a background build  Consequently you end up with a process that appears seamless  You make a change to pretty much any code in the project and instantly it is available after you refresh the browser   Very neat  and very fast   I couldn t imagine coding a front end in something like YUI backing onto DWR SpringMVC without it

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Far  far  far more refactorings

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Probably is not a matter of what can can t be done  but how   For instance both have editor surrounded with dock panels for project  classpath  output  structure etc  But in Idea when I start to type all these collapse automatically let me focus on the code it self  In eclipse all these panels keep open leaving my editor area  very reduced   about 1 5 of the total viewable area  So I have to grab the mouse and click to  minimize in those panels  Doing this all day long is a very frustrating experience in eclipse   The exact opposite thing happens with the view output window   In Idea running a program brings the output window panel  to see the output of the program even if it was perviously minimized   In eclipse I have to grab my mouse again and look for the output tab and click it to view my program output  because the output window panel is just another one  like all the rest of the windows  but in Idea it is treated in a special way   If the user want to run his program  is very likely he wants to see the output of that program    It seems so natural when I write it  but eclipse fails in this basic user interface concept   Probably there s a shortcut for this in eclipse   autohide output window while editing and autoshow it when running the program     but as some other tens of features the shortcut must be hunted in forums  online help etc while in Idea is a little bit more  natural     This can be repeated for almost all the features both have  autocomplete  word wrap  quick documentation view  everything  I think the user experience is far more pleasant in Idea than in eclipse  Then the motto comes true  Develop with pleasure   Eclipse handles faster larger projects    300 jars and  4000 classes    and I think IntelliJ Idea 8 is working on this   All this of course is subjective  How can we measure user experience

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One very useful feature is the ability to partially build a Maven reactor project so that only the parts you need are included    To make this a little clearer  consider the case of a collection of WAR files with a lot of common resources  e g  JavaScript  Spring config files etc  being shared between them using the overlay technique  If you are working on some web page  running in Jetty  and want to change some of the overlay code that is held in a separate module then you d normally expect to have to stop Jetty  run the Maven build  start Jetty again and continue  This is the case with Eclipse and just about every other IDE I ve worked with  Not so in IntelliJ  Using the project settings you can define which facet of which module you would like to be included in a background build  Consequently you end up with a process that appears seamless  You make a change to pretty much any code in the project and instantly it is available after you refresh the browser   Very neat  and very fast   I couldn t imagine coding a front end in something like YUI backing onto DWR SpringMVC without it

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If you have the cursor on a method then CTRL SHIFT I will popup the method implementation  If the method is an interface method  then you can use up- and down- arrows to cycle through the implementations   Map lt String  Integer gt  m       m contains Key  Wibble      Where   is  for example  where your cursor is

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If you have the cursor on a method then CTRL SHIFT I will popup the method implementation  If the method is an interface method  then you can use up- and down- arrows to cycle through the implementations   Map lt String  Integer gt  m       m contains Key  Wibble      Where   is  for example  where your cursor is

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First of all I love intellij   There are at least a hundred features it has that eclipse lack   I m talking magnitudes better in reliability and intelligence that no hyperbole can describe when it comes to refactoring  renaming  moving and others which have already been mentioned   BUT  there is one thing that intellij does not allow which eclipse does   It does not allow running multiple projects at once under the same vm     When you have separate projects for the front  middle  core  agents  etc  where they all have to interact with each other  you can not quickly modify and debug at the same time  afaik  The only way I current cope with this is to use ant scripts to deploy and update jars in dependent projects  or use maven    Eclipse allows multiple projects to be debugged under one ide vm instance

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Well  for me it s a thousand tiny things  Some of the macros  the GUI layout in general in Eclipse I find awful  I can t open multiple projects in different windows in Eclipse  I can open multiple projects  but then it s view based system swaps a bunch of things around on me when I switch files  IntelliJ s code inspections seem better  Its popup helpers to fix common issues is nice  Lots of simple usability things like the side bar where I can hover over a hot spot and it ll tell me every implementing subclass of a method or the method I m implementing and from where    Whenever I ve had to use  or watch someone use  Eclipse it seems like they can do most of the things I can do in IntelliJ  but it takes them longer and it s clunkier

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Idea 8 0 has the lovely ctrl shift space x 2 that does the following autocomplete    City city   customer  lt ctrl-shift-space twice gt    resolves to    City city   customer getAddress   getCity      through any number of levels of getters setters

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Don t forget  compare with clipboard    Something that I use all the time in IntelliJ and which has no equivalent in Eclipse

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Alt Insert to edit text in Column Mode

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Two things that IntelliJ does that Eclipse doesn t that are very valuable to me   Method separators  those faint gray lines between methods make code much more readable  Text anti-aliasing  makes code look so nice in the IDE

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There are many things that idea solves in a much simpler way  or there s no equivalent    Autocomplete actions  Doing ctrl shift a you can call any idea action from the keyboard without remembering its key combination    Think about gnome-do or launchy in windows  and you ve got the idea  Also  this feature supports CamelCasing abbreviations    Shelf  Lets you keep easily some pieces of code apart  and then review them through the diff viewer  Local history  It s far better managed  and simpler  SVN annotations and history  simpler to inspect  and also you can easily see the history only for such a part of a whole source file  Autocomplete everywhere  such as the evaluate expression and breakpoint condition windows  Maven integration    much  much simpler  and well integrated  Refactors much closer to the hand  such as loops insertion  wrapping casting  renaming  and add variables  Find much powerful and well organized  Even in big projects Much stable to work with several branches of a big project at the same time  as a former bugfixer of 1 5Gb by branch sources  and the need to working in them simultaneously  idea shown its rock-solid capabilities  Cleaner and simpler interface    And  simpler to use only with the keyboard  letting apart the need of using the mouse for lots of simple taks  saving you time and giving you more focus on the code    where it matters    And now  being opensource    the Idea user base will grow exponentially

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Preamble to my answer  My use of Eclipse is limited  We needed a Java IDE to work on both Windows and Mac and the Mac port slowed down day by day  This was years ago and I m sure it s OK now  But that is what got us to switch to IntelliJ and we ve been happy with it   Now for my answer  One big difference I haven t seen mentioned yet is that tech support is better with IntelliJ Jet Brains  We send an e-mail to JetBrains and get a definitive answer back in less than an hour  Looking for answers to Eclipse problems results in the usual   You stupid idiot  answers  usually a small number of the replies  along with the much larger number of insightful  helpful replies  But it takes some sorting through to get the real answer

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Probably is not a matter of what can can t be done  but how   For instance both have editor surrounded with dock panels for project  classpath  output  structure etc  But in Idea when I start to type all these collapse automatically let me focus on the code it self  In eclipse all these panels keep open leaving my editor area  very reduced   about 1 5 of the total viewable area  So I have to grab the mouse and click to  minimize in those panels  Doing this all day long is a very frustrating experience in eclipse   The exact opposite thing happens with the view output window   In Idea running a program brings the output window panel  to see the output of the program even if it was perviously minimized   In eclipse I have to grab my mouse again and look for the output tab and click it to view my program output  because the output window panel is just another one  like all the rest of the windows  but in Idea it is treated in a special way   If the user want to run his program  is very likely he wants to see the output of that program    It seems so natural when I write it  but eclipse fails in this basic user interface concept   Probably there s a shortcut for this in eclipse   autohide output window while editing and autoshow it when running the program     but as some other tens of features the shortcut must be hunted in forums  online help etc while in Idea is a little bit more  natural     This can be repeated for almost all the features both have  autocomplete  word wrap  quick documentation view  everything  I think the user experience is far more pleasant in Idea than in eclipse  Then the motto comes true  Develop with pleasure   Eclipse handles faster larger projects    300 jars and  4000 classes    and I think IntelliJ Idea 8 is working on this   All this of course is subjective  How can we measure user experience

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The IntelliJ debugger has a very handy feature called  Evaluate Expression   that is by far better than eclipses pendant  It has full code-completion and i concider it to be generally  more useful

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Two things that IntelliJ does that Eclipse doesn t that are very valuable to me   Method separators  those faint gray lines between methods make code much more readable  Text anti-aliasing  makes code look so nice in the IDE

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The IntelliJ debugger has a very handy feature called  Evaluate Expression   that is by far better than eclipses pendant  It has full code-completion and i concider it to be generally  more useful

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Don t forget  compare with clipboard    Something that I use all the time in IntelliJ and which has no equivalent in Eclipse

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There are a number of features and workflows that are different in the two  as is evident in all the answers  However  I think that in deciding what framework to use one much also consider the general productivity improvement one can make with each tool   I am a big fan of Netbeans and Eclipse and have used both for many years  They are excellent tools and depending on what you are doing  you may want to choose one or the other   However  about six months ago  while working on a complex java web project involving a lot of javascript front end code for a HMT5 ui  I was forced to look for alternatives to Eclipse due to a js autocomplete bug  I was so desperate that I was considering going back to a simple text editor for my js code     It is only by luck that I ran across Intellij Idea  no time to research tools unfortunately    While it takes some time to get used to the Idea way of doing things  special features aside  the productivity increase it offers from small things left and right is the biggest asset in my opinion  It simply works better for me and I am now a subscription-paying client of Idea Ultimate  Once you get used to this  its is very difficult to go back to anything else   Nothing beats free and I am a big fan of open source  but in the end if you are doing this for a living  being able to do things faster pays out every time

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I have discovered recently at least two advanteges of IntelliJ IDEA over Eclipse   If one tries to use code formating in the JSP code editor the JSP scriptlets get broken  Eclipse is getting a little bit crazy  it ads random pieces of code here and there  IDEA behaves very nicely   The other thing is speed of deployment of the application on the JBoss Server  IntelliJ is replacing the application in the JBoss s tmp folder  so the redeployment is really fast  Eclipse WTP is replacing application in the deploy folder  which  as it turns out  lasts much longer

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I tried to switch to IntelliJ because of the new Android Studio  But I m very disappointed now  I m using Eclipse with the Code Recommanders Plugin  Here is a simple example why Eclipse is so awesome   I want to create a new SimpleTimeZone  SimpleTimeZone has no Constructor with zero arguments   Ctrl   Space in Eclipse    Ctrl   Space in IntelliJ    In IntelliJ I get no informations what kind of constructors SimpleTimeZone has   After Enter in Eclipse    I get the previously selected constructor filled with predefined variable names  And I can see the type of every argument  With Code Recommanders Eclipse guesses the right constructor by the previously defined variable types in the current scope and fills the constructor with these vars   After Enter in IntelliJ nothing happens  I get an empty constructor  I have to press Ctrl   P to see the expected arguments

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Intellij has a far superior SVN plug-in than either Subversive or Subclipse and it works  The amount of time we ve wasted merging source files using Eclipse doesn t bear thinking about  This isn t an issue with IntelliJ because the plugin helps you much more    Also the Subclipse plugin is unreliable - we regularly have instances where the plugin doesn t think there has been any code checked in to SVN by other developers  but there has - the CI server has processed them

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