Most unprofessional IDEA review
http://www.ftponline.com/javapro/2003_04/online/intellij_dthielen_04_29_03/
Man, look at this guy's resume http://dave.thielen.com/resume.htm. He has only one year of real java experience and already is trying to make a statement here. No wonder he doesn't know what refactorings really are.
That sucks!!!
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Hey, he has 18 years of management experience -- how he could be
wrong?
Tom
Yuk !!!
That really does suck !!!!!
I wish there was a "comment this article" option !
I think this guy needs to learn what Java is
in the first place, and what IDEs are available on
the market.
Then maybe, he can come back and make a proper review.
My favorite quotes: ;o)
"At first I thought that the refactoring was a complete waste?until I used it"
(Oh, you really though so ?)
"IntelliJ IDEA's three biggest problems are that it's slow, it's slow, and it's s-l-o-o-w"
(Please, try NetBeans/SunONE, CodeGuide, JBuilder...)
"it only sort of pays attention to standards"
(JUnit, Ant, Standard Java code outline, JavaDoc, Code Inspection, CVS...)
"You can set the keymap to "visual studio," but it's not the Visual Studio keymap"
(Maybe because IDEA is much more powerfull than MS VS,
so the need of further keymappings is obvious)
"Other little things bothered me, but these fall into the category of individual preference"
(Thanks, that's what we need to know in a professional review. We're on the 'JavaPro' website after all)
ARghhh, Hilarious
Anyway, IDEA still rocks, and real Java users say it better !
Ok, I'll be fair, so here is a nice quote (page top) from http://dave.thielen.com/software.htm:
"The world of Java tools, and especially those that run in the J2EE environment,have really grown up in the past year.
Most noteworthy is that with IntelliJ there is finally an IDE worth using"
Hey, I found more remarks on IDEA, from the same author:
http://dave.thielen.com/IntelliJ Issues.doc
(For those who are not afraid of the good old Mirco*$Soft Word document)
In this doc, he says:
"They should add an obfusticator (in the meantime JShrink http://www.e-t.com/ is good)"
Is this already a Tracker Request ?
BTW, there's lots of other RFEs in there...take a look
"Replace requires mouse clicks on each replacement ? there are no keyboard shortcuts"
(Of course there is I use it all the time)
"You cannot display two different files in the editor (split screen) at the same time"
(OF COURSE you can !!!!!)
"You cannot easily select a line with the mouse"
(Triple click, and anyways, keyboard is better)
My favorite quote here:
"PITA (Pain In The Ass) means you can make changes yourself to eliminate that problem"
(Mhmm, no comment...)
Dan/
the same time"
I agree with everything else you've said, but can you explain how you do
this? I don't think you can.
This rang some bells, then I realised that this chap posted his entire list
of issues (as found in the word doc below) direct to the eap.features forum
just the other day.
http://www.intellij.net/forums/thread.jsp?forum=15&thread=28538&message=471706&q=50495441#471706
dan wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
Well, when Codewright is so good, why he don't stick with it?
What the hell is an "obfusticator"? If he means an obfuscator, what
has it to do in IDEA? Or did he had in mind, IntelliJ should choose a
better obfuscator for their idea.jar?
Tom
I've read that article and I didn't think it was as bad as is being made out here.
For the sake of balance, he also said:
"I tried (IDEA) and loved it."
"The editor is brilliant."
"Its automatic templates are very smart"
"The debugger is great"
I do however agree with other posters that some of his complaints are purely subjective or just plain wrong and this is where the guy's credibility comes into question.
The "not adhering to standards complaint" is a bit dubious really - where else is the Visual Studio keymap a 'standard' except in Visual Studio?
And, IDEA is imho slow. It's no slower than NetBeans on the same hardware, it's way faster than TogetherJ, but that doesn't make it 'fast'. Having said that, it is fast enough for me, but I wish it was faster ;)
i think he would say that the code inspection is bad?! but he mustn't work with IDEA!!! i think IDEA is the greatest java ide in the world!!!
i think it doesn't go much faster. if idea should run faster, java must be faster!!!
Agreed...I was wrong !
Got carried away a little bit
Dan/
Send emails to jva@omeda.com
I can tell you that intellij is faster than jbuilder and eclipse. Of course it's not as fast as vi but it's more than just a character based editor.
BTW that email is the contact for Java Pro. I would try to question the experience of the writer and not the opinions he stated in the article.
But it is in the feature list for the next version. So you were close :)
The GUI is fast and living proof that Swing can compare to native GUIs.
But some tasks are quite slow. Opening a project, for example. I understand, however, that this is just the price for the excellent code navigation, refactoring, etc.
Also, GC can become annoying if you have not enough RAM (which isn't idea's fault ;)
Well, actually, most of his review was very, very positive. It was marred by the fact that some of his complaints just didn't make any sense though:
Slow? I disagree
I've never had any trouble with the IDEA's speed personally.
He should compare it too Netbeans, JBuilder or Eclipse. It's a speed demon compared to those three.
Standards? I don't know what he means by this. I can run JUnit tests and ANT scripts. I can plug in any JDK and work with XML documents. So what's his point?
Undo? I may be different here, but I get annoyed when UNDO wastes time by unravelling my jumps around a file. I can do that myself. I'm interested in undoing actual changes to the file, not movements around it. I hope JetBrains have no plans to change this, because he's wrong.
Still, it was an enthusiastic review. He did say he "loved it" after all ....