eclipse vs idea
Hello All;
Let me say first that I love IDEA. I am the only person where I work that
uses Idea. I payed for IDEA from my own pocket. I know how easy it is to
create and maintain code with it. My coworkers are unwilling to try Idea
because it is not free. I tried eclipse to see if I would like it, and I
found it basic. I don't know what people see with eclipse. I think it is
mostly the free price tag.
Anyway, what do you all think about Eclipse compared to Idea? Given that
eclipse is free and open source, do you all think in the future the features
offer by Eclipse will eclipse Idea? I hope JB will out space and out
innovate Eclipse. I say this so that there will always be product for
productive developers who just want to meet deadlines with the best possible
quality. In alot of ways, this is an example of open source vs commercial
source.
Please don't get irritated by this post. I only want to know what you all
think about the future for IDEA in 3 to 4 years from now. I bet given enough
time, open source should produce quality products. How much time? I think 20
years. But who wants to wait that long when I can use IDEA now.
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Hello, Rodrigo!
You wrote on Wed, 18 Aug 2004 17:08:18 -0500:
R> Let me say first that I love IDEA. I am the only person where I work
R> that uses Idea. I payed for IDEA from my own pocket. I know how easy
R> it is to create and maintain code with it. My coworkers are unwilling
R> to try Idea because it is not free. I tried eclipse to see if I would
R> like it, and I found it basic. I don't know what people see with
R> eclipse. I think it is mostly the free price tag.
Again and again, pun from this news archives "Don't ask developer, that IDE
his used, if it IDEA, his tald it himself."
Thanks!
--
Alexey Efimov, Java Developer
Tops-BI
http://www.topsbi.ru
I use IDEA at work (employer pays for it) and Eclipse at home (I have to
pay for it). I much prefer IDEA. Not by a little either and not because
there are obvious features missing but because it is so painfully hard
to do things in Eclipse that are trivially easy in IDEA.
I wish that I could afford a personal license for IDEA, but I'd have to
give up something like feeding my kids to do it.
Rodrigo wrote:
Hmmh,
Isn't it so that you can use an Idea corporate licence anywhere, on any PC if you make sure that the same licence is not used twice at the same time ?
I have installed Idea at home and use the same licence, because, of course, I cannot use it at the same time at home and in the office. The network scan Intellij is performing is just running for the reason to make sure that the same licence only runs once.
So it should be possible for you to use IntelliJ at home too, isn't it ?
Regards
Thomas Gülden
Munich, Germany
Rodrigo,
I am in a very similar situation. I too paid for a personal license of IDEA. Everyone I work with uses Eclipse.
Everyone I know who has given both a try find that they like IDEA better. There are a few features here and there that make a difference to some people, but for the vast majority of people I talk to it comes down to ease of use for the more common features. IDEA tends to win out over Eclipse for ease of use almost every time.
That being said, it cannot be disputed that the price makes a huge difference to many people. Even though most people seem to prefer IDEA, only a minority feel strongly enough (and have the ability) to purchase IDEA. It's better than Eclipse, but most feel it's not that much better.
In the long run, I believe that IDEA will continue to flourish as a viable alternative, but it will never be the most popular IDE. There are just too many people out there who are unwilling or unable to pay when they can get something like Eclipse for free.
Personally, I'm OK with IDEA remaining an alternative for a minority of developers, so long as there's enough of us to keep them profitable. As long as JB is able to keep competing with the Eclipse juggernaut, I think we all win in the end..
I've been a big advocate of IDEA since the 2.x days. It has enabled me
to develop many applications in half the time and with twice the quality
of other developers. However, lately I have been rethinking my position.
Don't get me wrong, I still think that IDEA is the best Java IDE around
and that it makes me much more productive than I would be with any other
IDE including Eclipse. However, with the current job climate, I don't
think that I want to share that knowledge any more. My personal license
for IDEA gives me a definite advantage over others that don't "develop
with pleasure" and I am beginning to think that I should keep it that way!
Let the masses limp along developing with a free IDE or one of those
overpriced and underachieving alternatives. I'll keep using the one
that helps me stand out from the crowd.
� wrote:
IMO, the reverse should definitely be true of a Personal license, but it
would be up to the owner of your license (your corporation) to determine
if they wanted you to use their license at home.
I went to a java conference a week ago.
I had 11 instructors.
2 used Eclipse
1 used Emacs
8 used IntelliJ
All of them who used IntelliJ owned their own copy.
Here is my opinion on the cost. If neither you not your company can
afford IntelliJ, how "professionally" are you developing. If $499 could
not be spent keep me productive, I would be worried about other things -
like will my next paycheck bounce.
:-P
Tim Dean wrote:
>Rodrigo,
>
>I am in a very similar situation. I too paid for a personal license of IDEA. Everyone I work with uses Eclipse.
>
>Everyone I know who has given both a try find that they like IDEA better. There are a few features here and there that make a difference to some people, but for the vast majority of people I talk to it comes down to ease of use for the more common features. IDEA tends to win out over Eclipse for ease of use almost every time.
>
>That being said, it cannot be disputed that the price makes a huge difference to many people. Even though most people seem to prefer IDEA, only a minority feel strongly enough (and have the ability) to purchase IDEA. It's better than Eclipse, but most feel it's not that much better.
>
>In the long run, I believe that IDEA will continue to flourish as a viable alternative, but it will never be the most popular IDE. There are just too many people out there who are unwilling or unable to pay when they can get something like Eclipse for free.
>
>Personally, I'm OK with IDEA remaining an alternative for a minority of developers, so long as there's enough of us to keep them profitable. As long as JB is able to keep competing with the Eclipse juggernaut, I think we all win in the end..
>
--
Norris Shelton
Sun Certified Java Programmer
I agree from a personal perspective. However, there's a flaw in your argument: If companies like mine decided to pay for IDEA, they'd need to pay for hundreds of licences. Those $499 licenses add up pretty quick. Even with good volume discounts you still have a significant cost. It's easy to argue that $500 can be made up for in added productivity. It's a little harder when it's $50,000
OK, here is a question for you. What do they use now?
Tim Dean wrote:
>>Here is my opinion on the cost. If neither you not
>>your company can
>>afford IntelliJ, how "professionally" are you
>>developing. If $499 could
>>not be spent keep me productive, I would be worried
>>about other things -
>>like will my next paycheck bounce.
>>
>>
>
>
>I agree from a personal perspective. However, there's a flaw in your argument: If companies like mine decided to pay for IDEA, they'd need to pay for hundreds of licences. Those $499 licenses add up pretty quick. Even with good volume discounts you still have a significant cost. It's easy to argue that $500 can be made up for in added productivity. It's a little harder when it's $50,000
>
--
Norris Shelton
Sun Certified Java Programmer
Compared to the salary costs of 100s of developers, $50,000 is not a whole lot. I think the problem is that the cost of tools is usually a different budget than the cost the workforce.
Objectively, you need just a little increase in terms of productivity or motivation (pleasure!) to earn back $499 per developer. The other problem though is that these benefits are difficult to prove or measure.
In article <cg0k0j$s75$1@is.intellij.net>, "Rodrigo" <rodrigo@lim.com>
wrote:
Eclipse has some very smart people working on it, and a robust
community. IDEA has some very smart people as well, but the community
is not as large. Witness the number of posts in the eclipse.org news
server, vs the jetbrains servers.
That said, having a lot of people talking about your product does not
always mean that the project is developing. My personal test case is a
project builder. For one client, I want a way to create the hundred or
so projects they work on as part of their ant bootstrap system. I can
use virtually any command line tool I want, but I cannot easily assume
that the machine doing the build has either Eclipse or IDEA installed.
In IDEA, I spent two days with their project list, and had something
that generated IDEA projects. They are just plain old XML, and I could
generate them without IDEA even being installed.
With Eclipse, you must generate projects from within the workspace.
Further, the maintainers feel that having a way to do so from outside
eclipse is not useful, and that having opaque binary data files is just
fine. I suspect I could learn to write a plugin in a few weeks, but I
am not eager to do so.
Thus, even though the Eclipse community seems bigger, I solved a real
world problem with IDEA more quickly.
Eclipse, in general, tends to use the One Monster Dialog approach, while
IDEA uses many separate steps. Each style appeals to different people.
For example, check out the new class dialog in Eclipse - it does
everything, including letting you generate overridden methods for
implemented interfaces and inherited parent classes. Pretty keen, and a
one stop shop. IDEA, on the other hand has a generate class item, and
various "implement interface" intentions, which then let you implement
methods. Several steps, but the steps are far smaller, and you would
use the same techniques if you wished to implement a method later as you
do when you create it the first time.
Eclipse is a very powerful tool, and I encourage people to try it. It is
a bit heavyweight, but it does work very well. I also encourage people
to try IDEA. Usually, one of them seems more appropriate to a given
user.
Scott
Full ack.
Every time there is a new version of Eclipse, I try it.
I want to like it more than IDEA. I really, really want to. There are things in IDEA that annoy me endlessly; when I hit my Basil Fawlty threshold, I install Eclipse.
I'm usually back with IDEA within about an hour or so.
It's hard to say why IDEA (warts and all) is better; I think it just works the way I work; Eclipse seems to be geared more towards packing as much functionality into a single operation as possible.
Eclipse's project system is a prime example. By default, it assumes that you want to move all your code into an Eclipse directory; IDEA assumes that you want to leave the files where you found them, and work from there.
Knowledge shared is knowledge gained.
Bas
On 19-08-2004 20:41, Tim Haley wrote:
Bas Leijdekkers wrote:
I realize that. I was being facetious. If I really wasn't willing to
share the knowledge, I wouldn't have posted in the first place.
I am still an IDEA user and have been a paying user since 2.x. While I would switch to a free Eclipse environment due to cost and some bafflingly stupid feature changes in IDEA - I am content enough to continue to use IDEA through version 4.x. I am likely not going to upgrade however as many of the things that I want to do are served by this version of IDEA and anything J2ME related has to be done in either a custom ant build.... or eclipse-me. As good as IDEA is, I've kinda 'out grown' it. I need something with more of the features I keep needing every day, but there isn't anything out there.
Usability wise - eclipse just plain doesn't get it. Eclipse is getting better all the time, but some of their core philosophy is 'offensive' to project development. We'll see how things go. Who know, maybe I'll start taking a closer look at XCode 2.0 :)