Borland and Eclipse..... its getting steamy....

I am completely utilitarian when it comes to picking IDE's. Whichever IDE makes me more productive wins. IntelliJ has the best combination of features, intuitiveness, and stability of any Java IDE and I've tried them all (and I mean ALL). I consider Eclipse to be a solid IDE but it is really amateur hour when compared to IntelliJ.

Note that I have mentioned nothing about money. I don't care so long as it's not rediculous. I honestly don't understand programmers who say to me that they use Eclipse because it's free. I don't understand how someone who spends 8+ hours a day, every day of their life, spending that time with a subpar tool simply because it's free. That's just stupid.

I am a contractor. I carry my tools with me and I buy licenses for everything I use. If a tool improves my productivity or covers my ass (like a profiler), then I will buy it. To enable me to do this, I set aside a budget of $1000 a year. This covers new purchases and upgrades. People who spend $0 a year on their gear just don't care about their profession. It's that simple. You are NOT a professional in my opinion. People will use the excuse that their company won't pay for it. Who cares? You're the one who has to use it day in and day out.

Some people say, "But the standard editor at my company is Eclipse." Odd, that didn't keep me from using IntelliJ there. The ONLY time I will allow a company to dictate the editor I use is if they are using pair programming. In that case, you have to have a standard and follow it. Otherwise, my Java code is just as good, if not better, than any code checked in from a programmer using Eclipse.

All that said, I realise that I'm not the typical customer. However, I think my method of going about this is superior to the typical customer. I realize I sound like an egotistical asshole, and frankly I am when it comes to this. I've seen too many projects waste too many dollars because they were too damn cheap to buy good tools.

The modern day programmer is the sum of not just his knowledge, but his tools. They are AT LEAST as important as their knowledge. I carry this idea even into my hardware. When I go to a client site, I bring my own monitor, keyboard and mouse. Why? Because I'm sick and tired of the garbage that companies throw at you to do your work on. Since I've started bring my own gear, I no longer get eye strain, and I no longer get wrist strain.

What needs to happen, is IntelliJ and other "fans" of products like IntelliJ need to go out and explain this stuff to people.

That said, if Eclipse ever does get better, I will switch. Frankly, I don't see that happening in my lifetime but I will switch in a heartbeat. I'm a total whore when it comes to tools and I just go with the best that's out there. Keep it up JetBrains. I'd like to be a long term customer. :)

Marc

Very well said. I choose to use IDEA because it makes me productive. It is
bad enough that Idea has some buggy plugins. I can imagine the chaos with
Eclipse. If as a developer I have to depend on free, untested plugins then,
I have already lost.

What Idea gives me is a solid product that hides all the complexity from
me. I like the ease of use of all the intergrated default plugins that come
with Idea.

I belive I'm in only one in my company that use branches in cvs. I think
it is because Idea makes it easy.

>>> But are plugins really the primary selling feature of an IDE?
>>>
>> Not the plug-ins but the possibility to make them for sure(and the
>> guarantee
>>

- hence the documentation) if the situation requires it.

My experience, and what I've read of the market, is that the majority
of IDE users never install a single plugin. They use the application
directly as it comes out of the installer, and never even think of
looking for plugins. A large number will install a single plugin (an
SQL browser, typically) when told about it by a friend, and that's
all. This is undoubtedly true of Eclipse as well, although this
tendency is somewhat masked by the existence of commercial and
homebrew Eclipse distros shipping with pre-packaged plugins.

>> It's like the magic word "flexibility" in every marketing slogan.
>>

My old boss always said that "flexibility" and "extensibility" are
what software providers talk about when they have no idea what their
customers actually want. It's an insight that has saved me from making
any number of bad software purchases. JetBrains absolutely does not
have that problem.

To be honest, I think JetBrains should be glad of the plethora of
people writing plugins for Eclipse. Eclipse plugin download
repositories provide huge amounts of cheap and valuable market
research as to what people are actually interested in when using IDEs
that aren't presently available. JetBrains can then use that
information to figure out future product directions for IDEA and
Resharper. Figure out the functionality the Eclipse plugins provide,
and provide it directly in the core product with JetBrain's peerless
ergonomics and high quality (not things that most Eclipse plugins are
known for). As near as I can tell from the Irida list, that's exactly
what JetBrains is doing. I'd love to see innovative Eclipse plugins
like Jupiter or ContinuousTesting or some of the collaborative
development stuff adapted by JetBrains for inclusion in IDEA. I don't
fear that those plugins will cause IDEA to lose to Eclipse because
very few of the Eclipse customer base use those plugins.

--Dave Griffith

I've been meaning to do java3d. But without the tutorials, no amount of obfuscated
code nor the best IDE in the world will teach me the API.

Hello Ahmed,

We write programs, not poems :) So if you want learn programming using
Open API docs it's wrong way. But if you have some java experience and
IDEA you may use even obfuscated code. One more time documentation not
required for WHOLE OpenAPI but for the parts of it such as PSI,
Language API and so on.

Last weekend without any docs I use StructureView API and Productivity
API easily. (Thanks to Olesya and Anna for good API).

TIA,
Dmitry

Way to go. I agree completely. The economics of software development is sometimes
rediculous. Like you said, not enough money is been spent in the right places.
I am embarking into the consulting field. That is why I buy my own tools.
If I see they give me an edge, then I will buy it.

I too don't understand the logic behind developers choices. Where I worked
people marble at how fast I check code in. I'm the only one using Idea. I
also tell them that I use Idea. When they ask if it is free, they don't even
want to look at it. lol.

Also, I have gotten good raises where I work. It makes up for the tools I
use.

I am completely utilitarian when it comes to picking IDE's. Whichever
IDE makes me more productive wins. IntelliJ has the best combination
of features, intuitiveness, and stability of any Java IDE and I've
tried them all (and I mean ALL). I consider Eclipse to be a solid IDE
but it is really amateur hour when compared to IntelliJ.

Note that I have mentioned nothing about money. I don't care so long
as it's not rediculous. I honestly don't understand programmers who
say to me that they use Eclipse because it's free. I don't understand
how someone who spends 8+ hours a day, every day of their life,
spending that time with a subpar tool simply because it's free.
That's just stupid.

I am a contractor. I carry my tools with me and I buy licenses for
everything I use. If a tool improves my productivity or covers my ass
(like a profiler), then I will buy it. To enable me to do this, I set
aside a budget of $1000 a year. This covers new purchases and
upgrades. People who spend $0 a year on their gear just don't care
about their profession. It's that simple. You are NOT a professional
in my opinion. People will use the excuse that their company won't pay
for it. Who cares? You're the one who has to use it day in and day
out.

Some people say, "But the standard editor at my company is Eclipse."
Odd, that didn't keep me from using IntelliJ there. The ONLY time I
will allow a company to dictate the editor I use is if they are using
pair programming. In that case, you have to have a standard and
follow it. Otherwise, my Java code is just as good, if not better,
than any code checked in from a programmer using Eclipse.

All that said, I realise that I'm not the typical customer. However,
I think my method of going about this is superior to the typical
customer. I realize I sound like an egotistical asshole, and frankly
I am when it comes to this. I've seen too many projects waste too
many dollars because they were too damn cheap to buy good tools.

The modern day programmer is the sum of not just his knowledge, but
his tools. They are AT LEAST as important as their knowledge. I
carry this idea even into my hardware. When I go to a client site, I
bring my own monitor, keyboard and mouse. Why? Because I'm sick and
tired of the garbage that companies throw at you to do your work on.
Since I've started bring my own gear, I no longer get eye strain, and
I no longer get wrist strain.

What needs to happen, is IntelliJ and other "fans" of products like
IntelliJ need to go out and explain this stuff to people.

That said, if Eclipse ever does get better, I will switch. Frankly, I
don't see that happening in my lifetime but I will switch in a
heartbeat. I'm a total whore when it comes to tools and I just go
with the best that's out there. Keep it up JetBrains. I'd like to be
a long term customer. :)

Marc

Marc, you beat me to the punch. I was reading through he thread and that is exactly what I was going to say.

I'm a contractor and I have an IDEA license that I keep in an online storage. When I arrive at a new site, I download the license and get to work. There is a note in my PalmPilot that beeps loudly on the last day of the project, reminding me to delete the license before I leave. This has been the pattern for the past two years or so.

I was at a site a few months back, which had a handful of Eclipse users (most of the staff used IDEA). I was astounded. Eclipse took ages to read keystrokes, build projects, look up class names. Sometimes it froze for more than 20 seconds. Some fella was trying to use a J2EE plug in, which crashed the whole IDE regularly. He just started it up without a curse or a complaint.

Although Eclipse is fine on Windows, it appears to be less than wonderful on Linux and the MacOSX. IBM isn't a charity; Eclipse is a product designed to showcase the beginnings of IBM's own version of Java. Since most developers work on Windows, IBM chooses to target most of the Eclipse funding there.
Likewise, many of the plug-ins are not cross-platform (or just don't work very well on platforms other than Windows).

When I ask folk why they put up with it, they say:

"Well, why should I spend $400 on IDEA, when I can use this for nothing?"

Because if the 'free' tool is costing me money each day in terms of lost productivity, then it's not really 'free' is it?

Michael Jouravlev wrote:

It is much easier to get base IDE for free and then to add
only those plugins that needed, paying $50-100 per each.
Even if in the end you'd pay more, the process itself is
easier. It is like buying DVDs one by one instead of buying
the pack out of three movies, even in the pack is cheaper.
Most people prefer to pay in smaller chunks.

For an individual, this may be true, but for many companies, each
purchase must go through a process, so multiple purchases are usually
harder.

Also, the question is 'what do I need to get to be optimally
productive?' In this case, unless the combination of plugins is more
productive than the integrated tool, then usually the tool would win
out, assuming a reasonable price. Anyone who's not interested in
optimizing productivity, well, what can I say?

Usually a collection of plugins are not as well integrated for
productivity, and I believe this is true of Eclipse too.

--
Rob Harwood
Software Developer
JetBrains Inc.
http://www.jetbrains.com
"Develop with pleasure!"

Marc Stock wrote:

Since I've started bring my own gear, I no longer get eye strain, and I no longer get wrist strain.

I visited a friend of mine at his employer's office. He had a 15 inch
non-flat CRT, 128MB RAM, and one of the slowest hard drives I've seen
since I don't know when (of course it was always thrashing due to lack
of adequate RAM). I was trying to help him out, but it was such a pain
to work on that machine.... I told him he should splurge on himself and
get a half-decent machine for $1000 or something. Even just upgrading
the RAM to 512MB for $100 would have done wonders.

--
Rob Harwood
Software Developer
JetBrains Inc.
http://www.jetbrains.com
"Develop with pleasure!"