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What Java IDE should I switch to

4 points · submitted Aug 2014 by u/Apothiem · archived

I'm in my second year of studying Computer Science. So far I've only used JGrasp which is a very lightweight IDE. I'm wondering if it's necessary to make a switch. I like the fact that JGrasp doesn't spoon-feed you but now that our coding is becoming more complex I'm wondering if I'm wasting time with menial coding and finding errors that a more advanced IDE could help me with. Any suggestions on what to switch to, if anything?

47 comments · 60% upvoted · other discussions

comments

sh0rug0ru 23 points · Aug 2014

Top contenders are IntelliJ, Eclipse and Netbeans. Download each one and try each out, go with the one you like best.

chunkyks 3 points · Sep 2014

Always this advice, for IDEs, editors, or many other types of tools; keep in mind that any tool you're going to be using for 4-12 hours a day for next several years is going to be being used a lot.

It's worth investing a couple weeks trying and really learning each, to figure out which you like and which will be your best way to get work done.

gavinaking 1 points · Sep 2014

Download each one and try each out, go with the one you like best.

I echo this. In places like reddit you'll get a lot of folks shouting IntelliJ IntelliJ at you. But the truth is that IntelliJ fans are a distinct minority of Java developers. A very big majority of Java developers choose Eclipse, though—naturally, being in the majority—they're not as vocal/zealoted about it.

They're both great IDEs for writing Java, with very, very similar feature sets as far as the Java editor goes. Try them both out and see which you like best.

soulcheck 28 points · Aug 2014

If you can afford it - IntelliJ. IMO it's the best IDE hands down.

If you cannot afford it, maybe the Community Edition will be enough.

herimitho 18 points · Aug 2014

For pure Java community edition is more than enough.

[deleted] 11 points · Aug 2014

Community is still better than Eclipse for sure. Ultimate is worth the money though.

travmanx 5 points · Aug 2014

I bought the Ultimate last year (being a CS major) , but so far I feel that I haven't used anything more than the community version offered.

soulcheck 3 points · Aug 2014

Wait until you dive into spring. The tools they provide are marvellous.

travmanx 2 points · Sep 2014

Sadly my University doesn't cover any frameworks. So it's all self taught. I would love to learn spring tho.

lacosaes1 2 points · Aug 2014

What about "Enterprise Development" support? According to the website is only available in Ultimate Edition.

Truthier 1 points · Sep 2014

because you haven't done anything which you might need it for, in which case it may not be that much better. for example if you work on a grails project, having idea support for it makes it way easier to manage and understand

ryuzaki49 1 points · Sep 2014

Can you explain a little more? What tools did you use with the ultimate version, and why did you stop using them?

virtyx 1 points · Sep 2014

Unless your CS work involves a lot of JavaEE I doubt you'd use too many of the Ultimate features. However if you get an itch to make a webapp you'll probably enjoy it

[deleted] 1 points · Sep 2014

You don't know what you're missing. The most basic thing that's killing me is the lack of support for other web languages like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JSP and the OOTB support for running your web app in all the popular containers.

herimitho 2 points · Aug 2014

Sure, if you need any of the functionality it offers. It's not a "must buy no matter what".

DroidLogician 2 points · Sep 2014

I've been using IntelliJ Community for years, don't need Ultimate unless you're heavily into Java EE. Community is perfect for SE/Android.

Shameless plug, /r/IntelliJIDEA. Needs more quality posters and welcomes people asking for help.

zack6849 13 points · Aug 2014

In my opinion IntelliJ IDEA is the best one out there, the community edition is free, the ultimate edition is really nice too, and you can get a free ultimate edition license if you work on a FOSS project, though the main benefits to the ultimate edition are support for JavaEE stuff and web development (think PHP and Servlets), and oh my god if you do SQL stuff it has wonderful syntax hilighting, suggestions, and other stuff for SQL, it has wonderful type checking and other tools built in, for example tools for testing REST web APIs from the IDE without the hassle of writing code to send stuff with the same headers and whatnot, it looks wonderful, and is a great IDE all around, it can also (with some plugins) emulate most of the features of other IDEs jetbrains offers (ie php and stuff like that does pretty much the same as phpStorm), there's a plugin for pretty much everything

Edit: how do i markdown?

[deleted] 19 points · Aug 2014

IntelliJ Idea. Ex eclipse / netbeans user, look no further

zrnkv 5 points · Aug 2014

So far I have not seen a single person who would want to go back to Eclipse/Netbeans after using Idea for a while.

Lindby 5 points · Sep 2014

I tried IDEA for a few months, couldn't stand it. Went back to Eclipse. Sure, it has its problems, but at least the font rendering is not done with a potato.

virtyx 3 points · Sep 2014

Netbeans actually has some pretty nice features, and I think if you compare Netbeans to IntelliJ Community Edition, Netbeans has much better JavaEE support.

That said I can only imagine IntelliJ Ultimate is pretty unmatched (I'm a CE user myself)

zrnkv 1 points · Sep 2014

I haven't used Netbeans for many years but I heard that it got a lot better recently.

Idea CE isn't really usable for Java EE. That's what Ultimate is for. And it's worth every penny.

nikhilvibhav 1 points · Sep 2014

Lot better. Just joined an IT firm as a Java developer. Love it. Better than eclipse, at least IMO. Haven't used IntelliJ but can't wait to try it out.

chunkyks 5 points · Sep 2014

raises hand

I bought intellij in the "end of the world sale" a couple years ago. Tried it for a couple projects, didn't like it, went back to netbeans. Eclipse can rot in hell as a java ide.

shinyquagsire23 2 points · Sep 2014

I tried it, loved it, but I cannot for the life of me get used to the different terminology and menu locations. Slowed me down waaaay too much to be productive unfortunately.

llogiq 1 points · Sep 2014

Another Eclipse / IntelliJ / Netbeans user reporting in. Depending on what project I'm on, I'll use any of the above, though I always seem to return to Eclipse.

degrix 1 points · Sep 2014

Tried it, went back to eclipse. Could not find the tab/enter after auto brace option that eclipse had and that slowed me down far too much.

homeless_nudist 5 points · Sep 2014

There's been a lot of praise for IntelliJ lately, but I'm still a fan of Eclipse.

majeric 2 points · Sep 2014

Ya, I don't get it. Eclipse has brilliant refactoring support.

badonkadon_ 2 points · Sep 2014

I like eclipse best, but IntelliJ is also popular.

[deleted] 5 points · Aug 2014

I'll octuple-endorse IntelliJ. Not just because it's great for Java, but because it's also a pretty slick editor for JavaScript, CSS, Sass, grunt, XML and everything else.

sjnv 2 points · Sep 2014

IntelliJ IDEA .

SlobberGoat 2 points · Sep 2014

IntelliJ IDEA 13.1.4 Ultimate reporting in.

zrnkv 3 points · Aug 2014

Intellij Idea.

If you are a student you can use the community edition for free.

[deleted] 10 points · Aug 2014

Community is free for everyone. Ultimate has various discounts for open source projects and academia or non-profits.

zrnkv 2 points · Aug 2014

Ahhh. You're right. I thought the community edition was limited to only non-commercial projects.

ExPixel 2 points · Aug 2014

The community edition is free for everyone.

rniestroj 6 points · Aug 2014

Use NetBeans. It's free, has "everything" (profiler, maven support, versioning, multiple languages, ...) out-of-the-box, has an easy to learn and use UI. If you go with Netbeans there is a good chance that if you go in future for example to JEE backend java coding, or HTML5 frontend coding, or maybe C++, or PHP, that you will be able to stay with netbeans. If you will be familiar with the IDE, then new technologies will be easier to adapt.

[deleted] 3 points · Sep 2014

I just use vim and plugins

watafu_mx 6 points · Sep 2014

The Amish of the software development community.

majeric 1 points · Sep 2014

I refer to them as neo-luddites. It's rediculous to exclude the IDE from development. they are an eco-system. It's an artificial restriction that hobbles speedy development. More over it actually result in poorer code as a developer may choose shorter member names to minimize their typing. (as an example)

sazzer 1 points · Sep 2014

Which plugins? I'm a big vim fan but I miss the ability to automatically add imports, and to automatically jump to a class definition too much to use it for Java development...

Tevroc 3 points · Aug 2014

I've been using Netbeans for quite a while - it's free, works really well, and is full featured.

cryptos6 1 points · Sep 2014

I recommend IntelliJ IDEA. Code navigation is fantastic, refactorings are great and the static code analysis is far beyond the competition. My second choice would be NetBeans. Avoid Eclipse, it is a mess.

sreya92 1 points · Sep 2014

Depends, if you're ever hoping to do tutorials on frameworks or develop Java in the corporate world I'd recommend Eclipse. In my experience it's the most widely adopted. It's what I use, though I don't particularly like it...

space_coder 1 points · Sep 2014

If you are only programming in Java and the other languages/protocols directly supported by Oracle (Javascript, CSS, and HTML5) then I recommend Netbeans. It is full featured, has a great debugger, remote operations is built in, and has plenty of documentation. It does everything that a Java IDE should.

The only thing that Netbeans wont do that jGrasp does is the CSD diagramming inline with the source code and the fancy data visualizations.

If you program in other languages on a regular basis, you may be better served by IntelliJ or Eclipse. IntelliJ is more polished in areas, but Eclipse is free and works almost as well.

EDIT: In the end it's all personal preference (Don't let anyone tell you otherwise). I agree with Sh0rug0ru's advice of trying all three (Netbeans, Eclipse, and IntelliJ) and picking the one you like best.