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Gold Standard for Java IDEs
April 13, 2018

Gold Standard for Java IDEs

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with IntelliJ IDEA

IntelliJ IDEA is a full-featured integrated development environment (IDE) for development of Java and Groovy applications. As there is no mandatory IDE for developers in the organisation, it is usually chosen for personal use by developers. It increases productivity in development by supporting many different build systems, language-specific plugins, auto-completion for class names and static error analysis for written code.
  • Fast and comprehensive auto-completion for class names and variable names; best static code analysis engine by far
  • Interface is more responsive than competing IDEs such as NetBeans or Eclipse
  • Features like "go to definition" and "go to implementation" on class members help cut down on lead time when contributing to existing projects
  • Current version (2018.1) has some hiccups in the UI in the Linux distribution - menus floating where they're not supposed to
  • User interface is less sluggish than competitors but still has some room for improvement where speed and responsiveness is concerned
  • Decreases induction time when contributing to existing Java codebases
  • Increases productivity when collaborating on Java projects in small-to-medium sized teams
  • Less time manually configuring dependencies and frameworks in Java development
IntelliJ IDEA is, in my opinion, the gold standard for Java development. I would recommend it for medium-to-large Java projects, in medium-to-large teams, where its code analysis features help with understanding the codebase and more productive collaboration. The enterprise version of IntelliJ IDEA is required for Java EE applications, and it is fairly pricey. However, if Java applications are your organisation's bread and butter, IDEA is still positioned as a worthwhile investment.