Item: IntelliJ IDEA
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

IntelliJ was the main IDE of choice for our development team. Primarily focused on Scala development, but also for web development. It allows the team to easily focus on their code and not waste time fiddling with plugins/configurations for 2 hours or more throughout the day.

Pros and Cons

Excellent Scala IDE
Excellent developer tools (console, REST API tester, etc)
Great ecosystem for plugins
Works with many languages - great for a polyglot or full stack scenario

Since the IDE is written on the JVM - it has all the inherent issues with UIs built on Swing that run in the JVM. Memory bloat and slowness. These items are addressed occasionally, but as of late they seem to be creeping up.
The web based development tools are almost impossible to use anymore - something is going on when editing HTML that just brings my system to its knees.
Seems like there are constant updates. This can be good - but also distracting. I’ve had a number of upgrades that I had to back out due to regressions or other issues

Return on Investment

The overall stability of the application has kept engineers focused on their task at hand
The application has never caused a loss of files/data during the development process
Engineers seem to love the tool - keeps them happy and productive

Alternatives Considered

IntelliJ is in an interesting spot. Now with new JavaScript based IDEs available for free - there’s some serious competition. Atom and VS Code being the primary competition. In terms of web development technologies - these are the IDEs to seriously consider first. However, in terms of Java/Scala and other languages - your miles may vary. And I think that’s where the sweet spot is for IntelliJ - non-JavaScript based languages. The plugin ecosystem across all three IDEs are about the same - with maybe a slight edge to VS Code. But its the new guy on the block. IntelliJ is the wise old man that knows how to do a lot of core/important things very well.

Other Software Used

MongoDB, Amazon Web Services, OpenShift

Likelihood to Recommend

Great Java and Scala IDE. Good for polyglot. But for web, you’re better off using another solution.

Users and Roles

4 - Software Engineering

Support Headcount Required

Engineers support themselves.

Business Processes Supported

Software engineering
Unit Testing
REST API Testing
Running deployment builds

Innovative Uses

While there are potentially some ways you can innovate with he tool (I.e. building domain specific plugins for use within the organization) - we didn’t have any such use cases.

Future Planned Uses

None.

Likelihood to Renew

VS Code is maturing and has a Scala plugin now. The overall experience with VS Code - for web development at least - is very snappy/fast. IntelliJ feels a bit sluggish in comparison. If that Scala plugin for VS Code is deemed mature enough - we may not bother renewing and resort to the Community Edition if we need it.

Products Replaced

Key Differentiators

Price
Product Features
Product Usability
Product Reputation
Prior Experience with the Product

The single most important factor in my decision was its Scala plugin. Without that plugin we would have been forced into other solutions such as Eclipse or just plain old text editors. IntelliJ was significantly ahead of Eclipse in this area and much more stable and reliable.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

I’d be sure to spend more to looking at how it works with other languages and tooling. The environment is changing and new players are emerging that may be able to provide and overall better experience in the near term. I didn’t put as much time looking into alternatives at the time because - quite frankly there weren’t many. Its different now.

Implementation Rating

This installs just like any other application - its pretty straight forward. Perhaps licensing could be more challenging - but if you use the cloud licensing they offer its as simple as having engineers login to the application and it just works.

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Implemented in-house

Implementation Phases

Change Management Lessons

Change management was minimal - Not a part of it

Implementation Issues

None

Support Rating

Forum based support for paying customers is just not effective. Team had to ‘live with’ a few bugs until the development team finally prioritized the issue and resolved it. This is ok for a free/open source tool. Not really acceptable for a paid item.

IntelliJ IDEA Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Knowledgeable team	Problems left unsolved Difficult to get immediate help

Pros	Cons
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar	None

Easy Tasks

Writing code is pretty easy - the editor is feature rich and pretty intuitive
Testing REST APIs is pretty easy
Running your Unit Test Suite is super easy - can even run it in a continuous mode

Difficult Tasks

Sometimes the cache needs to be invalidated as builds will fail or code will be mis-represented as wrong with red lines
The built in terminal app was once useful, but lately has some nasty bugs around copy/paste that seem extremely non-intuitive
The discovery of some of the more useful tools are hidden in menus that may not make sense.

Mobile Interface Availability and Impressions

No - Not provided

A Trustworthy IDE that Won’t Let you Down

Overall Satisfaction with IntelliJ IDEA